I have just finished a beta of a comprehensive Remote mapping for Propellerhead’s Reason. “Remote” is Reason (and Record’s) method of integrating controllers into their software, and I have to say, it’s pretty cool once you have all the mappings done.
To be honest, I’ve always shied away from Reason in the past, since the interface seemed too closely tied to the analogy of “rack of hardware gear.” This seems to result in interfaces that are bound by a legacy of old hardware, rather than interfaces that took advantage of a computer’s speed and flexibility. I’ve always like the terse control offered by Max/MSP and the simplicity of MIDI learn in Ableton Live. However, now that I’ve spent a lot of time with Reason making this map for the Ohm64, I’ve come to really like it. Mostly what I like is that I now have full control of every device in the form of a consistent hardware interface, and I feel like I can really explore the sonic possibilities of Thor and Subtractor (for example), because I have a massive number of knobs, sliders, and buttons to control it with. This really opened up the possibilities with Reason, since there are some really fantastic sounding kits in there.
I’ve also taken advantage of their Remote SDK by doing a bit of programming that lets me create a “keyboard” on the Ohm64 that is, for the non-piano player, probably a lot better for getting ideas down. The keys are mapped to major or minor scales, and can be transposed at will. Take a look at the video, and you’ll quickly get an idea of what’s possible, then download the installer here:

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