Are you taking advantage of blocks?

[taoduh]

Glad I found this thread - I came here to ask a similar question. I've used blocks a bunch with Reason, though I haven't used the software at all for a couple years. I have v8.

I'm hoping to arrange a bunch of tunes that I can play myself but also play with others at different shows. Could be dixieland, American songbook, jazz, popular... I play keys and trumpet but maybe sometimes I'll have a vocalist or clarinet or bone.

So if it's just me everything should play except what I play. On a given song I'll probably play the same thing (piano for instance) every time so that's the most normal scenario.

Now let's say I have a clarinet and bone with me and we're going to play Dixieland mostly. I'll want to mute the clarinet and bone parts I've sequenced. Easy enough.

Now it gets tricker. I'd ideally want to extend the songs because now I have more soloists. Similarly if I have a singer, I'd want to add a run through the melody at the beginning and end for the singer and still have room to play piano solos.

Can I do some variation in the number of repeats of a block? Or should I have multiple versions of the songs - that's a big pain. Any other ideas?

[mimidancer]

My default document starts with all of my hardware setup and premapped and the sequencer in blocks mode. the only way to reason.

[Karim]

A few years ago I used it in my tracks in all its glory. Now I use it at the last stages of a track where I have to do the Radio Edit or Extended Mix version with great results. I wish it had improved...

[deeplink]

I used to dislike the idea, limiting blocks to only being used a dummy track markers.

But more and more I find myself experimenting with different arrangements and ideas within an 8 or 16 bar loop.

In song mode, this is a hassle.
And blocks is great for this.

[RandomSkratch]

I would like blocks more if you could more quickly pull elements out of blocks or put them back in. (like right click on clip and bring out of block/send to front or send to block). Having to switch between 2 different modes and copy/paste stuff is annoying.

Other janky things are needing to draw a blank clip to mute block clips instead of muting the clip directly. If you use a block to create your full loop and then bring elements in and out in the arrangement, you end up with all these empty clips instead of just deleting clips. Makes the arranger look messy.

[avasopht]

The actual feature of blocks is interesting.

Both Maschine and the MPC offer similar means of constructing full songs where you record blocks (called sequences on the MPC and probably the same in Maschine), which can be arranged or even recorded live into a song arrangement.

It's really not too different apart from the slightly different experience of being able to create an arrangement by recording your changes between sequences.

Funnily enough, the DAW I was using before Reason (and a precursor to MuTools) way back in 2002 worked exactly like this.

[Tinnitus]

I also use blocks to store old arrangements from the main sequencer window. Of course if you change patches or effects then this impacts old arrangements too.

Blocks are really useful especially for rearranging songs. Muting is also is a great feature.

If only you could see/determine the actual start and end bar position of the block drawn in the main sequencer window, that would make things easier.

[Thousand Ways]

Is there a means of changing the order of the blocks in a song's blocks list? I can't see anything on this in the relevant section of the manual. If there's no means of changing the order, this seems a really bad design. It means that the blocks have to remain in the list order in which they were created. Is there a workaround?

[robussc]

Is there a means of changing the order of the blocks in a song's blocks list? I can't see anything on this in the relevant section of the manual. If there's no means of changing the order, this seems a really bad design. It means that the blocks have to remain in the list order in which they were created. Is there a workaround?

Not sure what the problem is? These are just component pieces that can be arranged in any order in the sequencer.

[Thousand Ways]

Not sure what the problem is? These are just component pieces that can be arranged in any order in the sequencer.

I mean: can the list itself be arranged in any order? It seems that, once the blocks exist, you can't restring the list into a preferred sensible order. Example attached: having created various blocks at different times, I now want to group, say, all those labelled "verse" together in the list. There seems to be no way to do this.

[antic604]

I do! It's a great hybrid of patterns in trackers and alias-clips in other DAWs with unique advantages and only very few drawbacks.

