Recording & Sequencing

Spend less time clicking and more time creating.
Immediate and intuitive, Reason's rock solid audio and MIDI sequencer gives you total control.

Record, edit, arrange. Simply connect your MIDI controller and start making music—no setup required. Capture MIDI performances and automation, record and overdub audio, or draw in notes with the mouse. Whatever suits your workflow, Reason's sequencer is fast, flexible and fun. Any mistakes can easily be corrected, adjusted or quickly spliced together from multiple takes. Keeping with Reason’s famous ease of use, Reason's sequencer still comes with all the editing features you need. If your playing is too tight—use the ReGroove Groove Mixer to add more human feel.

All sequencer data — notes, automation, the works — are housed in clips; musical building blocks that can be opened, sliced or moved. When a clip is moved to a new location, all its internal data follows right along with it, always ending up exactly where you intended it to. Safe, speedy sequencing. In sync with your flow. Forever adapting to you and your working methods. Reason's sequencer simply gets you there faster.

Multi Lane Editing for MIDI

Arranging MIDI tracks is easier than ever with Multi Lane Editing. Perfect for building drumbeats on separate lanes or working with melodies and chords, Multi Lane Editing lets you view and edit multiple MIDI lanes simultaneously. The new snap to grid feature allows you to sequence tracks with lightning speed using an adaptive grid that adjusts based on your zoom level. Zoom out to adjust the big picture or zoom in to fine-tune the tiniest of details.

Pitch Edit

Sometimes a singer will completely nail the emotion and energy in a performance, but slip on a few notes. And other times singers will need more general help with staying in key. Reason’s Pitch Edit can quickly correct the pitch in a vocal recording and gives you detailed control over pitch, time and articulations in the performance. Pitch Edit is of course also a creative tool. Beyond just using it for correcting pitch, you can also use it to build harmonies, doubling up the vocals or create completely new performances. And the best of all: It sounds good. Really, really good!

Automation

Every thinkable knob, button or fader can be automated with ease, and then edited and fine-tuned in the sequencer. Simply draw in your automation—volume curves, filter sweeps, whatever you want—or press record and every button click, fader move and knob tweak in the rack will be recorded in the sequencer in separate clips.

Blocks

Sequence your songs using a pattern-based approach. With Blocks, the segments of your song become puzzle pieces, ready to be laid out in your arrangement, looped and rearranged.

Start by creating the discrete parts of your song in blocks mode. When you start building your song, switch to song mode and draw in what blocks should play when in the dedicated pattern lane. Use one block for the verse and one for the chorus — or build your song around a single 8-bar loop.

Blocks provide a very fast way of creating a musical structure for your song. But the options don't end there. With the basic arrangement laid out, you can see the contents of the blocks and create variations and mute individual parts, or add further musical elements on top.

Block presentation video 2:39

Comp editor

As a perfect performance may be less than perfect from scratch, Reason features a swift and easy to use comp editor. Record multiple takes in loop mode then build the perfect track from the best parts. It's as simple as selecting the parts that work and muting the ones that don't. Exit the comp editor and listen to the results; a perfect take containing only the good parts.

Comp Editor Micro Tutorial 2:28

Time Stretch

With our now legendary non-destructive time stretch, you can actually record first and pick your tempo later. Reason has a unique twist on the concept of time and tempo. Change the song tempo on the fly and all your audio tracks will follow right along without any need for pre-processing of any kind. Need to slow your song down to nail a tricky passage? No problem. Just reduce the tempo, record your performance and bring the tempo back up. The audio quality? Amazing.

Reason automatically slices recordings and imported audio into single notes or hits. Quantize an audio take. Tweak your timing to perfection, or to drastically change the recording. The sliced up audio can also be converted to REX files for playback and further sound designing treatment in Reason’s Dr. Octo Rex Loop Player, Reason's samplers, or the Kong Drum Designer.

Time Stretch Micro Tutorial 3:41

Sequence in the rack

If you are into 70's style modular synths, or if you simply like to play around with an analog style sequencer that can control virtually anything in the rack, take a close look at the Matrix Pattern Sequencer. Matrix is an analog style sequencer useful for anything from monophonic melodies and arpeggios to modulation of your instruments and effects and advanced rhythmical gating. Hook up the Matrix to a Subtractor and draw some notes for quick, acid-style synth basslines. Connect the Matrix's Curve output to the Subtractor filter and you've got predictable, looped automation synced with the tempo of your song. Easy, fast and lots of fun.