r/reasoners • u/Leiderdorp • Aug 03 '25

Q: getting a live track on grid

I want to chop and play around with a track that isn’t perfectly on time (live played) If I load the song into reason it slips in and out of timing of the metronome. I could slice the whole thing and line up all those cuts but I’m hoping there might be a quicker/ easier way to do this. All ideas welcome

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u/eppujoloz Aug 03 '25

Quantize.

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u/bullcrane Aug 03 '25

Sounds like you want to quantize your audio to a steady click. There is audio's slice edit mode, which can quantize. But depending on the nature of the audio track you might get better results manually razor-blading it and moving the resulting clips around (what you have been considering). You could use a mixture of these two approaches. I don't do this task often so am interested to hear what others say.

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u/WTFaulknerinCA Aug 03 '25

There are two options. If you try to quantize the whole thing it won’t work that well.

First play the sample outside of Reason but tap the tempo in Reason to get as close as you can.

Then bring in the audio. Zoom in and see how your transients line up to the grid. Chop where it starts to get about an 1/8 note off, at the nearest bar marker. Click the clip handle and drag so you can see beyond the razor point to the next transient. Then Option-click the clip handle and time-stretch is enabled. Stretch the clip until the transients line up. Do this every two bars, four bars, whatever you need. Then use slice edit to clean up any little bits.

Otherwise there is an ooooold video Ryan made on YouTube about teaching Reason to have the click adjust to the sample, something like training the click to time to the sample. It involves disabling stretch and dragging tempo automation to line up transients. It is more involved than above. And I can’t find the video because YouTube search sucks.

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u/NoFeetSmell Aug 03 '25 edited Aug 04 '25

Just to add to this, cos I swear I have that exact video saved in my youtube music production playlist, but I'm busy searching through it and it's hundreds of videos deep. This 12-year-old video still has relevant info re the audio slice markers and how to use them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bkdeAl0-H8

I'll edit in the tempo automation video too if & when I find it.

Edit: another old one that's helpful too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01JoCHI--wA

Edit 2: HERE IS THE MAIN VIDEO YOU WANT, though uploaded onto a random user's channel, and not the Reason Studios one we expected. It's Ryan's video, though: https://youtu.be/ITwY7B2PnRg

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u/WTFaulknerinCA Aug 03 '25

Thanks for adding to my reply!

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u/NoFeetSmell Aug 04 '25 edited Aug 04 '25

I dunno why that goddamn tempo automation one is so hard to find though! Anyway, op can watch one of the other third party videos about it, and learn the same info, I guess. Basically, op, what they say is that you wanna automate the track's tempo (it'll be the very top transport "lane" in the Sequencer view once you start adding in some tempo automation), where you'll see the bar & measure markers realigning (cos the audio itself is staying static, just as it was recorded). You then export the audio, and Reason will apply all the time stretching you just told it to make, and you'll (hopefully, depending on the accuracy of your automation points) end up with an audio track that is pretty much perfectly in time with the project's tempo, so you can drop it back into the project in a new audio track lane, but now you just turn off the overall tempo automation, cos there's no longer anything to correct.

Edit: I FOUND IT! The uploader says they struggled to locate the original too, so they uploaded their copy to their own channel! Either way, it's Ryan's video: https://youtu.be/ITwY7B2PnRg

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u/WTFaulknerinCA Aug 04 '25

Saving this post now so I can find it again in the future! Amazing we remember this video but can’t find the original

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u/NoFeetSmell Aug 05 '25

Amen to that. I tried to find a youtube downloader, so I could actually have the video on my pc, but it's long enough that it's not covered by the free options, and those sites are often sketchy enough as is before sending them any payment info! Hopefully it doesn't get copyright struck, I guess :P Why the fuck is it so hard to find? I wonder if the music used in it is now copyrighted differently, or they were only authorised to use it for a short period?..