Using Reason for keyboard patch programming

[themusicman926]

I've looked into this on my own a bit but haven't had much success. My school is doing Mamma Mia for their spring musical in the spring, and I have been assigned with playing one of the keyboard books. We do not have the money to rent the licensed keyboard patches, so I figured I'd give it a go myself, using reason to make the patch changes easy. Is it actually possible to use Reason for this kind of thing? Ie. automatic patch changes, programming, etc. Based on what I've seen, there is very limited functionality in this area and some have recommended I give MainStage or Ableton a try.

[selig]

MainStage is more made for live performance, but if you already know Reason plenty of us have found ways to make it work in a live setting.
One technique is to put the patches in order in the sequencer, with a new device for each patch. So rather than switching patches, you are switching devices/tracks to skip to the next sound.
I've also created Combinators that use front panel buttons to select patches, by using "receives notes" assigned to buttons to keep from hitting the CPU. This keeps notes from going to devices in the Combinator that are not currently heard. You can even use Mod Wheel to switch to a second instrument quickly when required, or split the keyboard so you can go back and forth between two or three patches quickly (or play two parts if need be).
The advantage of using a track/device for each song means you can preset levels and FX too, so that you don't have to adjust anything when switching songs - you can even assign the switching to buttons on your controller, so you only need the screen as a confirmation you're on the correct patch/song. Just name each device according to the cue/song which makes rehearsing super easy too.
I've used Reason live for everything from local gigs to national live TV appearances, and it's done just fine in all cases - but it totally depends on how complex you need to get. Happy to help if you end up going this route.
There are probably other ways to approach this in Reason, so hopefully others will chime in here too!

[QVprod]

Use Reason as a plug-in in Ableton or Mainstage, or any other live performance based app. Then you have the benefit of Reason’s sound design the the ability to use program changes…etc… in your host of choice. Mainstage is a fairly good choice only being $30

[thefixr]

I’ve used the same setup as Selig (track/device) for live settings and it works great. As he mentioned, I’ve always setup my controller so that I have buttons for switching to the previous/next track.

My setup allowed me to play contiguously without breaks for as long as I wanted a set to be.

Reason may not be designed with live performance as its first priority but its superior stability and high level of programmability make it really good if you have a little time to put into your setup.