Mixed In Key’s Satellite plugin is a great tool for collaboration, and the best part (well, aside from being free) is, it doesn’t care which plugins, instruments, or effects are in your session, or even which DAW you’re using! The downside is, if you want to use it in Reason, it gets a little strange—but not so strange that you shouldn’t give it a shot! Here I’ll share some of the things I’ve found as I tried using it in Reason. This isn’t a comprehensive list, nor a usage guide—just a few handy things to be aware of.
Oh, and if you like some of the features of another DAW that aren’t available in your own? You can share a session with yourself!
Reason quirks/things to keep in mind:
- Keyboard entry doesn’t work in Reason (it sends your keystrokes directly to Reason, bypassing the Satellite plugins). For example, if you try to name your stem in Satellite to “Lou”, while in Reason, the name won’t appear in the plugin, but you will have toggled Reason’s loop state (the L key is the loop on/off shortcut). You need to use an external text editor of some kind to type the name you want, copy it, then paste into Satellite using the right-click mouse functionality (Ctrl+V paste will not work for the same reason). Weird, but not a huge deal.
- Audio captured from another DAW (e.g. Ableton Live, Logic, etc.) may not automatically sync when dragged into Reason. Capture audio tracks from other DAWs from the very beginning of the song—that way, when you import into Reason, all you have to do to make sure it’s in time, is ensure the imported clip starts at the beginning of the track in Reason. This is a big deal, but something that can be worked around easily.
- Dragging audio and MIDI tracks into Reason will cause a new track to be added at the bottom of your session AND will also paste something at the location where you dragged it. The clips that show at the bottom of the session are what you want—you can delete the other stuff that shows up.
- The new MIDI track added to Reason will have an ID8 instrument attached, so if you’re wondering why there’s a weird piano playing back when you didn’t add one, that’s probably why. Best practice is to grab the clips from the imported MIDI track and move them to the instrument track you need (not copy), then delete the ID8 track.
Of course, you may want to try it out in a relatively unimportant session to get comfortable with things first, before you start using it in critical projects (but then, you should do this anyway, regardless of DAW).
Grab it here: https://mixedinkey.com/satellite/
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