Operation Manual

THE SEQUENCER
94
Automating tempo and time
signature
The transport track can be used to automate tempo and/or time signature changes. It
works by drawing or recording clips on automation lanes for the transport track.
Automating tempo
Automating tempo is done much in the same way as with other automation. You can
either record the tempo changes by changing the tempo on the transport panel, or
you can draw curves in clips on the transport track.
1. Set the desired tempo on the transport.
This will be your static value, i.e. the tempo of the song wherever there is no clip
present on the automation lane.
2. [Alt]/[Option]-click in the Tempo field on the transport panel.
This will select the Transport track and create a Tempo automation lane in one go.
From here you can decide whether to draw clips where you want the tempo to change
or to record automation clips by manually changing the Tempo controls on the trans-
port. We will describe how to draw tempo automation clips.
D It is generally a good idea to activate Snap and have the snap value set
to Bar when drawing clips.
3. Select the Pencil tool and draw a clip over the area where you want the
tempo to change.
4. With the clip selected, press [Return] to open it for editing.
If you like, you can switch to Edit mode - this allows you to edit the static tempo
value too.
Now you can draw automation curves in the normal way.
D Remember that Snap applies when inserting points.
You can also change the position of a point numerically in the Inspector.
Here, the tempo changes from 120 to 150 over four bars.
D If you press [Alt]/[Option] you can draw automation ranges for instant
changes between tempo values.
✪ Even though Reason supports a very wide tempo range, editing is by de-
fault restricted to the range 60 - 250 bpm. This is only to make it easier to
work with small tempo changes - if you want lower or higher tempi you
can change the range by double clicking the min or max value (“60” or
“250” in the picture above) and typing in new values.