Record Modes

[electrofux]

Hi,

i have allways wondered how recording seems to be so easy in Ableton Live while i struggle to record Midi Loops in Reason.
Since i have some knowledge of Remote Codec programming and CV noodling i have tried to mimik some of Abletons beahviour.
But there are too many barriers to achieve this properly in Reason.

What i wanted to have is the following:

Mode 1
1a)Reason automatically starts recording when the next note comes in
1b)Reason automatically stops recording after a given loop length

Mode 2
2)Reason automatically starts recording after at the next bar/when reaching the left position Marker (punch in quantization) and stops recording after a given bar count/when it reaches the right locator (punch out quantization).

Additionally
3)Reason automatically creates a new alt take after running through the loop once.

With two different combinators and a bit of Remote Codec programming and some looping back i achieved 1 (a and b together) and 2. But it is quite an overhead of devices (REs are needed) and needs complicated adjusting to compensate the latency which is unavoidable with looping back Midi.

1a is achieved via the Codec (of my launchpad). I have a button that arms the Record button on my launchpad and the next time i hit a Pad, record is activated and the note is send after that- that is the easy part but needs a controller with free buttons and programming.

1 b needs an Envelope of a certain length (a sequencer doesnt work as it gets confused by a loop runthrough) which gets triggered aswell and when it reaches its end it sends out a comand to an EMI which is connected with another codec which turns off record.
Now that works but due to the Midi latency the record time is a bit too long which leads to overlapping notes quite often.
So i came up with a complex array of Midi delays to make this adjustable. And it turns out to be similar to the looper in Ableton though not perfect. Eg when starting recording in the middle of a loop of the Reason sequencer and holding notes while the playhead moves from the right to the left loop locator they are obvioulsy not swapped over but instead prolonged over the right loop Marker. For this Clips are needed. But apart from that it is a great feature to have, recording feels much simpler.
So to compensate the above limitation recording mode 2 would be nice where punch in and out are fixed (at best Reason records a bit ahead and compensates if you trigger a bit too early like other programs do).

Ultimately a lot of the simplicity of recording in Ableton comes from Clips but those modes would imho help alot.