MPC as CONTROLLER and Reason 4.0 as SEQUENCER

[hieroglif]

Hi all,

First post on here, kind of out of desperation because I’ve looked all over and found no proper solution to this following dilemma…

I have posted this on the MPC forum, please look here for the full discussion:

http://www.mpc-forums.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=121851&p=1117948#p1117948

It definitely looks like its a Reason problem. I'm really startin to pull my hair out on this one, lol.

I’m trying to use my MPC2000XL solely as a MIDI Controller in Reason 4.0. In other words, I want to tap my pads and record the notes in the Reason sequencer. Simple right? Check out some online demos, forum posts etc. etc. shouldn’t I?

I have followed these and have managed to get as far as hooking it all up correctly and getting sound out of Reason when I press a pad.

I can assign devices to MIDI channels and when I select one and navigate to the right track on the MPC it will play it. The Midi out device volume bar will trigger in Reason, The NOTE ON light will come on the Reason device (e.g NN-XT). However, when I press ‘RECORD’ and try and record my sequence – nothing will record. No notes/events will appear in my device track sequence.

All my bus channels are set pick up the MPC device, the mixer volume increases, all seems well but no recording takes place.

There seems to be no button to ‘enable’ MIDI on the device track settings, so why doesn’t it record?

I will appreciate if someone can please suggest a possible cause and solution for this. There doesn’t seem to be any thing regarding this online. Youtube videos only show up to where I already am. The poster of the correct solution will get a load of .wav samples from me!!!

PEACE

 

[Kontents]

Have you uninstalled and re-installed? Sometimes this simple task will solve the issue.

Keyboards and Control Surfaces tab: Did you select a device to link up through here and everything looks good? You may want to delete and re-add the device as this can help

Advanced Control tab: You only need one bus selected for one device. Once the devices is listed the AMD "Advanced Midi Device" will show the bus A selection and when you use the device one of the channels will light up on the channel select the Reason device you want to record with and select it. That sometimes works.


Is your version a bought product? or a pirated download?

 

[hieroglif]

...

Hi Kontents,

Thanks for your reply,

Have you uninstalled and re-installed? Sometimes this simple task will solve the issue.

uninstall what, Reason? Hmmm...have you tried this before to fix an issue and have it work? I may try if no other hope left!

Keyboards and Control Surfaces tab: Did you select a device to link up through here and everything looks good? You may want to delete and re-add the device as this can help

This is set up fine and I have deleted and re-added it a few times.

Advanced Control tab: You only need one bus selected for one device. Once the devices is listed the AMD "Advanced Midi Device" will show the bus A selection and when you use the device one of the channels will light up on the channel select the Reason device you want to record with and select it. That sometimes works.

yep thats all good. all that info is in my mpc-forums post. im getting sound, input & output lights flashing and volume bars rising in all the right places. also got 'note on' flashing on the device i want to record. just no midi notes appearing in record sequence.

Is your version a bought product? or a pirated download?

Originally bought, not downloaded.

PEACE


Thanks for your reply.

 

[Kontents]

Hi Kontents,

Thanks for your reply,

uninstall what, Reason? Hmmm...have you tried this before to fix an issue and have it work? I may try if no other hope left!

Yup! Sometimes when you add certain things Reason may have a bug and a re-install can usually fix it.

Also does the MPC get any driver updates?? You may want to look into that.

 

[Kontents]

yep thats all good. all that info is in my mpc-forums post. im getting sound, input & output lights flashing and volume bars rising in all the right places. also got 'note on' flashing on the device i want to record. just no midi notes appearing in record sequence.

Do you actually have it set up like this?? because this has nothing to do with the Reason Sequencer device lights showing up... this is all rack based connection. Just confirm because I had a similar problem with my Trigger Finger and I did everything but this and had the same outcome as you. Would make notes and sound good, but no recording.

 

[hieroglif]

Yup! Sometimes when you add certain things Reason may have a bug and a re-install can usually fix it.

Also does the MPC get any driver updates?? You may want to look into that.

Ok I will look into that, I will start with the MPC drivers first though!

Do you actually have it set up like this?? because this has nothing to do with the Reason Sequencer device lights showing up... this is all rack based connection. Just confirm because I had a similar problem with my Trigger Finger and I did everything but this and had the same outcome as you. Would make notes and sound good, but no recording. .

Yes I can confirm this is how it is set up. If thats what happened to you then you had the same issue, how did you fix it?

I can actually record Reason sounds into my MPC but I cant record the triggered sounds into Reason!

thanks,

PEACE

 

[Kontents]

Really stupid question, but how is your midi set up? How are you connected to Reason from your MPC?


