R13: What tools would you like to see added to the Edit Area Inspector?

[joeyluck]

Now that the tools have been moved into the spotlight of the Edit area and we've seen at least one new tool added called "make ramp", what other tools would you like to see? There's room The categories can collapse (as the did before in the Tool Window) but the inspector area is also scrollable, which was something the Tool Window lacked.

Here's some I think would be great:

• Fix to Scale - Yes, we have players that can do this, but it would be nice to have a simple function in the Edit area to select notes, choose a scale, and then execute.
• Generate random notes - We have the Randomize and Alter features, but they rely on notes being in place first. It would be cool to be able to begin with an empty note clip and create random notes.
• "Clip effects" - Having a basic 3-band or 4-band EQ on the clip itself is very handy, as well as other things such as Pan. It's nice not to have to automate or bounce something for a fix or static adjustment. I think Reason Studios could look at their own ReCycle for inspiration for tools, because in ReCycle you can define parameter settings per slice, such as Pan, so would be nice to see things like that per clip in Reason.

Others I'd like to see that are just missing from the Note edit area:

• Reverse - This is available in the Audio edit area and can be applied to notes via the context menu, but is missing from the Edit area.
• Scale to Tempo - The same as the above. I actually apply this to notes more than I do audio.

And just because it's relevant, another improvement I'd like to see is being able to adjust Legato/Gap in something larger than +/-960 ticks. It's such a small adjustment and it's absolute, meaning I can't keep applying it to create a larger. Being able to switch from ticks to something like Bar, Beat, Note, Snap value would be very helpful.

Any tools you would like to see in the Note or Audio edit areas?

[Loque]

I am with you with any kind of help with note scales.

[tewoc]

Nice to hear that workflow development is going to continue ! Go Reason, go!

1. Automation randomness

Randomizte your automation lanes , 1% to 100% randomizing for selected automation points AND/OR clips

Its nice to give your sound some kind of random, realistic touch with less clicks

2. Loop selected clip

You can let only a selected clip play in loop, while the song plays regular. Great for try out ideas and song structure. Must have.

3. Midi Comping on / off

Record multiple midi-takes with each loop automatically - another must have feature

.... like audio comping thats already availible.

4. Automation presets

Some dropdown with presets like in europa synth

[Quarmat]

maybe this thing is already there and I'm the fool who didn't see the elephant in the room, but a selection options section with things like:

• select all identical clips (maybe even cross-instrument, I often copy sections between various devices)
• reverse selects (i.e., it selects everything that is not currently selected and deselects the current selection)
• select higher/lower notes and selects notes above/below a given velocity/duration
• select/deselect notes in a range of (1/32, 1/16, 1/8, etc.)

and things like that.

That would be nice!

[Kilsane]

Hi,
- it could integrate a ratchet system into the sequencer
- it could integrate a probability system into the sequencer
- it could integrate a struming system
- it could integrate a note coloring system (it's practical to find this fundamental when you have turned your chords in all directions)
- we also need punch in punch out
etc ... ... ...

[tewoc]

5. Group clips & audio files - must have

6. Selectors
- select same clips / notes
- selct every 2nd / 3rd / 4rd / 5th note only

7. make basic clip - must have
- make clip as e.g. "basic clip" (means that when you edit a clip, all other clips change)

... yes, I know blocks workaround - not the same...

[dioxide]

Last time I checked Note Off quantize wasn’t possible in Reason, so that should be added.

Also perhaps a Cubase style drum editor where you can use the modifier keys to add 3 velocity levels when inputting drum hits. Redrum already does this but there’s nothing similar in Drum Edit. In fact Drum Edit doesn’t seem to have much of a difference to Key Edit apart from the way the keys are shown. The non-native devices don’t show the drum or sample names like Redrum. I’m not sure if Kong does but Drum Edit still feels like a Reason 1 feature.

