Reaper tips

[Argle]

As you use certain plugins, you might find yourself always dialing up the same settings as a starting point. There's no reason to do it manually every time when we can set up the default preset. Let's say we have a favorite ReaEQ setup we always like, a highpass filter and one band. It's a snap to save it as the default. So the next time you need a ReaEQ, your favorite setting is ready to go.

[Argle]

By default the plugin names in Reaper are kinda stupid. They're usually too long and have the developer name tacked onto the end. Fortunately though there are 2 ways to rename plugins. You can change it on a per-instance basis. In this case, "EQ" is a much better name than "ReaEQ (Cockos)". See how only the one instance is renamed, the next time you add the plugin it's named the default. Note that plugins can be renamed in the mixer the same way.

You can change it for all instances as well. Notice that changing a Reaplug name will move it out of the Cockos folder into VSTs.

[Argle]

Let's open up the actions window. What can you do here? As it turns out, 3 main things.

1) Run individual actions

2) Assign keys or MIDI controllers to actions

3) Create custom actions

We'll hold off on custom actions for now. Let's run an action to see what it's all about.

Not very interesting, but note that every single menu command, button, and right-click context menu command in Reaper is available as a corresponding action. As well as loads of actions that aren't available anywhere else. What you can do here is assign keys that make sense to you to the important actions that you frequently use. Note that ANY of the factory default key assignments can be deleted or changed. This is a powerful feature that not all DAWs have. It lets you completely customize the keyboard.

So what are some useful actions we can assign to keys? Well, hundreds of em really. But let's do a couple examples. One thing you might notice if you've been using Reaper is, why the hell does the mousewheel do horizontal zooming rather than vertical scrolling? That's the Windows standard. It's one of those baffling Reaper dev choices, but something we can fix. First we can find the mousewheel shortcut to see what action it's assigned to it. Yup, horizontal zooming. Alright, now let's assign it to vertical scrolling instead. Great, we fixed that silly design choice.

How about another example. Previously I went over envelopes and automation. Let's say you've got a bunch of plugins and want to automate a specific parameter. Yikes, that's a lot of text to wade through. Individual plugins can have dozens or upwards of a hundred parameters. If only you could wiggle a parameter and create an envelope. Well, there's an action for that! Let's bind it to the tilde (~) key. Sweet! This is a much easier way to create an envelope.

Hopefully this gives you a taste of the power of actions and key binding. Have fun!

[Argle]

Which looks better:

this

or

this

Personally, I think the one that's colored all purdy looks better. Easier to see your instrument categories at a glance if you color them. So, how do we color tracks in Reaper? Let's color a track using the default settings.

Eh. It's something, but we can do better. We'll change some settings and see if we can get anything more interesting.

Nice. That's much better. If you noticed before, there are 16 custom colors you can set to whatever you want. Let's set a few. Notice that I clicked on existing colors to fill the custom colors, but you can type values into the right side pane as well.

Since I went over actions and keybinding, let's use that knowledge to assign the custom color window to a key.

Great, that lets you hit a key rather than navigate a menu. One more example. So far we've seen that items inherit the color from their track, based on the settings in Preferences/Peaks-Waveforms. But we can set the item color independently.

Hope this gives you an intro to livening up your projects with color. One more thing to keep in mind is track templates remember the color, so that's nice.

Edited October 14, 2013 by Argle

[Argle]

FX chains are chains of FX. Easy enough. So what's the point of them? Well, any time you want to insert multiple FX at the same time. Say you always start with a particular EQ and compressor. We can create an FX chain from that. Next time you need those plugins, bam. A nice time-saving feature.

If you really love a particular FX chain, you can make it the default for new tracks. If you get sick of this chain, simply save an empty FX chain as the default to undo it.

btw, an FX chain needn't be multiple effects. You can have a chain of a single effect. I'll do a future tutorial on a use for that.

Edited October 14, 2013 by Argle

[Argle]

Very quick and simple tip here, but you should always use project folders for your projects. This has a few advantages. It's easy to find the media for a project. It lets you send someone your project with minimal effort. Also, it allows you to clean your project directory of unused files. If you keep all your projects in the same folder you can't do that because Reaper will view all other project media as unused media for the currently opened project. So, yep, first thing in a project should be to save it in its own folder.

[Argle]

Ok, we're getting into another heavy subject like actions. Mouse modifiers can have a powerful effect on your workflow. In a sentence, any time you left click, double click, or click and drag on something, there is probably a mouse modifier to change the behavior for that thing. Some contexts offer only a few limited actions. Other contexts you can literally use any action or custom action you want. Confused yet? You get to mouse modifiers in Preferences, so let's take a look.

