Mute Clips

When you're reading a forum post or blog tip about how to get something done in some other DAW, do you just skip over the posting or do you take the time to read it? Being curious, I'll usually take the time to read tips for other DAWs, as it gets me thinking about my own workflow in Reason.

For example, Wire To The Ear posted a tip a few days back for Ableton Live and how to temporarily "Deactivate" a clip in a track. Immediately my mind started in on how it could be done in Reason and I eventually decided the best way to achieve this was to create a "New Clip Lane," move the clips you wanted to mute to that new lane, and then mute the lane in the sequencer. This way you could drop several clips into this new lane to evaluate different sections and figure out whether or not they're worth keeping in your song. Pretty smart, right?

Well, no. The thing is, the ability to "Deactivate" clips is already built into Reason. Just right click a clip and select "Mute Clip" from your right click menu and you get the exact same function as Ableton Live's Deactivate, right down to the faded/white clip in the sequencer window.



It's amazing what you can learn studying someone else's sequencer. Thanks for the Reason tip, Wire To The Ear, even if it was unintentional!