Issue with assigning buttons to select individual tracks

[BertieBarney90]

Hi all,

first time posting here - had a read through but haven't been able to find a solution to my problem.

I'm using an external MIDI controller with Reason 10 for a live setup. My controller is a keyboard, specifically an M-audio Oxygen 49. I want to use the 'c' buttons to select different tracks, but I can only find how to assign these buttons to go next/previous track.

For example, I have 3 tracks: a piano, a synth, and a trumpet. I want to have C1 'select' the piano, so when I play the keys it plays piano. I want C2 to 'select' the synth and only play synth. And I want C3 to select the trumpet, and only play the trumpet.

I've tried using Remote Override Edit Mode but I can't get it to work for the Sequence window. Is there a way I can assign these buttons to select individual tracks?

Thanks in advance!

[BertieBarney90]

Don't suppose anyone can help me with this?

[Bloma]

As far as I know you can't do it that way, but if your devices aren't already massive combinator patches, you could put each instrument into a combinator, and route mute or something like that to buttons on the combinator to switch them on and off, and then map those to your controller.

[BertieBarney90]

As far as I know you can't do it that way, but if your devices aren't already massive combinator patches, you could put each instrument into a combinator, and route mute or something like that to buttons on the combinator to switch them on and off, and then map those to your controller.

Thanks for replying and for the suggested workaround - although I don't think it's quite enough to have me switch over from the next/previous track. I'm amazed Reason doesn't have an option for this - anyone that plays keyboards live would want to be able to press a button and jump to various different instruments without worrying if they've landed on the right one...seems like quite a big flaw in Reason to be honest...

[artotaku]

As far as I know you can't do it that way, but if your devices aren't already massive combinator patches, you could put each instrument into a combinator, and route mute or something like that to buttons on the combinator to switch them on and off, and then map those to your controller.

Thanks for replying and for the suggested workaround - although I don't think it's quite enough to have me switch over from the next/previous track. I'm amazed Reason doesn't have an option for this - anyone that plays keyboards live would want to be able to press a button and jump to various different instruments without worrying if they've landed on the right one...seems like quite a big flaw in Reason to be honest...

As has been said in this thread it is not possible out of the box since Reason does not offer any remotable items for random track selection by an index.

However, it can be done to certain extent (by abusing the Next and Previous Target track remote items) with Reason´s Remote scripting (writing a custom remote codec for the midi controller). This may not be for everyone since it requires some programming in LUA and most likely access to Remote developer documentation.

[Bloma]

Do you need to record on the fly? Or just select what you're playing?

[napynap]

As far as I know you can't do it that way, but if your devices aren't already massive combinator patches, you could put each instrument into a combinator, and route mute or something like that to buttons on the combinator to switch them on and off, and then map those to your controller.

Thanks for replying and for the suggested workaround - although I don't think it's quite enough to have me switch over from the next/previous track. I'm amazed Reason doesn't have an option for this - anyone that plays keyboards live would want to be able to press a button and jump to various different instruments without worrying if they've landed on the right one...seems like quite a big flaw in Reason to be honest...

I understand your frustration with Reason's native inability to work as a live DAW, but it seem your conclusion of a 'big flaw' is misguided. Propellerheads advertise that Reason is to create, compose, mix and finish. It does these things very well, honestly. There is no language that says it is designed to be used in a live setting.

[BertieBarney90]

Do you need to record on the fly? Or just select what you're playing?

Just need to select what I’m playing, not worried about recording on the fly. Do you have a workaround for the former?

[BertieBarney90]

Thanks for replying and for the suggested workaround - although I don't think it's quite enough to have me switch over from the next/previous track. I'm amazed Reason doesn't have an option for this - anyone that plays keyboards live would want to be able to press a button and jump to various different instruments without worrying if they've landed on the right one...seems like quite a big flaw in Reason to be honest...

I understand your frustration with Reason's native inability to work as a live DAW, but it seem your conclusion of a 'big flaw' is misguided. Propellerheads advertise that Reason is to create, compose, mix and finish. It does these things very well, honestly. There is no language that says it is designed to be used in a live setting.