[esme]

scale and chord awareness and highlighting
a randomly jumble notes feature - great for changing up melodies. hilite some notes and jumble will swap their positions. same notes different order.
probability like in drum sequencer.
linked clips - edit one and they all change

[Pepin]

- Non-destructive quantize
- Retrospective recording
- Strumming

[Marc Swing]

Audio:

• Quantize audio to grove

• Strip Silence (see video 1)

• Vocalign or ARA support so we can use Vocalign in Reason

• Polyphonic support for vocal pitch

• Polyphonic support for audio to midi

• Transient detect sensitivity slider (like Recycle/Mimic)

Midi:

• Fix to Scale

• Midi Comping

• Fixed velocity

• Struming function

• Midi note chase

And low latency monitoring for audio/midi (see video 2)

[gphg]

midi comping across selective lanes only

[michael.jaye]

Randomize octave
Randomize note length

[Yonatan]

More control over the pianobar. Select scale to be fixed as snap, but also to add or reduce notes (custom scale) abd be able to reduce what part of piano register to be active.
With this in place, randomize and painting in notes would be so much more interesting.
Now it is not that inspiring as it is hitting wrong notes and pianobar is far too tiny to get a good view.
And overall chord grid, but also a function in a singular clip in edit to paint in chords and a step sequencer editor style to just hit a chord or notes on ones midi keyboard and it instantly gets printed on the sequencer grid without having to play song and record it, just adding in edit process. Now one need to click note by note at right spots or record the midi info manually as if it where audio. That would not be necessary.
Implement the Player functions into the sequencer. It dont make the players obsolete, just expands the ways to work as fits in the moment, just as they took the sections of the mixer to the rack, put the good ideas in the players into the Sequencer. People like to be creative in many ways both in Rack and in Sequencer.
In short, make the Sequencer more and more like a potent Instrument in itself, fun and intuitive to play with.
And yes, add markers and a Arrangement section/tool with Kong-style pads to be able to assign markers as well as whole blocks, jumping instantly to any marker and/or block, so one can play around with arrangement and also record these sessions for interesting variations of the song or Remixing existing songs. One can create different arrangements as saved scenes in this Kong-pad session live function. Imagine then how many pad-grid devices that is out there to assign to these pad matrix in Reason, how fun it would be.
And also make chord or scale selections be able to made separate in each block, even tempo and if 4/4 or 3/4, 6/8 etc. Having these flexibilities could make people experiment more with both harmonic and time variations for more complex arrangements, not just get stuck on 4/4 120 bpm. We need these changes more than ever when Ai generated song tools can spit out 4/4 C-key, 120 bpm songs on a row.
We want to have endless fun and not be stuck with an arrangement made years ago that we might want to change but who dares to touch it and tiring trying different versions in new saved projects. Really hope RS take this to heart and combine with their knowledge. These things would make Reason a DAW of the future and also easier to later add focused Ai assisting tools into already flexible creative tool, for suggestions, smart selected randomization, tool to build next step out of what is already in the project, not to mention mixing assistant tools and for mastering. Sooner or later that will be a standard in DAWs.

[Quarmat]

(...)

these are really well thought out suggestions, I especially like the part for live arrangement with Kong-style pads

[selig]

I’ve been wanting a “revert” button for so long, which means what I really want is non-destructive EDIT processes. I’d love to be able to apply quantizing etc experimentally and non-destructively.
This could work on audio as well, allowing you to put clips back to their original time stamp after moving, etc.

In general I’m wanting ways to do deeper dives well beyond what undo can help with, knowing any part of my original data is always available!

[Loque]

Extraction of controller data into several tracks/clips and the opposite, joining control data into a note track/clip.

[Pepin]

Extraction of controller data into several tracks/clips and the opposite, joining control data into a note track/clip.

+1 I could have sworn this was possible at one point, but I looked for it recently and couldn't find it. I guess I was dreaming...

[joeyluck]

I've been using DaVinci Resolve Fairlight and something I find incredibly handy is a built-in 4-band EQ in the Inspector, meaning that you can apply individual EQ to each clip.

So if a clip needs an extra adjustment, you can avoid having to automate the channel EQ, or moving the clip to its own channel, or bouncing to a new clip.

