I’m glad that the Propellerheads had a wake-up-call and decided to add MIDI Out to Reason. They have implemented it in a great manner in Reason 7. The new External MIDI Instrument device is tightly integrated in the rack design. And because of this your external MIDI equipment can be controlled from Reason and it’s output can be further processed by the Reason devices. This way Reason becomes the center of a modular system using both internal as well as external processing.

I decided to do a little experiment using my old Yamaha DX100. Dusty old I should say as you can see in the picture. The DX100 was my first electronic device. Many devices I have sold over the years when switching to software, but somehow I always kept my DX100. Although I hadn’t used it in years.

For this little experiment I used the following configuration in Reason:

• The External MIDI Instrument device controls the DX100 using my Nio interface
• I picked a patch switching for programs on the External MIDI Instrument device
• The Matrix is connected to the External MIDI Instrument and triggering notes
• The audio of the DX100 is processed using a few Reason rack devices

And that sounds like this:

It all feels very tightly integrated. The External MIDI Instrument has CV inputs for Gate and Note/Pitch values. But also the Pitch Bend and Modulation can be controlled by CV from the back of the device. And there’s an assignable CC parameter which can also be controlled by CV.