Reaper tips

[Argle]

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.

Edited October 24, 2013 by Argle

[Argle]

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).

Edited October 25, 2013 by Argle

[Argle]

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.

[Argle]

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.

Edited October 28, 2013 by Argle

[Argle]

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.

[WiFiSunset]

Hey Argle, I was wondering how to do Sidechaining in Reaper. I found like one explanable youtube video, and it still was a bit confusing.

I get setting ReaComp in the Master Folder. The confusion comes in which tracks do I sidechain to which, and how is it done.

[Argle]

Hey Argle, I was wondering how to do Sidechaining in Reaper. I found like one explanable youtube video, and it still was a bit confusing.

I get setting ReaComp in the Master Folder. The confusion comes in which tracks do I sidechain to which, and how is it done.

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.

[Argle]

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.

[Argle]

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.

[WiFiSunset]

If you want me to do a gif demonstration let me know.

That would be great actually.

I thought about what mainly confused me; the video only showed 2 tracks while giving an example, but most of the time I have 6 or more. Does it make a difference? Like 3 tracks sidechained to 1 or something. Is that necessary?

Thanks

[Argle]

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.

[Argle]

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.

Edited October 30, 2013 by Argle

[Argle]

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.

[Argle]

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.

[Argle]

If you've ever looked at all the JS plugins in Reaper, there are like 100+ of them. Are any of them good? Problem is, many of the interfaces are so bland, and there's pretty much zero documentation about them, who even knows? Over the last two years I've stumbled across some really cool ones, so I'm going to list some of them in the forthcoming posts.

First plugin is time_adjustment. What's special about this? It does negative delay. What the heck do you need a negative delay for? Simple. If you've ever been faced with a patch with a slow attack you know how it makes the timing of your whole song loose. This is especially an issue with orchestral works - strings, brass, and woodwinds all suffer from it, in relation to percussion instruments. So whaddya do? You could

1) Ignore it and have mushy timing.

2) Decrease the attack time of the patch, but that usually ends up sounding fake. And even the fastest marcato strings sound delayed compared to a percussive sound.

3) Manually move the part off the grid so the timing is tight. This works, but it's annoying to compose off the grid.

OR

You can put time_adjustment on the output channel of the sounds and set a negative delay. -25ms to -50ms is the typical range needed. Problem solved! You have the benefit of composing on the grid while having all your instruments timing tight, but in a natural way instead of setting an unnaturally choppy attack. After all real musicians don't wait till the beat happens to react, they anticipate the timing. If you have an orchestral template go through all the output channels and apply time_adjustment in the right amounts, and you'll be very happy how much tighter your orchestra sounds. It's great for pads as well, as an alternative to setting the attack very fast. It works for almost any non-percussive sound, really. Just solo the sound with the metronome on, and if it's coming in late apply time_adjustment.

Edited November 1, 2013 by Argle

[jnWake]

I'm really going to try that time_adjustment thing. I always have trouble with those damn string samples.

[Argle]

I'm really going to try that time_adjustment thing. I always have trouble with those damn string samples.

Once you give it a try you'll wonder how you ever got by without it.

[WiFiSunset]

First plugin is time_adjustment. What's special about this? It does negative delay. What the heck do you need a negative delay for? Simple. If you've ever been faced with a patch with a slow attack you know how it makes the timing of your whole song loose. This is especially an issue with orchestral works - strings, brass, and woodwinds all suffer from it, in relation to percussion instruments. So whaddya do? You could

You can put time_adjustment on the output channel of the sounds and set a negative delay. -25ms to -50ms is the typical range needed. Problem solved! You have the benefit of composing on the grid while having all your instruments timing tight, but in a natural way instead of setting an unnaturally choppy attack. After all real musicians don't wait till the beat happens to react, they anticipate the timing. If you have an orchestral template go through all the output channels and apply time_adjustment in the right amounts, and you'll be very happy how much tighter your orchestra sounds. It's great for pads as well, as an alternative to setting the attack very fast. It works for almost any non-percussive sound, really. Just solo the sound with the metronome on, and if it's coming in late apply time_adjustment.

......Wow. That is so epic .

I thought that I'd have to wait and buy some better VSTs, but what I needed......was this.

This literally solves a lot of problems with String soundfonts. I'm definitly going to experiment with this some more.

Great stuff!!

[Argle]

The stereoEnhancer plugin has two width controls and a crossover. What's the use of it? To make the low end of a sound mono while keeping the mids and highs stereo. It's useful to tame the low end of drumkits and wide synth basses.

Edited November 2, 2013 by Argle

[Argle]

A cool plugin for the MIDI user is ReaControlMIDI. Let's open it up. At the top you can do bank and program changes. Admittedly I have no experience with this, so check it out if it interests you.

Further down you can transpose notes. That could be useful to play in one key but have the results in another key.

Further down still is the Control Change, which I think is the coolest part. Because you can't automate modwheel, pitch bend, and other CCs by default in Reaper this is a workaround to do it. My favorite use for this is to use automate big pitch bend swoops that would be hard or impossible (for me) to record with the pitch bend wheel. Other obvious uses are mod wheel, volume, and expression. An alternative to drawing in the CC lanes in the Midi Editor, or performing the modulation on your controller.

