Argle

I would join but the furious pace is too much for me. I don't see why voting needs to be so long. Should be three days tops. That would give more time to do a remix.

I hope they're sexy pics.

Toolbars are like most other aspects of Reaper. You can customize them, or if you wish completely remake them. All toolbar buttons are essentially actions or custom actions. With that in mind, let's take a look at the ways we edit a toolbar. Usually it's easiest to just right-click on the toolbar you want to edit. Now I'll add a new toolbar button in the main toolbar. For demonstration purpose let's do something pretty useless like create a new track. There are a couple ways to select an icon. You can look at the graphical icons by right-clicking on the button. You can also set a text icon. In this case I couldn't find any graphics I liked so I just went with text. Let's try the same thing in the MIDI editor toolbar. In a previous post I created two modes for dealing with MIDI - normal and drum modes. Rather than try to remember a key combination, we'll put them in the toolbar. Reordering the buttons is a simple as click and drag. Dividers are very useful to separate groups of icons. So far I've just edited the existing toolbars, but there are a number of optional blank toolbars available for your purposes. To reach them open the toolbar docker. Going back to the docking tutorial, toolbars can be docked in the normal method. If you need to move a docked toolbar, expand it until you see the tab. You can dock the toolbar docker itself. So there you go, another tool in your arsenal.

I really like MStereoSpread, been using it for a year or two. The spectral widening is not time-based and seems to collapse to mono perfectly, so you won't get any messy results if your mix gets summed to mono.

fuck me, I've done 40 of these things so far. I'm not sure how much longer I can keep putting out 2 tips a day. It might have to drop down to one.

Reaper has a cool feature that may be unique in the world of full-featured DAWs - portable install. You can run it off a flash drive! Or anything else for that matter. There are two methods to accomplish this. The first is to create a portable install when running the installer. This results in a factory default install, which is good for testing a new version of Reaper before committing to a normal install. If you like to test out the prereleases this is prolly the way you want to do it. For this tutorial series I'm using a portable install so I don't confuse people by showing them my own highly modded version. The second method is to create a portable install from your main install. This is the really awesome way, because all the customizations that you've been working on for months or years transfer over! You can find this option in the Reaper folder in the Windows start menu/programs, or whatever the Mac equivalent of that is.

Because Cosmic Sounds asked about sidechain compression, here's how to accomplish it using the built-in ReaComp. Let me just say that I almost never do real sidechaining because it's a pain in the ass. I use CamelPhat to do "fake" sidechaining; four-on-the-floor offbeat pumping. It's super easy to accomplish this if you have a plugin that has an LFO that can modulate volume, and a ramping LFO shape. That said, if you need something more complex than 4x4 dance beat pumping here's how to do it. Ok, so we have 2 tracks, a pad that we want to duck, and a kick that we want to be the ducking trigger. Next we insert a ReaComp on the track we want to modulate, the pad in this case. If you set the threshold/ratio/attack/release now, it will just compress the pad, which is not what we want. Now we want to create a send from the trigger (kick) to the pad. The key here is to set the receiving channels to 3/4. This will let ReaComp receive two separate signals, the pad signal on channels 1/2 and the kick signal on channels 3/4. Now that the kick is coming in on 3/4, set the detector input to Auxillery Input 3/4. Lastly it's just a matter of setting the normal compressor settings to taste. Notice how the input meter has changed from the sustained pad to the rhythmic kick. Once you set up the settings you should hear the pumping right away. Don't forget to turn up the ratio! The ReaComp default is 1, which results in nothing. To Cosmic Sounds' question, if you need to apply this to more than one track there are a few options. You can repeat this process for every track, which is tedious. If the tracks are contiguous you can put them in a folder and put the ReaComp on the folder. If the tracks are non-contiguous you can create a send from them all to a send track, then apply ReaComp to the send. Don't forget to disable the Master/Parent send on the individual tracks for this method. Hope this helps.

Well that was a bundle of fun.

There are normal OCR albums that are on TPB. Which is hilarious.

Capcom obviously wanted OCR to do the music. They've worked together before. That's more a commentary about the skills of the people here than a desire for crass commercialism.

I recently learned about this, and it's awesome. By setting a mouse modifier for MIDI notes it's possible to do strumming. Nice! The default that we replaced adheres to snap. I guess you could use that with a tiny grid setting, but my preference is the version that ignores snap. I find it's easier to get strumming. You can do fast or slow strumming with this. No more tedious programming by hand to get this effect.

By default the way you deal with MIDI is through the MIDI editor/piano roll. This is useful most of the time, but there are several other views that can provide information that is hard or impossible to see in the MIDI editor. First up is the event list. This is a vertical view of all the MIDI data. From the standpoint of video game remixing, this view is particularly useful to delete all of the measure 1 crap that you get from video game MIDIs you download... volume, pan, program change, all that stuff. You CAN do this in the piano roll but it's a pain in the ass. In the event viewer it's a snap. Next up is the track list. With the big MIDI overhaul in Reaper 4.5, this panel is worth consulting if you need to view or edit multiple MIDI clips/tracks at a time (more on that in the future). There's also the media item lane. It's kind of like the track list, but shows MIDI events as blocks. Last is the CC lane. Not really an alternate view because it's part of the MIDI editor, but it can be resized to your preference. This is where you see velocity, mod wheel, pitch bend, and any CC messages. The minimum # of lanes is 1, but you can have more if you want. Note that entries in the dropdown list with a dot next to the name mean lanes that have data.