[joeyluck]

I'm liking the suggestions! I can see some of them as tools and maybe others would be menu items?

Strum - I'm guessing this could be an option under Note Position, with a range in ticks. I'd probably use this more than Randomize position. And then it could have two buttons to Strum Up or Strum Down. Would that be the way?

Strip Silence - looks useful! I assumed it meant just stripping actual silence from audio, which alone I figured would be very helpful. Sometimes after I bounce tracks and import them into a new project, I'd like to isolate everything to clips to get rid of empty space for a better visual. And especially with Reason self-containing audio, it takes up too much disk space to have long tracks containing silence, s would be good for optimization.

But then after watching the video, I realized that it was more flexible than that, given that you can define the threshold. They could have made a better name for it? "Strip Below Threshold"?

We already have Split At Slices, which is handy, but for this use case it still requires a bit of work to then go through and mute the slices you don't want to hear. So maybe not too far off from having a feature like this?

I like the suggestions of non-destructive quantize. Could be helpful to have other things in Note edit non-destructive? We already have non-destructive elements in Audio edit (such as Revert All Slices and Reset to Original Pitch). So it would be consistent to treat Note clips similarly.

• Fixed velocity

Would this be different than hitting the "=" sign next to note Velocity after selecting a group of notes?

[Pepin]

"Quantize ends" was already mentioned (+1 from me). I'd also like "quantize lengths" as an option. So we'd have start/end/length all available for quantization.

I've been using DaVinci Resolve Fairlight and something I find incredibly handy is a built-in 4-band EQ in the Inspector, meaning that you can apply individual EQ to each clip.

So if a clip needs an extra adjustment, you can avoid having to automate the channel EQ, or moving the clip to its own channel, or bouncing to a new clip.

I've not used it myself, but I think this also exists in Pro Tools (called "Clip Effects").

[manisnotabird]

There's probably a better, more realistic way to "humanize" timing than just randomly distributing each note over a range of +/- so many ticks. I understand that humans tend to be a little tighter on accented notes, and a little more off on quieter notes, so maybe scale the timing by velocity? I also imagine that humans tend to wander slightly ahead of where they want to be rhythmically, and then correct once they start to notice, and then maybe wander slightly behind, etc. There's probably more. And maybe similar factors in humanizing velocity?

[SynthGang]

I've been using DaVinci Resolve Fairlight and something I find incredibly handy is a built-in 4-band EQ in the Inspector, meaning that you can apply individual EQ to each clip.

So if a clip needs an extra adjustment, you can avoid having to automate the channel EQ, or moving the clip to its own channel, or bouncing to a new clip.

This!!! I literally spend 12 hours a day in DaVinci and I can't get enough of this feature!

Here's Fairlight's secret: so much of what they've done is very clearly modeled on Pro Tools features, and Pro Tools gives you a few extra clip-level goodies which are quite nice:

Screenshot 2024-07-20 040153.png

[joeyluck]

I've been using DaVinci Resolve Fairlight and something I find incredibly handy is a built-in 4-band EQ in the Inspector, meaning that you can apply individual EQ to each clip.

So if a clip needs an extra adjustment, you can avoid having to automate the channel EQ, or moving the clip to its own channel, or bouncing to a new clip.

This!!! I literally spend 12 hours a day in DaVinci and I can't get enough of this feature!

Here's Fairlight's secret: so much of what they've done is very clearly modeled on Pro Tools features, and Pro Tools gives you a few extra clip-level goodies which are quite nice:

Screenshot 2024-07-20 040153.png

Yeah another inspector 'clip effect' in DaVinci I've been using a lot is panning. It's just nice to not have to automate something like Pan if I don't need movement and only need specific placement.

I think aside from these inspectors and 'clip effects' found in other software, Reason Studios could get inspiration for additional tools from ReCycle. And I'm not thinking so much on the slice level, although I'd really like to see more ReCycle integration into Reason, but on the clip level. In ReCycle you can define parameters for slice, such as Pan, so why not for starters having that on clips in Reason?