Pro Tools and Reason
I’ve taught the PT101 class for many semesters now and there seems to be a question that comes up frequently. How to use Reason as a sound source for a PT session. While I am risking sounding ancient, this is an age-old question. I remember back in the day…. 
before Pro Tools could talk MIDI and before Performer (yes there was an application before Digital Performer!) could talk audio (or Vision before Studio Vision for that matter) we used to have to set up communication between many applications on our systems to get our work done. One application would handle the audio files and another would handle the MIDI sequencing. This is the history that leads us to being able to use sound sources, i.e. Reason, with another audio application (in this case PT).
Enter ReWire!
Setting up that communication used to be very arduous, but today it is streamlined through the ReWire plugin. If you think about sequencing and DAW operation there are three main protocols which must be dealt with.
First, we want to have our MIDI sequencer be able to trigger external sound sources. We want to be able to sequence a MIDI track in PT in order to make a device in Reason make a sound. So we need MIDI communication.
Second, we want to pass audio from the sound source into the DAW application. So we need audio communication.
Third, in a perfect world we would also have a relationship between the linear timeline of our main application and that of any ancillary applications so that any play/pause, meter, tempo, etc would be mirrored regardless of which application we were looking at. So we need tempo and transport communication.
ReWire provides all of this functionality which makes the possibility of using Reason instruments inside of a PT session a very real possibility. On campus, our MIDI systems course deals with just this topic for several weeks. To get a glimpse of how we use this functionality take a look at the following handout which steps through all of the configuration and operation uses when utilizing Reason within a PT session.
Once you’ve mastered this protocol you will open up a whole new world of sounds to use in your productions!