In response to the above post: Exactly what I explained with the Bus A Set up. Thats why I had to make sure you have it set up that same way. In your original post you stated the MPC was assigned to all the bus ports which is not correct and not what you are supposed to do.


It should look like this:

 

[hieroglif]

Really stupid question, but how is your midi set up? How are you connected to Reason from your MPC?


In response to the above post: Exactly what I explained with the Bus A Set up. Thats why I had to make sure you have it set up that same way. In your original post you stated the MPC was assigned to all the bus ports which is not correct and not what you are supposed to do.


It should look like this:

with regards to set up, sorry to have to say this again, but its all in the mpc forum post. link is in my original post..

Ok ASA I get home I'm going to try assigning it to one bus again. I did do that yesterday but maybe I had to restart etc before I did.

Thanks for the screen shot. so do you map the MIDI channel to the mixer and then the mixer to the device? I've just been right clicking the channel and mapping it straight to the device e.g channel A = Thor.


appreciate your swift responses dude....i think we may be getting there...

 

[Kontents]

with regards to set up, sorry to have to say this again, but its all in the mpc forum post. link is in my original post..

Ok ASA I get home I'm going to try assigning it to one bus again. I did do that yesterday but maybe I had to restart etc before I did.

Thanks for the screen shot. so do you map the MIDI channel to the mixer and then the mixer to the device? I've just been right clicking the channel and mapping it straight to the device e.g channel A = Thor.


appreciate your swift responses dude....i think we may be getting there...

In my screen shot its going through a combi device. So if you are using a single device it should just link straight to that device.

Notice the channel I am in tho.. that channel is the one that lights up only when I tap the pads on the trigger finger. So when you set yours up check what channel lights up and then do it to that channel only.

 

[Doc Vigilanti]

How about do this.

Unhook everything and start from scratch. I read the post on the MPC forums that you linked too and people are getting it to work with no problems. So my suggestion is to unhook everything and do what the other people have told you.

Basically it should be like this.

The Physical Connections Should Be:

MPC MIDI OUT > Computer Interface MIDI IN
MPC MIDI IN > Computer Interface MIDI Out

The Software Setup should be

MPC:

MTC Sync External on the channel that you want, i.e. A or B.
In the sequencer on each track it should be triggering MIDI Channel 1a or 1b, 2a or 2b, etc.

Reason:

You want to go into Controllers or something like that I can't remember what it is called off the top of my head, and set the MIDI channels the MPC MIDI data is being sent on, i.e. "Name of MIDI Interface" IN(1,2 if applicable), and "Name of MIDI Interface" OUT(1,2 if applicable). Save it, then do what Kontents is telling you to do.

Now what I'm about to say is very important so I'm going to bold it just because if you don't do this you will get the problem you are having. I'm not yelling at you or trying to be a dick or anything, but I had problems with this when hooking up hardware using the MPC as the master to trigger a Triton.

IF YOU DON'T HAVE A MIDI HANDSHAKE(IN TO OUT, OUT TO IN) BETWEEN YOUR MIDI INTERFACE AND MPC THEN IT WILL NOT WORK, YOU WILL ONLY BE ABLE TO TRIGGER THE SOUNDS AND NOTHING MORE.

 

[LDB]

If you're getting sound when you hit your MPC pads the midi signal is getting to Reason. Reason is just not recording the midi notes. Has to be something on the software side. Something is not enabled or like already mentioned you need to reinstall Reason.

 

[hieroglif]

...

I've already gone through alot of what you both suggest but have tried some of the suggestions which I havent done and still no luck..... so seems like its doomed!!

trust me: handshake midi connection, mtc, start again, and again, and again...tried it all...

I will maybe try and reinstall Reason, if not I guess I can reWire to Cubase or something like that (which I dont really want to do cos I've got like £1,000 worth of equipment and I cant even f-kin record a note! shouldnt need another piece of software to eat up my memory!)

I've been producing with reason and a usb keyboard controller for 2 years and then was using FL for 3 years prior to that, so to upgrade and not be able to do sh-t is pretty annoying...but oh well, i will have to move on, spent too much time on this already.

thanks for all your help, I'll keep you updated if I manage to sort it out, in the meantime if there is anything someone would like to add then please do so..

this is a nice site and i will be checking it out more...hopefully get some beats up on here soon...

cheers...peace...

 

[Kontents]

Don't give up just yet. You are just a little off from accomplishing it. We can keep trying if you are up for it. Reinstall first and see how it goes. If you added any banks to your propellerheads folder you may want to move it out when you reinstall.

 

[Doc Vigilanti]

I'm with Kontents, don't give up, if you have the handshake and the MPC settings right then your 3/4 of the way there.

Can you do us a favor and post screen shots of your reason settings? That will help out a bunch.