I'd love to see some improvements, though:
* easy ability to cut out a portion of arrangement to put it in Block (Ctrl+Razor Tool is an OK substitute)
* smarter way to pull out a clip to the front - right now all of them have to be pulled to the front, then deleted to just leave the one you want which is clearly backwards
* some way of stacking / mixing the blocks, e.g. I'd like to layer 2 blocks on top of each other and decide which one is on top so that the other one only "peers through" when 1st one has nothing playing there
* better visibility (the blocks when painted are very faint, grayish and difficult to distinguish on the timeline) and the colors otherwise are much less "punchy"
* eventually more blocks (I think they're limited to 32)

[antic604]

The best way to understand the power of Blocks is to think of it as a combination of an arrangement system and ghost clips. Most people that don't like Blocks point to the fact that if you start in a sequencer track, you then have to copy/move your clips into a block. But herein lies the actual power of the system. The Blocks arrangement and the normal tracks in the sequencer are active at the same time, acting as two layers of track information (that's why you need to move/copy information). You can continuously edit both the arrangement clips (the blocks) AND the clips that are in the sequencer tracks, on top of the blocks. You can make changes to the arrangement clips without altering stuff that is in the tracks, and the other way around.

As for having to move/copy information into Blocks, that's why many like myself are so amazed there isn't a "Convert Clips to Blocks" command (which I need all the time), but there IS a "Convert Blocks tracks to Song Clips" command (which I've never once needed). This implies you are expected to start your songs in Blocks mode, which can work but sometimes (many times for me) you don't know you need/want Blocks at the start of the process.
All to say, my complaint is more about the lack of a simple/obvious workflow both out of AND in to Block mode, especially when I can see more use for the latter than the former.

You can Ctrl + Razor Tool on the beat bar to non-destructively put the vertical slice of the arrangement into clipboard and then Ctrl+V it into the Block:

block.png (181.92 KiB) Viewed 10375 times

[robussc]

Not sure what the problem is? These are just component pieces that can be arranged in any order in the sequencer.

I mean: can the list itself be arranged in any order? It seems that, once the blocks exist, you can't restring the list into a preferred sensible order. Example attached: having created various blocks at different times, I now want to group, say, all those labelled "verse" together in the list. There seems to be no way to do this.

Hmm - I see you've definitely pushed a lot of music into your blocks! My songs have at most 8 - but mostly just the standards: intro, verse, prechorus, chorus, bridge, outro. (sometimes there might be a second bridge and/or verse) The variations are all made in the sequencer by either muting or overlaying parts on top of the blocks.

I think you might be using blocks in a manner that wasn't expected by the devs, so I can see your frustration.

[selig]

As for having to move/copy information into Blocks, that's why many like myself are so amazed there isn't a "Convert Clips to Blocks" command (which I need all the time), but there IS a "Convert Blocks tracks to Song Clips" command (which I've never once needed). This implies you are expected to start your songs in Blocks mode, which can work but sometimes (many times for me) you don't know you need/want Blocks at the start of the process.
All to say, my complaint is more about the lack of a simple/obvious workflow both out of AND in to Block mode, especially when I can see more use for the latter than the former.

You can Ctrl + Razor Tool on the beat bar to non-destructively put the vertical slice of the arrangement into clipboard and then Ctrl+V it into the Block:

Yes, and I’m saying wouldn’t it be nice if you could just copy anything and hit a key that would automatically create a new Block (in the next available space) with that data? Computers are great at automating repetitive stuff like this!

[Wobbleburger]

You can Ctrl + Razor Tool on the beat bar to non-destructively put the vertical slice of the arrangement into clipboard and then Ctrl+V it into the Block:

Yes, and I’m saying wouldn’t it be nice if you could just copy anything and hit a key that would automatically create a new Block (in the next available space) with that data? Computers are great at automating repetitive stuff like this!

I totally agree and I feel like Blocks were abandoned like a mid-1990s mall. You can still go and get Orange Julius maybe but it's sad. Blocks should be available independently of projects.

[antic604]

I totally agree and I feel like Blocks were abandoned like a mid-1990s mall. You can still go and get Orange Julius maybe but it's sad. Blocks should be available independently of projects.

To be perfectly honest, most features - and native instruments & FX - in Reason were introduced and if not improved within 3-6 months window, they're left unchanged forever.