So, we see various contexts such as track control panel, media item, or envelope segment. Then for each context there is a list of allowed actions such as left click, left drag, or double click. Let's try an example to see what this is all about. Normally when you drag an envelope up and down it ignores the time selection. But what if you wanted to change that?

Pretty sweet huh? By changing the mouse modifier you can now do envelope editing VERY fast. All you have to do is draw a time selection over the area you want to change. This is a much more pleasant way to work than trying to do the same thing one envelope point at a time. Note the context we changed - envelope segment/left drag.

Alright, another example. There are more changes that can be made to envelope editing. As you know you can add an envelope point by Shift-clicking and delete the point by Alt-clicking. But what if you wanted to simply double-click to add OR remove points? By using mouse modifiers, we can do that.

Awesome. Notice that we changed TWO contexts this time. One context is when you double-click on a blank envelope segment to create a point. The other is when you double-click on a point to delete it. The two of them work together to create a system that doesn't require keyboard modifiers.

Ok, let's do something other than envelopes. Say you like to create regions a lot, but right-clicking to navigate a menu annoys you. We can add a mouse modifier for a context that by default has nothing: double-clicking on the ruler.

Nice, that's pretty convenient. One last example. We may want an easy way to zoom into tracks or items of our choosing. There is a nice feature called marquee zoom. Let's set up two mouse modifiers, one to create a zoom box, and another to zoom back out.

Excellent. So alt-drag zooms in and alt-click zooms out. These examples are just some personal preference of mine and don't even scratch the surface of mouse modifiers. There are an extreme number of ways you can configure them to your liking. Dive right in and experiment!

Edited October 15, 2013 by Argle

[jnWake]

Wow that envelope tip is great! I always do that manually haha.

[Argle]

You may be wondering if you can easily change an envelope's curve to something other than linear. Why of course. Be default you can Alt-drag an envelope segment to set the curve.

[Argle]

Layering is a common technique to get the best possible sound. Say you have 3 bass synth VSTs that all play the same part and work together as a unified bass line. What do you do? Copy the MIDI items to all 3 parts? Well that's an option, but if you need to change the bass line you have to change all 3 parts. Another option is to use Reaper's flexible sends to route the MIDI of one bass track to the other two.

Notice the plug icon, that's how you can tell you're creating a send. Remember to disable audio sending, you only want to send MIDI. If you want to check to make sure your tracks are routed, click on the IO buttons.

If you're mainly a MIDI person and don't create audio sends very often, you can change the send defaults to make your life easier.

That's all there is to it! Give it a try, it's quite handy.

Edited October 16, 2013 by Argle

[Argle]

You may have noticed that the item label takes up a bit of vertical space in the track and makes the actual item waveform smaller. There's a way to change the placement of the item labels so you get a bigger item display.

[Argle]

You may not even be aware of this, but you can grab the top of an item and drag it down! This works as a volume trim on an item level (pre-fx). However, there is a way to use a volume knob instead. To me this has two benefits. One, it's easier to see and more obvious. Two, you can actually increase the item gain as well as trimming it! This is a great way to turn up really quiet recordings before they hit the FX chain. This works on MIDI items too, it increases or decreases the velocity by a factor.

[Light_of_Aether]

Docking is an extremely powerful feature to customize Reaper with the important windows you use, in the locations you prefer them to be. Additionally it lets you access multiple windows from the same dock by switching back and forth.

Regarding the media explorer, how do I change which channel/VST is used to preview midi files? When I played around with the media explorer in one of my projects, it chose my 13th track's VST to play the midi files.

I love this thread, Argle! Everything you have discussed has been extremely useful. Thank you!

[Argle]

Regarding the media explorer, how do I change which channel/VST is used to preview midi files? When I played around with the media explorer in one of my projects, it chose my 13th track's VST to play the midi files.

I love this thread, Argle! Everything you have discussed has been extremely useful. Thank you!

I'm so glad you like it! I haven't been sure if I'm moving too quickly, or the subject material is too scattered. It's really just a thread for me to put down what I like about Reaper.

Anyway, first select the track you want to demo the MIDI with, then preview it in the Media Explorer. That should do the trick.

[Argle]

You may wonder if there is a way to easily change a fade curve in the same manner of modifying an envelope curve. Unfortunately there is not.

Just kidding, there is. Unlike envelopes, this one by default is not set up, which I feel is a mistake on the part of the devs. Oh well. It's easy enough to change using mouse modifier. As you can see I chose the Alt modifier in keeping with the way envelope curves are changed.

[Argle]

I haven't done a lot of MIDI tips so far but I definitely don't want to neglect it. There's a neat function that's very easy to miss. Check it out.

Note that this fixes disconnected AND overlapping notes, regardless of the severity. This is something a quantize function can't do. It's available as an action (of course), so it's great fodder for a custom key assignment or toolbar icon (more on that later). If you're a MIDI user I'm sure you can find a use for this.

