How To: Compose To Picture With Reason

As much as I love Propellerhead Reason there's still a few things it just can't do.

The main thing people seem to be obsessed with and go on about ad nauseum is its apparent inability to record audio in (such as vocals) but there are some simple ways around that (and I'll almost definitely do a post about that later.)

But for me there are two things I really wish it could do: 1) music notation (and the ability to print the final sheet music) and 2) being able to compose to picture (for film or television scoring.) There's not much I can do about the first, but for the second there's ReVision.

Granted Software's ReVision is basically a ReWire enabled QuickTime player which allows it to be synched with Reason, so you can precisely compose and place your soundtrack and then export the whole thing (sound and picture) out of ReVision. It's ingenious, simple and dead easy to use:

1. Open ReVision (always open the host application first, to insure that ReWire is enabled correctly!)
2. Open Reason.
3. ReVision and Reason are now ReWired and in synch! So any changes you make in one will immediately show up in the other.
4. When you're done you have to export the project out of ReVision to insure that sound/picture are contained in the same file.
5. You have a finished video with music!
   

The above steps will also work with a video capable sequencer (such as Garageband, Apple Logic, Ableton Live, etc) in place of ReVision (just always remember to open the host application first and Reason second.) But I find ReVision a lightweight, easy to use solution.

For Windows users: sadly ReVision only works on Mac OS X. However, I'm told that the excellent Reaper sequencer also works very well. But any sequencer that allows the ReWire protocol will work, so you may already have one installed!

Note: I've been hearing reports that ReVision isn't working too well with Reason 4. I'm sure this is only a temporary glitch. Download the demo and give it a try first!