Sure no problem. What you do is put a ReaComp on the track you want to sidechain (e.g. pad). Then you create a send from the trigger (e.g. kick) to the pad track, but make sure it gets received on channels 3/4, not the default 1/2. Then in ReaComp you select the Auxillery Input L+R. These are the keys, receive on channels 3/4 and selecting Aux Input. After that it's just a matter of setting the compressor to what you're after. If you want me to do a gif demonstration let me know.

You can mute an item in its properties window, but there is a much better way to do it. You can do the same thing with MIDI notes. The item mute toggle action is an absolute must-have for me. Once you get a taste of item muting you will be using it nonstop in your projects.

Tempo and time sig changes can be a little tricky to deal with. While I'm not an expert on the subject, here's an overview to using it. Displaying the tempo envelope in the master track is pretty straightforward. As you can see, changing the tempo changes the horizontal zoom for the project. Next step is to insert some tempo markers. Markers affect the tempo envelope, and vice versa. They're two means to the same end. If you like you can create a smooth transition to the next tempo rather than a sudden jump. A tempo marker can be moved. Lastly, you create a time signature change using the same function. So that's it for time sig and tempo changes. Note that you can change the tempo envelope points rather than dealing with tempo markers, but I find markers to be more precise and easier to use. Your call though.

Jesus Christ, you hit the comment jackpot here.

I showed in a previous post that Ctrl-click and drag on items is a fast way to copy items. But for copy-pasting items contiguously, this custom action is absolutely the fastest way to to it. I've probably used it thousands of times so far. If you make any sort of pattern-based music map this to a comfortable key cuz you'll be using it a lot. Here's the custom action. And here is a demonstration of it.

There are two settings of interest in the MIDI editor. One is to hide all unused note rows. The second is to change the display method of notes from rectangles to triangles (or diamonds). When you combine these two in a custom action, you can make a nice MIDI drum mode for yourself. Both custom actions are worth putting in the toolbar for quick access (more on this soon).

How many of those people are willing to collab, though? Jill is a working professional. I don't see her or many of the other ones on the forums.

lol, weights? Sir, you are talking to someone who hasn't done any quad exercises for months. The other day I was thinking hmm, I shouldn't neglect my legs like this. Balancing didn't seem to be too difficult, but as I was doing them I thought jeez, I hope my quads aren't going to hurt as much tomorrow as I think they will. And they do. I'll definitely try to add weight after I get the bodyweight pistols down.

Tried some pistol squats yesterday for the first time. Only like 7 or 8. Yeah my quads are on fire today. Damn. I don't do regular squats because I find them boring and easy, but these will be a good addition.

There are no dedicated folders in Reaper, just as there are no dedicated tracks of any kind. Any track can be anything. And a track can serve as a folder for other tracks. By doing this you can process a group of tracks at once by putting FX on the folder track. Creating a folder/parent track is not hard, but a little tricky at first until you get the movement down. You kinda drag one track to the middle of the other track until you see the indented blue line. Not hard, but definitely something that can be made easier with a custom action. Here's the action. For complicated custom actions I will just post a pic instead of a gif, you will have to create it yourself. Let's see the custom action in action. One key press, doesn't get any faster than that. As you can see, all but one of the actions are from the SWS extensions, which shows how vital it is.

Ok, let's go over custom actions. Single actions are nice but this is the real fun. You can string together any number of actions into a custom action, and do with them everything you can with a single action. Here's a quick overview. Take note of "consolidate undo points". This has an effect on how undo is processed for the custom action. If checked the entire custom action will be undone at once. If unchecked each of the component actions will be undone in reverse order. I prefer to check it because I don't care about the individual actions, but it's up to you. Let's try a simple custom action. Say you often find yourself creating volume and pan envelopes for a track. It's simple enough to roll these into a single custom action. Bingo. Less time spent doing pointless things is more time spent doing what is important, creating music. Let's try another simple one. In previous posts I have created regions. It's a multi step process: draw a time selection, create the region, remove the time selection. We can combine the latter two actions into one custom action that creates a region and automatically removes the time selection for you. Not bad. Cutting down on key strokes or mouse clicks is good for you AND your peripherals. Let's try one a bit more complicated. You may want to completely reset a project mix to start over from scratch. That means resetting the volume and pan, removing all envelopes, and deleting all plugins. That's a lot of work to do manually, but with a custom action it's the work of a key press or button click. Pretty great. Hope this has been helpful for custom actions. Don't be afraid to spend hours experimenting with your own custom actions. It's one of the best ways to turbocharge your workflow. Going forward I will be sharing more custom actions I like.

Found some Tetris techno remix a decade ago by accident. Then I discovered VGMix2. Then from there OCRemix. I think that's the sequence of events.

We went over track coloring in a previous post, and ended up with a system that was pretty fast. But with SWS actions now we can do faster. First you can see that I set up some custom colors. Now let's find the SWS actions for track coloring. There is a set of item coloring actions as well, if that's your thing. I'm going to map the number pad keys to the first 5 custom colors. Finally, let's try it out. Awesome! Instant track coloring at your fingertips. Set up your custom colors and map them to some useful keys. Number row, number pad, or function keys are a good idea. I personally use the number pad with the Ctrl modifier.