Reason basic ReWire setup

The following are the steps needed to setup Pro Tools to use Reason. This creates the ReWire connection between the two programs. This will allow you to record and edit MIDI in Pro Tools, send that MIDI info to Reason to trigger a Reason instrument (such as Redrum, Thor, etc.), and bring the audio back from Reason into your Pro Tools session.

* Start Pro Tools, create a new session, and ensure that Reason is NOT currently running

* In Pro Tools Create a stereo Aux Input track, instantiate the Reason plug-in in the insert section, set the audio path on the Reason plug-in to Mix L/R, and set the output path of this instrument track to your main output path.

Reason should now be booting. Reason will become a ReWire slave to Pro Tools, which will be the ReWire master in this setup. BTW, Pro Tools will only operate as a ReWire master, never a slave.

* In Reason, create one or more devices that you want to trigger, like Thor, and load a patch. You can always come back to Reason later and add devices and change patches. You should create a mixer in Reason first so that all additional devices you added will be automatically connected to the mixer.

Reason and Pro Tools are communicating in the background, and Reason has already published the new device you created (basically Reason told Pro Tools the device is loaded and ready to use, it also told PT how it can communicate with the device)

* In Pro Tools, create a MIDI track, set the midi input to "All" (which is generally fine unless you have a bunch of options you could use to input midi), and set the midi output to which ever Reason device you want to play. When you click on the output tab you should see all the available devices in Reason. You can repeat this process to add additional MIDI tracks that can be used to record and send MIDI to other devices loaded in Reason.

* In Pro Tools, record enable the MIDI track and play your MIDI controller. Check to make sure you are getting audio from the Aux In track.

* Now go record/edit/play some midi.

In my next post I'll discuss how you can record the Reason audio into Pro Tools, and after that I will discuss how to bring in multiple streams of audio into Pro Tools simultaneously. Have fun!