That’s fair but when there’s the option to have next/previous track you’d think they’d add an option to jump between several tracks more intuitively. Would be useful in various settings...

[Bloma]

Try this. Only thing is, they operate as on/off switches. This is super simple and the really smart people on here probably can do one that switches rather than turns on/off. But it's a start.

[Sterioevo]

Try this. Only thing is, they operate as on/off switches. This is super simple and the really smart people on here probably can do one that switches rather than turns on/off. But it's a start.

Or change the Master Volume setting to "receive notes" in the programmer.

[Bloma]

Try this. Only thing is, they operate as on/off switches. This is super simple and the really smart people on here probably can do one that switches rather than turns on/off. But it's a start.

Or change the Master Volume setting to "receive notes" in the programmer.

Could you elaborate on that?

[Philup]

How about downloading this free device

if you only have one keyboard/midi controller You will have to drop it in a combinator with your other devices, enable receive notes input from the programmer window and set the key range to a lower or higher octave that you don't plan on using in your performance.

If you have a second cheap midi controller, you can keep the device outside of your combinator and lock the cheap controller to it and do your key switching separately.

[Philup]

If you feel like throwing money at the issue you can use this device

[Bloma]

Hi all,

first time posting here - had a read through but haven't been able to find a solution to my problem.

I'm using an external MIDI controller with Reason 10 for a live setup. My controller is a keyboard, specifically an M-audio Oxygen 49. I want to use the 'c' buttons to select different tracks, but I can only find how to assign these buttons to go next/previous track.

For example, I have 3 tracks: a piano, a synth, and a trumpet. I want to have C1 'select' the piano, so when I play the keys it plays piano. I want C2 to 'select' the synth and only play synth. And I want C3 to select the trumpet, and only play the trumpet.

I've tried using Remote Override Edit Mode but I can't get it to work for the Sequence window. Is there a way I can assign these buttons to select individual tracks?

Thanks in advance!

I just realised, when you say 'c' buttons, do you mean the keyboard note Cs? Because you could easily assign different octaves to different sounds with a combinator.

[Sterioevo]

Or change the Master Volume setting to "receive notes" in the programmer.

Could you elaborate on that?

In the combinator programmer allocate the buttons for each device to “receive notes”. You can then use the buttons to activate each device as required. The advantage to using master volume is that it will not affect sustain. So pretty much the same as what you uploaded just with a different destination. The receive notes parameters allows you to choose if a device receives notes within the combinator. If you wanted to control devices exclusively you would need to program off buttons for all other buttons in use as required.

[BertieBarney90]

How about downloading this free device

if you only have one keyboard/midi controller You will have to drop it in a combinator with your other devices, enable receive notes input from the programmer window and set the key range to a lower or higher octave that you don't plan on using in your performance.

If you have a second cheap midi controller, you can keep the device outside of your combinator and lock the cheap controller to it and do your key switching separately.

This looks really promising, thanks! I'll download it and see if it solves my problem, i'll report back.

[BertieBarney90]

Could you elaborate on that?

In the combinator programmer allocate the buttons for each device to “receive notes”. You can then use the buttons to activate each device as required. The advantage to using master volume is that it will not affect sustain. So pretty much the same as what you uploaded just with a different destination. The receive notes parameters allows you to choose if a device receives notes within the combinator. If you wanted to control devices exclusively you would need to program off buttons for all other buttons in use as required.

Thanks for this - am I right in understanding that i'll still need to program 'off' switches if I want to just have one instrument playing?

[Sterioevo]

Some approaches might be to:
- allocate the 4 buttons to 4 different device "receive notes". This would allow you to turn them all off, activate 1 or all simultaneously.
- program on buttons for the respective devices as well as off settings for all other possible combinations of buttons. This would allow you to only have 1 device selected at any one time. ie if you select button 1 it would activate "receive notes" for device 1 and deactivate the other 3 devices. You can program On for the Off and On state meaning that you always select the respective device regardless of off/on state
- you could also adapt the 2 methods above to have 8 devices being controlled with the Off/On state selecting between 2 different devices

The downside is that you can end up using most of your combinator routing slots.

Another approach might be to use the free Select Program RE https://www.propellerheads.com/shop/rac ... t-program/