Reason high-res beta starts soon!!!

[EnochLight]

There was no wood until Record. Rack was filling whole screen when I used it on my 800x600 old monitor. On one side there was a scroll bar and that's it. I loved it

Ahhh that's right, man - my bad! It's been so long since I've seen Reason 5.0 and older, I totally forgot. 11 years ago seems like an eternity!

[imrae]

4) probably some more stuff I don't remember right now

My #1 pain-point is the lack of clip-looping or linked clips. My #1 missed opportunity is the inability to send groove to rack sequencers. Either of these would compensate for the other...

[antic604]

4) probably some more stuff I don't remember right now

My #1 pain-point is the lack of clip-looping or linked clips.

Doesn't Blocks mode solve that in most practical cases?

[antic604]

4) probably some more stuff I don't remember right now

Folders! Track folders!! You're forgeting about track folders!!!

[imrae]

4) probably some more stuff I don't remember right now

My #1 pain-point is the lack of clip-looping or linked clips.

Doesn't Blocks mode solve that in most practical cases?

Maybe I'm missing something; it very much seems that Blocks is intended for pasting together entire song sections. I don't think you can layer then? How do I use Blocks to tweak a 2-bar drum loop playing against a 4-bar percussion part, 8-bar bassline and 16-bar synth progression?

(That's an intentionally "nice" example by the way, given that I write stuff like https://imrae.bandcamp.com/track/doing- ... -wrong-way )

[EnochLight]

4) probably some more stuff I don't remember right now

My #1 pain-point is the lack of clip-looping or linked clips.

Doesn't Blocks mode solve that in most practical cases?

Maybe I'm missing something; it very much seems that Blocks is intended for pasting together entire song sections. I don't think you can layer then? How do I use Blocks to tweak a 2-bar drum loop playing against a 4-bar percussion part, 8-bar bassline and 16-bar synth progression?

Right, in Reason, a single "Block" essentially is a single "Clip" with a set amount of bars, but they can only be arranged in a linear fashion. Being able to launch Blocks polyphonically in an Ableton Live fashion has long been requested among the Reason community.

[antic604]

Maybe I'm missing something; it very much seems that Blocks is intended for pasting together entire song sections. I don't think you can layer then?

No, you're not missing anything. But you can layer things "on top" of Blocks, so for example use Blocks to sketch the repeating parts - say drums, bass - and everything that's one-off or longer goes "on top" and is independent. This way you can update your drums & bass in whole arrangement changing just the clips in Blocks.

https://youtu.be/I6UFCdD4Lyk


Another idea is using an RE like Sequences, which gives you 8 patterns that you can arrange using pattern lanes. Changing the details of patterns in Sequences is reflected in arrangement.

https://youtu.be/MHTA11NTMXc


I mean I agree with you Reason should have alias/linked/ghost clips, but - unlike e.g. Bitwig or Live - there are ways to approximate that feature

[imrae]

Maybe I'm missing something; it very much seems that Blocks is intended for pasting together entire song sections. I don't think you can layer then?

This way you can update your drums & bass in whole arrangement changing just the clips in Blocks.

But only if I don't want to edit them as loops? This is ridiculous, I should be able to revisit multiple looped parts. A lot of composition is about refining the interactions between different voices.

Another idea is using an RE like Sequences, which gives you 8 patterns that you can arrange using pattern lanes. Changing the details of patterns in Sequences is reflected in arrangement.

This is better but also has some defects:

• No integration with the Groove Mixer (i.e. if you were using Groove the timing will be wrong).
• No visual feedback of loop length/phase in the sequencer. Keeping track of loop phase is quite important for tracks like the one I posted. I suppose for trivial uses like the 2/4/8 example one can generally figure it out.
• Cannot begin loops at an arbitrary point in their cycle. e.g. to drop out the first beat of a new section would require something like mute automation.

[EnochLight]

I mean, we can spend all day going over Reason's deficiencies when it comes to missing features, but this is the graphics/HD GUI thread, so...

[jens]

4) probably some more stuff I don't remember right now

Folders! Track folders!! You're forgeting about track folders!!!

