MAC’ing Reason Remote Mapping Some of you may know, and some of you may not, but I’ve been developing a midi amp controller, or “MAC” for short, for quite some time now. What is it? It’s a hardware interface that controls a virtual set of guitar amps in real time, namely Kuassa’s Vermillion and Creme Reason Rack Extensions. https://shop.propellerheads.se/product/kuassa-amplifikation-vermilion/ https://shop.propellerheads.se/product/amplifikation-creme-guitar-amp/ In it’s current state the MAC is nothing more than a handful of midi electronics crammed into a cardboard, beard tied, and duct taped frame but it serves as a valuable learning tool for future product iterations. It’s already answered the most valuable question of all, “does the MAC fill any particular real world need?”. The answer to that is of course yes, it does indeed! Propellerheads Reason is renowned for being the most rock solid music production platform in existence primarily because they haven’t allowed third party developer plug-in integration, well until recently that is. Not too long ago the Propellerheads released Rack Extensions in the form of an SDK replete with API’s and code libraries for developers. This was an elegant, albeit in house, solution to the plug-in problem at hand but the fact that developers have to follow a tightly controlled SDK framework to develop their wares means that Reason pretty much never crashes, a claim most others simply cannot make. People are so confident in Reasons stability that some have even started placing the Swedish made software right in the middle of their live performances. Guitars, keyboards, synths, vocals, FX, and even drums are all processed and handled by Reason in real time replacing real world hardware such as FX pedals/racks, amps, compressors, maximizers/limiters, etc etc. The more that I thought about this paradigm shift in real time music processing the more I began to realize that there was something missing. If guitarists decide to go direct-in, leaving any tangible amps and pedals behind, they wouldn’t have the ability to shape their tone short of pushing an engineer out of his chair to fiddle with the software. A mouse and a keyboard isn’t exactly user friendly for guitarists. That’s why I started developing the MAC, to bridge the deficiency inherent of the paradigm. The biggest issue in developing a control surface for Reason guitarists hasn’t been sourcing the electronics or designing a suitable form factor. It’s been figuring out how to configure it to best work within the Reason production environment. Originally I had to manually map out the prototypes controls by using Reasons “Edit Remote Override Mapping” function which isn’t exactly ideal because its tedious and robs midi functionality away from additional device instances. I wanted the prototypes controls to have a default configuration so that when I load up a virtual amp and lock the MAC to it everything’s rocking and rolling without any further user intervention. Today I’m glad to report that I’ve finally conquered that mountain by configuring my own Reason Remote Maps, and no the process was anything but obvious. So what does this mean for the MAC midi surface controller and Reason guitarists looking to go direct-in into their DAW’s? For one it means that the mapping of the MAC controller and Kuassa virtual amps are now automatic and two it means that more than one controller can be locked to more than one amp. This opens up the possibility of multiple direct-in guitarists being able to tangibly shape their sounds simultaneously in real time, like they would with real amps. Pretty cool, huh? :)~ #developer #rapidprototyping #prototype #midi #music #production #musicproduction #engineering #ducttape #cardboard #controller #controlsurface #musicians #guitarists #propellerhead #reason #rackextensions #kuassa #vermillion #creme #amplifiers #programming #coding
Posted on: Mon, 30 Jun 2014 00:32:22 +0000
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