 

[Kontents]

I'm with Kontents, don't give up, if you have the handshake and the MPC settings right then your 3/4 of the way there.

Can you do us a favor and post screen shots of your reason settings? That will help out a bunch.

Was just about to ask that.

 

[Doc Vigilanti]

I know how he feels though, just starting out with new stuff I've spent countless hours trying to figure out stuff only to find out that there was one setting I didn't click that was holding up everything else.

 

[hieroglif]

Thanks Doc and Kontents,

Glad I got someone to share my pain with! OK, I'll re-install Reason,

set it up from scratch, and if it dont work I'll make a f-kin screenshot manual so the world can witness...lol

Thanks once again, I dont forget a favour.

 

[lion-ucs]

This sounds like hooking up to a bus is your problem

Busing is more so for live performance and for using reason as a sound mod (which I think you may have found in your tutorial search)

You should be hooked up, MIDI I/O (only one should be needed) to your interface/sound card/usb midi controller. For this we're gonna say you have an M-Audio FastTrack Pro. So, MIDI I/O between the MP and the FastTrack.

Now, I don't know much about the MPC outside of any tutorials, tips and tricks I may find that is related to it. So, I don't know how to setup the MPC side of this MIDI, but obviously you want to send MIDI out.

In Reason you should have a generic midi surface and the input set to fasttrack pro. (or you should be able to do the auto detect -- probably a better idea, cause if you cant do this then you probably have a problem already). Now at this point you should be done, if the MPC is outputting MIDI and Reason is receiving these signals then whatever device you have selected in the sequencer will be triggered.

This SHOULD work. I can't say for sure since I don't have an MPC, I'm simply going by logic is all.

 

[hieroglif]

Peace all,

Yes - I'm back. Couldnt look into this for the last few days because I had a show to do and other work etc...

anyhow I still aint got this working, but lion-ucs, you are exactly right, I shouldnt have been 'Bus'ing this. I should just treat it as I do my midi controller keyboard, stick the USB in and THAT'S IT...from there on it should work in Reason. Just after you posted the above post, I recieved an email from a friend of mine, who is quite sound with audio engineering. He came round a few days before I first posted and couldnt figure out the problem...but then he emailed me the following, confirming what you have just posted:


"...........i half understand the problem now. that 'midi unit' in reason (whatever its called), where you route an incoming midi channel through to a specific instrument within reason- the instruction manual said that was for using reason with an external sequencer. i dont know if this is the same as 'rewire', but its specifically for external sequencer control. so it will still receive any incoming midi data, as when playing on your mpc or keyboard, but as far as reason is concerned,it doesnt know the difference between midi data played live on a keyboard, and played back from another sequencer.

basically, it WONT record from that, simply because its not intended to. thats why there were no additional options. thats why when you have your midi keyboard plugged in to your computer via usb, you dont need to use that unit to record what you play, it just does it automatically when you arm the channel you want to record to.

the next question is how to record properly from your mpc/keyboard in reason through your midi box. as i recall, your little midi outboard box was registering in reason as an audio unit of some kind (as if reason wasnt seeing the drivers properly). so maybe thats the problem, although midi is clearly coming through, so that seems unlikely to me.

to repeat, using that 'advanced midi' unit is the wrong approach- its not capable of recording that way. sorry i cant offer you a solution yet though! other than using a different sequencer where this wouldnt be so difficult to setup. im sure reason is nice enough, but i dont think it was ever designed to be advanced/user friendly in the manner of cubase/sonar etc, especially judging by the lack of option screens or track options.

that being said, im sure its will be possible to record midi in reason thats coming through a regular midi port, so id suggest checking the driver installation first for your midi box (its obviously working fine, but nonetheless, maybe reason still isnt quite 'seeing' it properly). otherwise your whole midi setup was fine (that part wasnt the problem)............."



at the moment gents, I've downloaded the latest driver for my interface, and that seems to have made some good changes (Reason is picking up the actual name of the interface rather than just "USB Audio Device")

However now I dont have any sound coming out!! I know if I can get sound to come out now, there will be recording!

I plugged my usb midi controller keyboard in and that worked straight away!

I'll keep ya'll posted...

 

[Kontents]

"...........i half understand the problem now. that 'midi unit' in reason (whatever its called), where you route an incoming midi channel through to a specific instrument within reason- the instruction manual said that was for using reason with an external sequencer. i dont know if this is the same as 'rewire', but its specifically for external sequencer control. so it will still receive any incoming midi data, as when playing on your mpc or keyboard, but as far as reason is concerned,it doesnt know the difference between midi data played live on a keyboard, and played back from another sequencer.

That makes sense. Its registering the MPC Sequencer as the main sequencer and trying to record through the MPC instead of in Reason. The outcome of this should be interesting. Keep us posted.