I'm still shocked we got 3rd party wavetable loading in Europa

And Parsec even getting a v2 is some sort of cosmic aberration

[Thousand Ways]

Hmm - I see you've definitely pushed a lot of music into your blocks! My songs have at most 8 - but mostly just the standards: intro, verse, prechorus, chorus, bridge, outro. (sometimes there might be a second bridge and/or verse) The variations are all made in the sequencer by either muting or overlaying parts on top of the blocks.

I think you might be using blocks in a manner that wasn't expected by the devs, so I can see your frustration.

Well, if they didn't intend blocks for this kind of use, then why did they allow 30 (or whatever the number is) in the list?

The purpose of blocks is to be able to construct sections, to apply them in several places if desired, and to have the option of replacing them quickly. So if I want to try out one version of a bridge, then hear the track again with another bridge substituted, I can do that. It therefore makes sense to have a lot of different block options available. And it seems a bad piece of design that the list, once established, can't be altered. In the image given above you can see that I have deleted the blocks labelled 5–12. With those gone, it would make sense to be able to move the others up the list. Or to be able to group all verse variants together, all chorus variants together, and so on.

[selig]

Hmm - I see you've definitely pushed a lot of music into your blocks! My songs have at most 8 - but mostly just the standards: intro, verse, prechorus, chorus, bridge, outro. (sometimes there might be a second bridge and/or verse) The variations are all made in the sequencer by either muting or overlaying parts on top of the blocks.

I think you might be using blocks in a manner that wasn't expected by the devs, so I can see your frustration.

Well, if they didn't intend blocks for this kind of use, then why did they allow 30 (or whatever the number is) in the list?

The purpose of blocks is to be able to construct sections, to apply them in several places if desired, and to have the option of replacing them quickly. So if I want to try out one version of a bridge, then hear the track again with another bridge substituted, I can do that. It therefore makes sense to have a lot of different block options available. And it seems a bad piece of design that the list, once established, can't be altered. In the image given above you can see that I have deleted the blocks labelled 5–12. With those gone, it would make sense to be able to move the others up the list. Or to be able to group all verse variants together, all chorus variants together, and so on.

I agree this would be super helpful, there should ideally be few restrictions on how you organize your song parts IMO.

A related feature to auditioning an alternative version of a section is something I miss from Studio Vision Pro and that is the cue list. It is essentially a “play list” you build by dragging sections into the list, or just selecting them (in real time or offline - both work to build a cue list!). The difference between a cue list and dragging block into the timeline is the timeline - meaning, a cue list will ‘fill the gap’ if you deleted a section or add time if you insert a new ‘cue’. That means if you have two different bridges and they are different lengths, no problem. Just swap them out and hit play to hear the new arrangement.
The kicker, is that once you get an order you like you can convert it to the timeline and then work as per usual, or you could also work like how Blocks work in Reason - options!
I used those features for song building all the time in SVP, but have hardly found Blocks as useful a replacement.

[Eclipxe]

Just bumping so ReasonStudios can be reminded - Blocks are the killer feature (for me) in Reason. Please add more blocks related features and allow us to set blocks enabled by default.

[antic604]

...and allow us to set blocks enabled by default.

Just set them to enabled in your starting template.

[Jagwah]

yes cool

[Eclipxe]

...and allow us to set blocks enabled by default.

Just set them to enabled in your starting template.

Ugh. You’re right. Thanks I totally forgot I could do that.

[kuhliloach]

Just bumping so ReasonStudios can be reminded - Blocks are the killer feature (for me) in Reason. Please add more blocks related features and allow us to set blocks enabled by default.

I've probably mentioned this but Blocks are the huge lost opportunity and a grand example of bad UI design and planning. Proper handling of this feature would have put a dent in the huge market dominance of Ableton IMO. It isn't too late. Everything you do in Reason should be in a Block. When you open the software and make something that should be Block 1 automatically. Somehow they way it currently exists is massively confusing. This all comes down to proper UI design.

[antic604]

BTW, this is what I meant that visibility of blocks should be improved - right now they're simply grey outlines on block's colour. I can hardly see anything , especially with dark theme but even the default one isn't much better

For comparison - the same clips in sequencer directly:

blocks visibility.png (306.23 KiB) Viewed 8427 times

[jam-s]

I think that dimmed look of the blocks is clearly intentional and also the right way to do it imho, as it clearly communicates visually which part is providing the background layer and which elements are in the foreground.