Down at the bottom is the ability to send sysex data. Again, a really power user thing that I have no experience with.

Remember that in the fx chain, ReaControlMIDI has to go before the virtual instrument that you want to affect, compared to normal audio fx that come after the instrument.

[Argle]

So in case you don't know, the way you loop a section of project in Reaper is to first make sure looping is enabled. Then you draw a time selection around the area you want to loop, and voila.

You can do the reverse as well, skip a time selection. To accomplish this press Alt-spacebar to play the project rather than spacebar. A use for this is if you wanted to record while skipping a certain section.

[Argle]

New in v4.5 is a large overhaul of MIDI, most notably you can now view and edit multiple MIDI items at once. Disclaimer up front, I am not an expert in these new changes, so I'll give you the basics, but there is tons more nuance in the various ways of handling multiple MIDI items.

First things first, if you open up the MIDI editor you can use the track list on the right to navigate all MIDI items in your project. They are arranged per-track, and if you click on the diamond icon on the left of a track entry, it will expand to show all the items on that track.

So, there are some icons we must become familiar with. First is the eye icon, which unsurprisingly controls visibility. An item that is visible is not necessarily editable. You may want certain items displayed as a reference, but have no intention of working on them. You want those items simply visible.

Next is the lock icon, which controls editability. Notice that an editable item has solid notes, while an item that is only visible has faint transparent notes. Obviously an item that is made editable will also be made visible.

Last is the arrow icon, which sets the active track. While you can have multiple tracks editable, you can only draw new notes on the active track, and only one track can be active at a time. An item that is made active will also be made editable and visible, obviously.

So that's the basics of dealing with the track list. If you wish you can select multiple items in the arrange window and double-click on them. The item that you click on becomes the active item, while the other items are visible. Then if you click on any of the selected items you can change the active item. Note that if you click on an item not in this group, the entire group will disappear from the MIDI editor. Lastly, if you open a single item and then ctrl-click on additional items in the arrange window, they will be added to the editor as visible items.

So there's a crash course on multi-MIDI editing. There are a lot more options that you can do with it, so explore. I didn't go into the media item lane, which is a different way to select the items you want to view. For more in-depth info check out the manual.

Edited November 7, 2013 by Argle

[Argle]

You may like the default look of Reaper, you may not. But either way there's no reason you have to keep the default theme. Let's see what other themes are available.

Eh. The v3 one's ok but the other two are pretty awful. Fortunately though that's the tip of the iceberg. Enter the Reaper stash. No pot, just loads of user generated content including themes. I've been using RADO VOX for a couple years, so let's try that one. Download the zip and unpack it. Locate the theme file and place it here. Restart Reaper and let's check it out.

Almost looks like a different DAW. And that's only one theme, there are hundreds of them in the stash. You can begin your search here. Outside the stash is the monstrous Imperial theme. Have fun!

Edited November 8, 2013 by Argle

[Argle]

To follow up from the previous post, within each theme there are various layouts. A layout is a way of displaying information on the TCP, mixer panel, or master track. The number and style of layouts that come with a theme is up to the theme creator. Let's take a look at a few TCP layouts. Now for a few mixer layouts. As you can see layouts are very useful for changing the look of tracks.

You don't have to change the global layout either, you can change the layout of individual tracks. Useful for certain tracks that have a specific purpose.

Lastly, there's a cool thing that I just recently learned. I don't want you to wallow in ignorance like me, so know that some themes (not the default one) have "separator" tracks for the mixer. Let's check it out. Pretty useful for organizational purposes. All you gotta do is create a single track with the separator layout, hide the TCP, save it as a track template and bingo, you got a mixer separator ready to go.

Separators layouts exist for the TCP as well. Play around with layouts and have fun.

[Argle]

To round out this mini discussion on themes, let's talk about WALTER. This is very advanced. If you want to create themes, mod themes, or have an itch that existing layouts can't scratch, this is for you. Otherwise you can safely use Reaper without worrying about it. WALTER stands for something, I forget what. When you think about themes or skins, you think about graphics. WALTER is the next level; it controls the behavior of elements in the TCP, mixer, and master track. This is how layouts are made. By using WALTER the themer decides what elements (mute, solo, pan, IO, meters, etc) are visible in the layout, where they are placed, what size and shape they are, and what happens to them when the window is resized. So you could decide to have

- buttons pinned to the center of a mixer strip, or pinned to the top.

- a wide squat volume meter, or a tall narrow one.

- a very minimal TCP with a couple buttons (volume, mute, and solo), or a TCP loaded with all the elements available.

- a long volume fader, or a compact volume knob.

These are only a few examples of the power of WALTER. So how do you use it? Everything is contained in the rtconfig.txt file for a theme. Here's how to find it. By default Reaper themes are associated with Reaper; for this purpose you want to open themes with a zip extractor like WinRAR.

No examples this time, not sure it would really help. Thankfully though the designer White Tie has put together the definitive guide to WALTER. Read it. Many times. It seems overwhelming at first, but it's quite straightforward once you learn it. The easiest way to get started is to create a blank TCP layout in WALTER. Then place a single element and try to move it around and stuff. I have custom WALTER layouts for my TCP, mixer, and master track. That way I have only the elements I need, laid out exactly how I want. Fun, challenging stuff.

Edited November 12, 2013 by Argle