Posts

Reason 14 & the Rack Extension SDK 5.0.0

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I've been progressively disenchanted with Reason because of the lack of full MIDI support and more importantly, lack of (MIDI recording of) expressive playing. All my Polyphonic Aftertouch or MPE controllers/synths are ignored by Reason- So... I end up having to use Ableton Live, unfortunately, which has been my long time fallback while waiting for Reason to support something, like when I've waited for Audio IN/Recording, VST Hosting and now still, for proper MIDI routing into/out of VSTs, PolyAT/MPE and... soon MIDI 2.0 and... Video (but that's stretching it). Anyway, in June of this year, the Rack Extension SDK 5.0.0 was released and I checked its possibilities and I was extremely excited with all the new very interesting and some long awaited features by RE devs! It wouldn't solve my ongoing gripes with Reason but at least it would allow amazing UX/UI things never possible before on a Rack Extension! Last week, I finally got some spare time to really put my hands on ...

Game-world footage to illustrate our music...

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 Exploring the possibilities of using game-world footage to illustrate our music...

Reason 13 is out! ...but...

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Reason v.13.0 is out. Is this the best Reason version ever ? hmmm... kinda yes but also not :( The new Devices are interesting and/or useful. The Sequencer improvements are great though with some quirks and  harsh corners   needing some smoothing out. The Rack  can finally  utilize 100% of its window width, thanks to the removal of the screen space-wasting vertical bar when the browser (now Device Palette) is collapsed (now hidden). The Browser (and Device Palette... yes, now there's 2 different "things" to deal with) now support Categories & Tags , which is always a good thing to have. The new Browser allows now (something we lost a few versions back) for patch previewing while scrolling down the browser patch list with the arrow keys. Recent versions only allowed this through MIDI Controller (i.e.  Remote Mapped ) patch navigation. But speaking of the new Browser & Device Palette, here's what's making this the worse Reason update (for me): We lost ...

Reason 13: Something's wrong here!!!

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  Looks like using a mouse on top of my master MIDI controller isn't enough now to quickly add Devices to the Rack :( Apparently, now I also need the QWERTY keyboard near my controller just to add my preferred Rack Devices... " faster " :(   Looks like my previous doubts are now unfortunately confirmed: Am I now forced to scroll through the Device Palette to reach a device "deep" in the list instead of my regular 2 click (on the Favorite and then on the Device)? Are Devices also tagged like the patch/sample files shown in the video? Do I need to text search for every device that's more than 2 pages away from a double-click or click'n'drag ? Where's the Device Favorites ? References: "Reason 10 Live Stream: Europa Shapeshifting Synthesizer" clip Reason 10.0 ...ok! :)  September 30, 2017 and I'm not alone

Imagine ...a "new" Reason

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Simple(r) GUI, no screen wasting extra pixel padding around the essentials, with every section at a distance of 1 click (top bar) "pancake" style main menu when at the minimum width of the rack (which I'll keep in these mock-up examples) With modular sections, layout customization and all (browser included) detachable as separate windows (to keep it simple, these mock-ups will show them all still attached) So the Browser could still show up on the left or on the Right, according to how it's configured ...or simply detached as a new separate window The top bar could also include the toggle buttons for Virtual Keys and ReGroove which both could still be detached on separate windows or attached/stacked horizontally in any order vertically Same with the Sequencer, could show up at the top of the Rack or still at the bottom We could quickly toggle the Navigators with 1 click, as/if needed same for the Transport (on all windows: Rack, Sequencer and Mixer) ...with a bigger T...

R13 ...faster (?)

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Great new interesting Rack Devices and features :) POLYTONE DUAL‑LAYER SYNTHESIZER with cool morph capabilities RIPLEY SPACE DELAY hinting at a lot of very interesting capabilities more neat  Rack Device Tools a tighter, more practical Sequencer for clip editing TAG s finally!!! but... something's off with that picture above :/ The devices list was kept on a different section, separate from the new floating(?) browser. Am I now forced to scroll through the Device Palette to reach a device "deep" in the list instead of my regular 2 click (on the Favorite and then on the Device)? Are Devices also tagged like the patch/sample files shown in the video? Do I need to text search for every device that's more than 2 pages away from a double-click or click'n'drag ? Where's the Device Favorites ? I can see the Favorite Lists  section on the new browser but... I'm not seeing Rack Devices in there, so... is Reason 13 really FASTER on every possible aspect when ...

Text-to-Video to illustrate our music...

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Exploring the current possibilities of what A.I. generative tools allow... ...tiny baby steps, I know :)