Category Archives: How To

How to Rewire Reason into Pro Tools

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The basics of “Rewire-ing” are actually fairly simple. One program is known as the “Host” and one program is known as the “Client”. Host programs are used to control the client programs. In this particular instance, Pro Tools is the host, and Reason is the client.

One of the most important things you need to understand when using Rewire are it’s limitations. With Rewire, audio travels in only one direction; from the client to the host. MIDI data can travel in both directions, but is usually only done from host to client. Pro Tools currently limits the MIDI data coming from the client to the host to cc messages only (a feature that I’m hoping will expand in the future), but fully supports all MIDI from host to client.

Although there are multiple different ways to Rewire Reason into Pro Tools, depending on what you are looking to do, the simplest way is the following:

  1. Create or open a Pro Tools session.
  2. Create a stereo Instrument track.
  3. Insert Reason on the track.The Reason program will start automatically when you do.
  4. In Reason, open or create a Reason session.

That, right there, is the absolute basics of Rewire-ing Reason to Pro Tools. Seriously. At this point, when you press play in Pro Tools, Reason will follow along at the same tempo and the transports will be in sync. If you opened a pre-created Reason session, the audio from reason will come through the instrument track you have it inserted on.

Now what if you didn’t open a pre-created Reason session? What if you are trying to create new music? This is, again, where things get complicated and can be done in several different ways. I’m going to cover the most basic and widely used method here in it’s simplest form:

  1. In your new Reason session, create a device that you want to use to produce the sounds, and select a preset. (Reason Adapted users can actually skip this step because you are forced to use a specific set of devices because of the limitations of the Adapted version)
  2. On your Pro Tools Instrument track, in the Instrument section (make sure your instrument section is not hidden from view on the mix or edit window), select the device that you are going to use from the MIDI output selector. When you add devices to the Reason Rack, they automatically appear in the MIDI output dropdown. (Again, Adapted users will get the fixed set of devices in this list; just select the one you are going to use)
  3. Make sure that the MIDI input is set to “All” or the specific MIDI input that you are using.
  4. At this point, as long as your hardware is setup properly, you should be able to play your controller and hear the preset you selected on the Reason device, assuming that you have the Default Thru Instrument set for “first selected MIDI track”. If not, either make that setting (Setup->Preferences, MIDI tab) or record enable the track.(the next few steps are a little obvious)
  5. Record the MIDI
  6. Playback at will.

The MIDI data will be recorded in your Pro Tools session on that Instrument track, and it will control the device that you selected, producing sound that is then passed back into Pro Tools on the same instrument track.

There are some more complex ways to use and setup Reason over Rewire, but since this is a “basics” tutorial, I will stop there. Check out some of the other tutorials here if you wild like to know more.

How to use a MIDI controller with Reason and Pro Tools

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The topic of this tutorial can be quite convoluted as different platforms behave differently in certain circumstances. In Windows, Pro Tools “steals” the MIDI from most other applications, and Reason shows an error message about not being able to select a MIDI controller, and many people get confused and wonder how to get their controller to control Reason.

The simple and most common solution is to use Pro Tools as your MIDI sequencer instead of Reason, and just use the Reason devices to generate the sound for the Pro Tools Instrument/MIDI tracks. The outcome is the same, and is honestly how a majority of the people who use Reason with Pro Tools work. The only reason to use the Reason sequencer is if you prefer the Reason sequencer for some *ahem* reason. I might see this being the case with the newest version of Reason, 4.0, but IMHO, the Pro Tools sequencer is much easier to use than any of the pre-4.0 Reason sequencers. (YMMV)

So how is it done?

  1. Make sure your MIDI controller hardware is setup, has any necessary drivers installed and is working correctly (that’s really up to you following the manufacturer’s installation instructions and out of the scope of this tutorial ;) )
  2. Create an instrument track (Stereo or Mono, depending on the sound you are going to use) and insert Reason on the track.
  3. In your Reason session, create a device that you want to use to produce the sounds, and select a preset. (Reason Adapted users can actually skip this step because you are forced to use a specific set of devices because of the limitations of the Adapted version)
  4. On your Pro Tools Instrument track, in the Instrument section (make sure your instrument section is not hidden from view on the mix or edit window), select the device that you are going to use from the MIDI output selector. When you add devices to the Reason Rack, they automatically appear in the MIDI output drop-down. (Again, Adapted users will get the fixed set of devices in this list; just select the one you are going to use)
  5. Make sure that the MIDI input is set to “All” or the specific MIDI input that you are using.
  6. Make sure MIDI Thru is selected on the Pro Tools Option menu.
  7. At this point, as long as your hardware is setup properly, you should be able to play your controller and hear the preset you selected on the Reason device, assuming that you have the Default Thru Instrument set for “first selected MIDI track”. If not, either make that setting (Setup->Preferences, MIDI tab) or record enable the track.

