Propellerhead Reason and Ableton Live Walkthrough

Ableton Live is a very diverse program and have already wrote a review that tells a lot about the product and why I use it in my home studio. This guide will walk you through the steps needed to link Ableton Live to Propellerhead Reason and how to setup multiple drum tracks if needed. Reason itself has multiple instruments all on a virtual rack mount that you can even view the rear and rewire these instruments like you would for a real hardware rack mount studio, it can be used for everything from synths, samples and drums.Depending on how this article works out I may decide to do more tutorials like this in the near future.

First and the most important step is to make sure you open Ableton Live before you open Propellerhead Reason. If you open Reason first the Rewire program in Reason will not activate and Reason WILL NOT work with Ableton Live if you do this. You open the programs like you would if you were using them by themselves just make sure Ableton Live is first.

After you have Ableton Live open with Propellerhead Reason the first thing you must do within Ableton Live itself is to setup and arm a audio track. Find the first audio track that will already be made by default by Ableton Live and then find the section labeled monitor. That section should have 3 tabs called In, Auto and Off. This setting should always be set to IN if you are using the audio track as a reason track. Once you find the IN tab under the monitor section of your first audio track in Ableton Live click that tab. Once you have done this you have "armed" the track so any audio sent to it will automatically play at less you mute the track.

Once you have armed your first audio track you must find the section labeled "Audio From" just above the monitor section you just used. That section should have 2 tabs and clicking on the tab will bring up a sub menu. Click the top tab and scroll down the the "Reason" option in that menu. By default the second tab should say 1/2 which is what you want. Those numbers represent the channels from Reason being used for that audio track in Ableton.

Your audio track is now setup and armed and if you press play on Ableton Live it should trigger Reason automatically and in sync to Ableton's BPM (beats per minute) setting to Reason. Once you have one track armed and all setup, making a second track is easy. Right click in the open area to the right of the premade audio and midi tracks in Ableton Live. Right clicking should bring up a menu that lets you add a new audio track, once this track is made use the same steps you used to setup and arm the first audio track. You can setup as many audio tracks as you wish.

Now you know how to setup and arm audio tracks in Ableton Live and how to slave Propellerhead Reason to Ableton. Once you get use to this and a few other tricks you should be on your way to creating your own killer track.