[Nik]

Right, so I'm gonna program drums using guitar pro for my stuff. As we all know, guitar pro drums sound like crap, but I have a program called Reason 2.5. That program has awesome sounding drums. However, Reason sucks in several aspects.

The biggest issue with it is that it doesn't have tempo changes. When you do a song in Reason, it has to be the same temp throughout. So, exporting a drum MIDI from GP and importing it into Reason is out of the question because it puts everything at the same tempo.

Any ideas on what I can do?

Is there any way to patch Reason and GP together into real time and have GP use the drum kits from Reason in real time? Then I can use the Stereo Mix Record option on my recording program and record the drums from there. Or do something of the sort? Any ideas?

[David]

Originally Posted by Nik

Right, so I'm gonna program drums using guitar pro for my stuff. As we all know, guitar pro drums sound like crap, but I have a program called Reason 2.5. That program has awesome sounding drums. However, Reason sucks in several aspects.

The biggest issue with it is that it doesn't have tempo changes. When you do a song in Reason, it has to be the same temp throughout. So, exporting a drum MIDI from GP and importing it into Reason is out of the question because it puts everything at the same tempo.

Any ideas on what I can do?

Is there any way to patch Reason and GP together into real time and have GP use the drum kits from Reason in real time? Then I can use the Stereo Mix Record option on my recording program and record the drums from there. Or do something of the sort? Any ideas?

Well GP's drums suck because it's an organization song composition program, not a serious full production studio.

I've been using beatcraft since I'm lame... and it's kind of lame... so I might just go check out Reason, but it's the same way as Reason. It will only allow 1 tempo for all the patterns in a file, so I just divide it up into the patterns, and save them as mp3's like that anyway. It's only ilke a 8ish second clip for each pattern, usually like 10 patterns, 5ish fills... and then I just duplicate them over and over in the correct order in the mixing program, such as Mixcraft or Magix Studio.

That was hard to explain... so if that made shit for sense... just tell me.

[Drew]

I just program loops in fruity loops and then use them in Sonar, which allows tempo changes. It's less flexible (but a LOT faster) than programming them measure by measure, but if you loop each kit component seperately (i.e - a kick loop, a snare loop, a hi hat loop, a crash loop), this actually gives you a lot of flexibilty to create fills by adding, sbtracting, or shifting existing components in the mix.

[Nik]

Well, I really wouldn't recommend Reason. It sounds amazing, but it's ridiculously inflexible and difficult to work with for prog/shred kinda stuff because that type of music utilizes lots of weird time signatures and tempo changes (thus my issue).

Can you import MIDIs into Sonar without losing stuff like tempo changes, etc? Also, doesn't Cubase do this kinda stuff pretty well? I think some people were making backing tracks for Dream Theater using DT MIDIs and importing into Cubase and it sounded pretty decent...

[eleven59]

I'd recommend using Reason in Rewire mode with Pro Tools so you can do tempo/time signature changes.

[Nik]

Originally Posted by eleven59

I'd recommend using Reason in Rewire mode with Pro Tools so you can do tempo/time signature changes.

Could you please explain how I would go about doing this?

Because this sounds EXACTLY like what I want to do...

[BCrowell]

While I can't provide any advice using the tools you have, I would spend some time looking into :

DFH (Drums from Hell)

or

BFD (Big F*&king Drums).

BFD IMHO ROCKS, from it's sound, to it's ease of use! I actually SOLD my real kit, as this program gave me superior sounds without the expensive mics! It has a VERY nice humanization feature set, where you can have it vary volume, feel, and tempo (so it's not so MIDIFIED stiff). The sound is incredible.

[smueske]

I think the thing you need first is a good host sequencer / audio program. Personally I use Sonar, and like Pro Tools, you can use Reason as a rewire client with it. If your current program allows plug-ins, get a drum sampler (like Battery 2, which is fucking awesome).

[Nik]

Originally Posted by smueske

I think the thing you need first is a good host sequencer / audio program. Personally I use Sonar, and like Pro Tools, you can use Reason as a rewire client with it. If your current program allows plug-ins, get a drum sampler (like Battery 2, which is fucking awesome).

Is it possible to wire Reason to guitar-pro? Or something of that sort? I can't afford to get more software right now...

[Drew]

Guitar Pro is a tablature program, though, and not really a sequencer. I doubt it has VST capabilities.

As far as freeware goes, you could check out the Krystal Audio Engine, a free 16-audio track multitracker. I'm not sure what sort of time change support it offers, but it's at least a step in the right direction...