After that, you can record enable the track and record your sequence into it. The MIDI that is recorded in Pro Tools will playback the device you have selected in Reason, and the audio from Reason will pass back through the Instrument track.

There are a number of ways to expand on this procedure, like using multiple devices and tracks (instrument, AUX and MIDI), but those will be covered in a different tutorial later; this is just the “basics”.

How to control individual levels of devices in Reason through Pro Tools

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This topic is one of the more advanced topics when using Reason with Pro Tools, but once you get used to it, I think you will find it to be very easy to do. For this topic, you need to understand a few of the more complex features of the Rewire plugin and the Reason interface, specifically the Hardware Interface device in the Reason rack.

Reason can pass individual audio outputs across the Rewire interface. To do this takes a little bit of planning and also knowing what you are doing. To re-route the outputs of a device to an individual output, you need to flip the Reason rack around so that you are looking at it from the back-side. This is done in Reason by pressing the TAB key.

Click here for a photo representation of the back of the Reason rack.

As you can see if you click on my photo representation above, I have the NN-XT and DrREX devices installed into the Reason rack, and I’m looking at the back-side of the rack after having pressed the TAB key. The 1/L and 2/R outputs of the NN-XT are routed to the hardware interface’s 1 and 2 inputs using “virtual cables”. To route any of the other outputs on the devices to individual channels, you just click-and-drag from the output the the channel.

Click here for a video example of routing the cables.

(There are actually a few ways of making those routings, but that is probably the easiest to describe. for the other methods, check the official documentation)

All of the individual inputs on the Reason Hardware Interface are accessible from the Reason Rewire plugin. For each audio output that you want to control in Pro Tools, you would insert one Reason plugin, and then set it to the appropriate channel(s) from Reason. For instance, using the example above, if I wanted the stereo output of NN-XT to be on one track, and the stereo output from DrREX to be on another track, I would;

  • create two stereo tracks (AUX or Instrument is usually recommended for “virtual” tracks) in Pro Tools
  • insert the ReasonRewire plugin on one track and select channels 1 and 2 from the channel dropdown on the plugin (represented in the plugin as “Mix L – Mix R”) Click here for a photo reference selecting channels 1-2 .
  • insert the ReasonRewire plugin on the other track and select channels 3 and 4 from the channel dropdown on the plugin (represented in the plugin as “Channel 3 – Channel 4″) Click here a photo reference selecting channels 3-4

Now you can control the volume from those devices individually in the Pro Tools mixer. For mono tracks, it’s basically the same, except you are selecting single channels on the plugin.

That’s fairly straightforward, right? Well those are the basics. But it can become much more complex (and powerful) depending on how you are using it, how many outputs and devices you have, etc. It’s all really up to you now that you know how to do it.

How to Delay just one word or phrase of a vocal track

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Create an aux track of the same type as the vocal track you are trying to delay (mono, stereo)

On one of the sends on the vocal track, choose an available bus.

On the input of the aux track, select the same bus.


Insert either medium, long or extra long delay in the aux track.
The tempo should sync to your session tempo. (if your audio was not played to a click along with the session tempo, you will have to determine the tempo of the recorded audio; but I will not get into that here, as that would be a tutorial all in itself)
Select the note duration that you want the delay to follow (whole, half, quarter, eighth, sixteenth) with triplet and/or dot modifier if necessary.
That’s it for setting up the delay to tempo sync

And to catch just that one phrase, you would automate the send so that it is only active for the particular phrase that you want to repeat. You can do this by automating the send volume, or by muting the send, depending on the sound you are looking for. Automating by mute might not be as smooth as automating the volume of the send. (I prefer automating the volume).

How to change the default meter (time signature ) in Pro Tools?

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Changing the base time signature of a session in Pro Tools is relatively easy.

  1. Create or open your session
  2. Make sure the meter ruler is showing
  3. In the edit window, click the “+” sign next to the word “Meter” on the meter ruler
  4. Make sure the location is set to the beginning of your session, and then enter the meter in the boxes below.
  5. set the click value to whichever value you want the click to sound on (quarter, eighth, etc)

Since the click follows however the session is set up, your click will now be in the meter that you selected.

How to capture a screenshot

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Sometimes, when troubleshooting a problem, or even just showing cool features, it becomes necessary to post a “screenshot” of the program you are working with. There are multiple ways to do this, with varying degrees of complication, but I’m only going to cover the most basic and simple version here. I’m also only going to cover doing this under Windows (for now).

