I just got the May 09 issue and turned to the Power App Alley article on Sonar/Reason.

My first thought on scanning the article was "why would you want to use a step sequencer on a drum machine?" I then read the whole article and realized "because the author doesn't know what he's talking about!" He says that you can't copy one Redrum pattern to another. That is absolutely WRONG! It's a simple copy/paste! Same key commands you use for everything.

By using Sonar's step sequencer you are simply replacing one step sequencer with another. If you truly want something more flexible, do a copy pattern to track from Redrum which will allow you to manipulate note data on Reason's MIDI tracks.

I never said you can't copy one Redrum pattern to another. I specifically said "With ReDrum, you can produce sequences with up to 64 steps—but that requires 'bank switching' among sets of 16 steps. Nor can you copy a sequence from one set of 16 steps to another."

A set of 16 steps that you want to copy to another set of 16 steps within a 64-step sequencer is not the same as copying a Pattern. If you know how to do what I'm talking about, then please tell me - I checked with Propellerheads before writing the article and they confirmed this is not possible with the current software.

The advantage of using Sonar's step sequencer is that there is no bank-switching, and you can have as many steps as you want. You also have a controller strip, and a variety of ways to manipulate rows that aren't available in Reason. This is no diss on Reason; I love the program. But a lot of people use Sonar and Reason together, and if you like working with step sequencers, using Sonar's is faster and easier for sequences longer than 16 steps.