Yes, well, theoretically - but tbh practically I rarely (if ever) miss them, as I can't remember ever having vertically run out of space on the timeline... if I wouldn't be too lazy to use a lot of automation, things might be different though...

[jens]

Maybe I'm missing something; it very much seems that Blocks is intended for pasting together entire song sections. I don't think you can layer then?

No, you're not missing anything. But you can layer things "on top" of Blocks, so for example use Blocks to sketch the repeating parts - say drums, bass - and everything that's one-off or longer goes "on top" and is independent. This way you can update your drums & bass in whole arrangement changing just the clips in Blocks.

That's for me one of - if not outright THE - Reason's best features...

viewtopic.php?t=539287

[MuzikFreq]

I'll be honest. Each time I open bitwig I tend to dink around in it for a minute now and just end up reopening reason's DAW. I do feel a bit faster in editing and such. Sound design isn't as quick but what fun is making something when not having fun doing so? I think the fun design and colors and cable workflow has something to do with it.
But really, there are elements of the daw that really need adjustment and same with some of the other REs like the rv7000 and those tiny knobs to change the algorithm of the reverb and the parameters are super small. On my desktop I could use the improvements with scaling it to fit 2 racks +browser as right now its 2.5 racks with the browser.

Another improvement in scale could be the master section as it is also really small. But might be better with scaling.

[zoidkirb]

Hopefully Reason doesn't go down the path of tying to be Ableton Live with clip launching. Live already does it so well, why not buy that and run RRP rather than wait for a probably half assed Reason clip launcher?
To me Reason already has it's looping strength in Players, utilities, and any rack instrument with pattern sequencing built in.

And if this thread is doing the usual Reason thing of turning into a request-fest I'll throw in my 2 cents.....track folders, retrospective record, midi comping!

[SebAV]

Why are we even arguing about it anymore, when they're doing a high-res beta now? Obviously, Reason Studios recognized that it's an issue that half blind people on 27" 1080p monitors can't see Reason's knobs.

I guess it's because even after Reason gets higher resolution assets and you can finally comfortable zoom it in a bit, some elements still remain relatively tiny, e.g. those triangles to unfold tracks in Sequencer or to unfold chanels & devices in the Rack. All of the old devices are full of tiny buttons and switches, microscopic text labels, that - regardless of sharpnes of the GUI - are hard to manipulate or read. This won't be solved by the update (or at least what we've seen so far) and no wonder people would like to see another step taken, i.e. re-design of the GUI to make things easier to use. I mean how many times you tried to move a slider or twist a knob, but instead you were dragging the device around? That happens all the time, because the "hit-boxes" are tiny as well. Have you tried using Reason on a touch screen? Even if the scaling is the same, Bitwig or Live are 10x better, simply because they were designed differently. And RS are aware of that - just compare Thor and Europa in terms of how easy they're to operate despite being the same size in the Rack; especially for someone who's new to Reason and doesn't have muscle memory ingrained over the last 15 years... Even though the individual elements - buttons, switchs, knobs & sliders - are of similar size, they're more generously spaced and (I believe) the hit boxes are bigger, so you just can use them with more confidence. Plus the text labels are 50-100% larger.








High-res assets, GPU acceleration and independent zoom WILL HELP, but that's just the beginning of the road and if Reason Rack Plugin is THE product, they'll eventually have to go back and re-do some of the classic devices, because they're still useful, but hardly usable. And they'll have to introduce some stricter guidelines for 3rd party RE devs, because even some of the new ones are criminally over-crowded and densely packed. Example:

I’m with you. I think Complex-1 and Algoritm are great examples of what a « redesigned » Thor could be (in Europa they use tabs).

https://a.phcdn.se/static-live/img/reas ... 2ed2a.jpeg

https://a.phcdn.se/static-live/img/reas ... 5d9a7f.jpg

Especially the upper part of the module doesn’t waste space (but Thor being a native old device it has a « semi-folded«  view).
But as ever with RS it won’t happen till next century.

[Dalle]

Thor for iPad looked really good before they discontinued it... Would be pretty cool if they took it somewhat in this direction for Reason imo. At least make the empty rack edges smaller and space the controls out? Oh and maybe even add a high quality oversampling option?