  1. Get the image on the screen that you want to capture.
  2. Press the “prtscn” key on your keyboard
  3. Open an image editing program (all windows systems come with Microsoft Paint installed, but you can use whatever image editing program you like).
  4. create a new document in your image editing program and “paste” the contents of the clipboard (ctrl + v)
  5. save the file to your hard drive. It’s best to save a file in a common image format such as jpg

Now you have an image of the screen you were working on or that you wanted other people to see. Now you need a way to share it with them. If you need a large number of people to see the image, the easiest way is to post it to a photo sharing site and send them the link to the web page that particular photo is on.

Like this one

I prefer the free photo sharing service Flickr for sharing photos in this way. You can choose another photo sharing program if you like.

How to change the track colors?

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NOTE: This tip is obsolete with the release of Pro Tools 8, which makes the “hidden” control an actual control on the color palette window.

Here’s a new feature of Pro Tools 7.3 that isn’t documented, but I think is very cool and helpful for session organization:

  1. Open the color pallete by double-clicking any track’s color label
  2. Hold down the three primary modifier keys at once (OSX: Command+control+option; XP: Control+start+alt)
  3. Mouse click in the color pallete window and drag up/down (this is typical “click/drag” functionality, but there seems to be some confusion with some users; click the color pallete->hold the click->drag while over the color pallete)

You should see the color of the track change in opacity to match the track’s color label. You can set the opacity how you like it, and be able to locate groups of tracks much faster. Your tracks will end up looking something like this:

Mix Window Snapshot

Edit Window Snapshot

Please note: This feature was changed slightly with the release of Pro Tools 7.4. With the standard release of 7.4, you can no longer adjust the opacity of the colors; they are either “on” or “off”. So step 3 above becomes just “Mouse click in the color pallete window”.

This behavior has been corrected in the 7.4cs2 update (which is highly recommended for many other bugfixes), and the procedure above returns to normal.

How to Side Chain in ProTools?

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The basics

This question goes a little deeper than can be explained here, as there are several different ways and/or reasons to side chain. I’m just going to cover the basics of how to make it happen; it’s up to you to decide what you want to do with it (gate trigger, ducking, de-ess, etc)

For this tutorial, you will need a few “givens”: a track to process and a track/source to be the trigger. Set the output of the trigger track to be an available bus. On the process track, insert the plugin that you are using that you want to side chain (compressor, gate, etc). Set the key input to be the bus you selected for the trigger track output, and activate the key. Make settings on the plugin accordingly.

An example of a use for a side chain gate trigger can be found in my other tutorial; How to fatten a kick drum in ProTools?

More information can be found starting on page 20 of the DigiRack Plug-ins Guide

How to fatten up a kick track in ProTools?

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There are a few different ways to do this. I’ll cover a few:

Use a Signal Generator

Create a mono aux track
create a send from the kick track across a bus (say bus1). I’ve renamed that bus in my example to make it more recognizable: KikPhatt
insert the signal generator on the aux track. Set the Frequency low (like 65Hz), bring the level up, and set the signal to sine.
Insert the Expander/Gate Dyn3 plugin inline after the generator. Set it’s key input to be the send bus from the kick (bus1/KikPhatt), and turn on the side chain button (looks like a key). Play with the attack, hold and decay until you have something that is pleasing (try Attack 10.0us, hold 23ms, ratio 5.0:1, range -80.0db and release 5.0ms to start) Set the threshold as necessary.

Click here for a Photo Reference

Of course tweak all settings/levels to taste…

More to come…

How to get a reversed reverb sound in Pro Tools?

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So you want to get that other-worldly, just arriving from the 5th dimension sound on a vocal track? Try a Reversed Reverb:

  • Duplicate the track in question.
  • Slice one of the vocal phrases on the new track into a separate region.
  • Isolate it (remove all other region data from before and after)
  • Note where the start and end points are. (this will be important later)
  • Select it.
  • Use the audiosuite reverse tool to reverse it.
  • Now select the region and an amount about the same size after the region.Click here for a photo of the selection
  • Use an audiosuite reverb (for this example, I’m using D-Verb’s Room2 on medium setting) on the selection. (you may have to do this a couple of times to get it to sound the way you want it to).
  • Now reverse it again.
  • Move the region back so that it’s end time is the same as it’s original end time from above (you noted it, didn’t you?) Shift+drag will snap the end time to the grid.Click here for a photo of the alignment
  • Mix with the original.
  • Listen.

Of course, you will need to tweak the settings to taste, but those are the basics.