I’ve been a user of Propellerhead Reason in the past, but recently I wanted to dust off my chops and try to create some tunes again. My problem is that I don’t have a MIDI interface to attach my keyboard to this PC (yet). So I figured I’d install a software keyboard and hook it up through a virtual MIDI driver. Easy, right?
The propellerhead site pointed me to a software keyboard called Bome’s Mouse Keyboard, which actually had a page dedicated to hooking it up to Reason. Well, I started going down the list of drivers they had listed on that site and each failed in turn. Why? Because I’m running 64bit Vista and none of the drivers were built for 64bit OS. That is … all except one called MIDI Yoke. This one had an install program which ran fine and did not complain. So here are the steps to getting it up and working:
- Download and install Bome’s Mouse Keyboard
- Download and install MIDI Yoke
- Reboot
- Get coffee (depending on the speed of your machine)
- Launch Bome’s Mouse Keyboard and configure it’s MIDI Output by selecting one of the Out To MIDI Yoke: X settings from the Midi Out file menu.
- Open Reason (I’m using version 4) (hopefully you already have this installed)
- Select Edit -> Preferences then select the Keyboards and Control Surfaces page.
- Click the Add button under the Attached Surfaces box.
- You will now be presented with the Control Surface dialog box.
- From the Manufacturer drop-down select <Other>.
- From the Model drop-down select MIDI Control Keyboard.
- Enter a name in the Name text box (I used Bome’s Mouse Keyboard as the name).
- From the MIDI Input drop-down select In From MIDI Yoke: X where X matches the channel number that you selected for the MIDI Out of the software keyboard. I used 1 in both cases.
- Now just click the OK button and close the Preferences dialog and you should be ready to go!
Well, I hope this help someone out. When I was going through the pain of trying to find a Virtual MIDI Driver that would run on a 64bit OS I found nothing but complaints and forum postings of users who could not get it to work… but no solutions. Well, hopefully that has changed now and there is a FREE virtual MIDI driver that will run on 64bit OS. Enjoy!