Edited October 18, 2013 by Argle

[Frederic Petitpas]

Dude you're a goldmine

I'm a Reaper user. I got a tough one for you.

Say you import a .mid file. You can set the output to Wavetable and then you'll be able to hear the default settings from the .MID you imported (it will remain panned as set in the external editor, play the same chosen instruments and whatnot...).

But how can you change the pans/instruments after that ?

say I compose a tune in Guitar Pro 5, export to .mid and import it in Reaper, set it just like you see in the picture below and I'll be able to hear the exact same thing I was hearing in Guitar Pro 5. In my example, it was a piano... and if I could just pan it differantly or change it for, say a harp, I would simply compose directly in Reaper.

Edited October 20, 2013 by Metal Man

[Argle]

Ok, the reason you can't change the pan position is that it doesn't work with the normal pan slider. You either have to 1) use a pan CC message in the MIDI editor or 2) the plugin ReaControlMIDI (very useful plugin). However, pretty much all MIDIs you import already have a pan message at bar 1. So you have to get rid of that if you want to use ReaControlMIDI or it will keep snapping back to the original value. Otherwise just change that value.

If you use the event view mode in the MIDI editor you can see all of the CCs at the start of a track - name, volume, pan, program change. And you can delete them if you want.

There's a rather larger problem though - you can't actually render anything using the Microsoft GS Wavetable synth. Just look at the meters if you play a MIDI track... nothing. Reaper views it as an external synth, and you would need some way to route the signal back into Reaper. Some soundcards have a "record what you hear" option. Otherwise you could always route the signal out of your PC, into a mixer, and back into your PC. Pretty ridiculous way to render general MIDI in my opinion. I don't think Reaper is a good program for it. It's not easy or intuitive for that purpose.

So what can you do if you want GM sounds? You can look for a Microsoft GM soundfont. Then you can play it in a soundfont player and have a much easier time. Or you can buy a sound library that has GM specifications and better sounds. btw - the general MIDI sounds are all stored in the file gm.dls on your computer. A program like Extreme Sample Converter can actually convert it. I can do a conversion for you if you want - Kontakt, soundfont, many other formats. PM me if you want.

Edited October 21, 2013 by Argle

[Argle]

By default drawing MIDI notes in Reaper is pretty straightforward - double-click to create a note, click and drag to create a note of a certain length, double click on a note to delete it, alt-click to get the eraser tool. You can tweak some settings to make things a little quicker though.

First thing we notice is the last note length is not remembered. It would be helpful to enable this option.

There, that's better for putting down notes of a given length. Next thing you will notice is that the standard left-click action isn't mapped to anything very useful. Let's change the behavior so it adds a note. That way we only have to single-click instead of double-click.

btw, you saw there were a few options for "insert note". We just want to "insert note", but "insert note leaving others selected" is another cool option worth considering.

So there you go, just a couple ways you can tweak MIDI editor. Experiment with mouse modifiers in the MIDI editor, you might find a good way to do something.

Edited October 21, 2013 by Argle

[Argle]

By default the coloring of MIDI notes is pretty unspectacular. They are colored by velocity, but most of the time it's easy enough to just look at the velocity lane. Perhaps you would prefer the notes to reflect the color of the track. There's an option for this, as well as other coloring options. My preference is based on track color.

[Argle]

By double-right-clicking on notes in the MIDI editor you can give them names. Tab and shift-tab will cycle up and down. This is great for making drum maps for certain plugins, or naming keyswitches so you can actually find them!

Note (lol) that note names are per-track, so any items in the same track will have the same names.

Note names can be saved into a track template.

Once you have the names you can save them, then load them for a different track.

[Argle]

Here's another action that can easily go unnoticed. What's the use of it? If you have a phrase of different length notes you want to quickly set to the same length. Run this action then drag the notes to the length you desire. While you can accomplish the same thing with the quantize function, you will probably fiddle around with settings a lot more. Another candidate for custom key mapping or toolbar icon.

[Argle]

1. Go here: http://www.standingwaterstudios.com/

2. Install

3. ???

4. Profit!

SWS extensions are a user-created set of features and functions that add on to Reaper. While it's a third party thing, it's damn near mandatory for ANY serious user. It's almost impossible to create awesome custom actions without SWS. Ignore at your own peril.

When you first start up Reaper you'll notice a new menu at the top: Extensions. There are loads of cool things in there. I may get around to some, but for the scope of this thread we will mainly be using the additional SWS actions, which are very numerous. Let's take a look.

That's all for now, just install the extensions. I will frequently make use of SWS actions in the future.

Edited October 23, 2013 by Argle

[Argle]

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.

Edited October 23, 2013 by Argle

[Argle]

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.