Reason For Me?, MIDI editing capabilities? Options

[korektphool]

I have Cubase SE and five virtual instruments, i bought Steinberg's Studio Case. I want to know if I buy Reason, will it have some sort of Key Editor that is present in Cubase? Is it worthwhile to buy Reason when i already have Cubase? Does Reason use virtual instruments?
Korektphool
PS i am making hiphop music.

[korektphool]

Anyone there that can help me on this problem?
I need to make a decision by Christmas!
Thanks in advance!
Korektphool

[swilder]

you can use reason's instruments in cubase. reason is a very powerful music pruduction system in its own right. so you may not evrn need cubase anymore. A demo is available for download. try it out and check it out for yourself

Scott

[korektphool]

Hi Swilder!
Thanks for that input, but i heard somewhere that you cannot record audio on reason, so ill need to use cubase for this. can u help me on how to do this in cubase and automate the background music in reason?
Korektphool

[korektphool]

Hello, anyone there?
KorektPhool

[KevO]

Hi --

Reason is a rack of a bunch of wonderful virtual instruments. Samplers, drum machines, effects, etc. You can record midi input, but you cannot record audio. Through the rewire protcol you can use a program like Live or Protools (and probably Cubase -- a program I don't have) to combine what you do in Reason with recorded audio in other programs.

Hope this answers your question...

[macyu]

Yeah I've seen it done. It's a really nice environment to have both a DAW like Cubase and Reason linked via rewire. As KevO said, reason is like bunch of good virtual instruments. Think of it like any other expensive virtual instrument like Kontakt. But the thing with Reason is that you could run it stand alone, and even record but only midi. The good thing is that you can link it up with a DAW that supports Rewire, and with that, you basically have two programs open, like cubase and reason, and reason will play along with cubase. Tempo changes and the like are also sync-ed. You can either opt to use the midi editor in cubase and play it via reason, and route the audio back to cubase, or you can just record/edit in reason and just route the audio back to cubase. Both ways work, but I heard the timing is better if you just do the midi in reason.

one final note. make sure you have plenty of ram! running both programs at once makes it pretty ram intensive.. esp on OS X... and the reason sampler doesn't stream from disk, so your ram requirements will grow as you load more and larger instrument samples.

[boze]

yeah, Reason into Cubase via the 'rewire' protocol is a nice investment. while the instruments in Reason aren't as strong as the individual synths and samplers available to run in cubase, the things that make up for it are 1) ease of use (reason is quick and easy to work with) and 2) you get all the basic tools at once- synths, samplers, a loop slicer.


two more comments:
1) reasons effects are pretty weak as a whole

2) a good workflow is to make your beat in reason and hen when it's done or fairly fleshed out close out reason and launch cubase and then launch reason as a rewire slave move to recording audio and mixing with effects in cubase. since the two-apps-at-once thing slows down reasons responsiveness, i think it helps to work this way and move faster at the start.

good luck!

[korektphool]

kevo, macyu and boze: thanks for all that help. It has nearly influenced my desicion, i am thinking of buying it, except for one last question i have. Does it have a key editor for MIDi? Because if i want to use it as a standalone product its should have some way of editing midi, i do not play the keyboard. Also, the 'orkester bank', are those loops or single note samples to trigger midi?
once again, thanks from the korektphool

[boze]

yes, it has separate views for basic piano-roll, drum, and loop slice editing and you can either poke the notes in with a midi kbd and move them around later or just pencil them in.

The app runs entirely in one window and the bottom part is devoted to arrangment and composition. You switch between viewing one track close-up or the entire arrangment using a little group of view buttons in the top right of the bottom half of the window. It's really easy to understand and use- that plus stability (since it doesn't use plugins, vsti's or live audio) is what has made Reason so popular.

Good luck and happy holidays everybody!