Assigning MIDI channels to specific rack instruments

[princent]

Here you go

PoohBear

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Thanks! I got this working, using the first method.

I have The NDLR which sends out via several midi channels and I needed to have an instrument in Reason to listen one specific midi channel.

[mimidancer]

Carly - Thanks for the video. I get what needs to be done. Notice that the only way to actually do this is by adding additional 3rd party software (ie, MIDI Loop, MIDI Ox, or the Codec). That's a real flaw in Reason itself. I mean, virtually every MIDI device on the planet allows you to specify an incoming MIDI channel. That's true for virtually all VI's and DAWs I'm aware of. Right now, Reason doesn't really have the ability to do that in an easy way.

Carly briefly mentions this in the video, but triggering a specific instrument by midi channel is exactly what the Advanced midi is for.

From the manual

! Do NOT use the Advanced MIDI Device if you are only going to use Reason’s internal sequencer for recording and playback!

This is opened by clicking the “ADVANCED MIDI” button on the Hardware Interface panel. The Advanced MIDI device is only used if you are controlling Reason from an external sequencer, using the External Control Bus inputs. Normally, you send MIDI to a track via the sequencer, by selecting the sequencer track.
You can select MIDI ports for up to four External Control Busses (on the Sync page in Preferences). Each bus can host 16 MIDI channels, for a total of up to 64 MIDI input channels. The Advanced MIDI Device is where you can route each MIDI channel to a specific device in the Reason rack:

1. Select one of the External Control Busses by clicking the corresponding Bus Select button at the top of the Ad- vanced MIDI device.

2. Pull down the device pop-up menu for a MIDI channel and select a device.
The menu lists all devices in the current song.
Now, incoming MIDI data on the selected bus and MIDI channel is sent directly to the selected device, bypassing the Reason sequencer. The name of the device is shown in the name field for that MIDI particular channel.

3. Try sending MIDI notes from the external sequencer, on the selected bus and MIDI channel.
The indicator below the channel's name field should light up.
See also “Advanced MIDI - The External Control Bus inputs” in the Advanced MIDI and Synchronization chapter.

If you're hearing more than one instrument at a time, it's because your controller is set up as a control surface in Reason causing you to send midi twice. Uncheck 'Use with Reason' under Control Surfaces in the Preferences.

This used to be true before Players. Now one can used the advanced midi to reach the instrument. IS to set up a combinator. Assign your midi device to the combi then place a player on top of the combi and set it to direct record. I use the selig note view for this. Then save the whole thing as a template. i simply drag what I want to play with my beatstep into these combis. or you can even drag new combis on top. It stays mapped. The only limitation is that you can only record one midi track at a time. For some reason won't let you arm multi midi tracks to record. So I just do it one pass at a time. None of them are longer than 4 bars so not a big deal.

[me-yourself-and-them]

that first video was a big help setting 1 external midi controller to drive 2 different reason instruments based on split keyboard zones using midiox. even though i assigned ranges to different channels in midiox, sent the midiox out to different loop midi ports the 'fkn* octo rex still kept on playing loop slices through the midi channel "hard assigned" to kong. solution: disable "select slies by midi 2 in octo rex. it seems like that feature is still responding on all channels instead of the one hard assigned to octo rex.

[Carly(Poohbear)]

that first video was a big help setting 1 external midi controller to drive 2 different reason instruments based on split keyboard zones using midiox. even though i assigned ranges to different channels in midiox, sent the midiox out to different loop midi ports the 'fkn* octo rex still kept on playing loop slices through the midi channel "hard assigned" to kong. solution: disable "select slies by midi 2 in octo rex. it seems like that feature is still responding on all channels instead of the one hard assigned to octo rex.

How do you have things setup in Reason and I'm mainly talking about the rack?

There are several ways to control multiple instruments from one device, the simple solution is to use zones in a combinator, personally I use players now to do the zoning as then you can swap your instruments out and you don't have to rezone things like you would with a combinator.

2 really good free devices are the UTL which is used to filter (set zones) the notes and TonicMint A/B Transpose player (so you can transpose the notes down to play the drum machines from higher up the kb etc)