A day in the life of a Reaper-er-erer

spantini

spantini

COO of me, inc.
The weirdest thing happened yesterday. I was starting to put together a new MIDI drum track in a new project. I found a groove in MTPDK and dropped that in, but I needed a little lead in intro, I had one I wanted on another track in another project so I copy/pasted that in. This intro bit needed a little trimming on the ending to get rid of a couple notes, so I split off the right end at the bar marker (snap was on). Looking good, so I slide the intro item over to the groove item and hit Play.

Weird part. . . As soon as the play cursor hit the split, the drum/cymbal hits sounded like I added a flange FX to it - there were no FX on either item in the track. So I'm like WTF? I hit Play again but this time it played clean - no flanging. Now I'm thinking everything's fine and switch to laying down a guitar track. When I hit Record and the cursor hits the split. . . it flanges again! I Stop and hit Play and this time no flanging - Gads! Where's that flanging coming from!?

I reason it must have something to do with the MIDI drum item(s). The MTPDK groove was added and snapped to grid, so I know there probably isn't a problem with that side. So I zoom in on the intro item's end section where I edited, and sure enough there was the tinniest sliver of a drum note which was just dangling back into the item at the split. It was so slender the mouse cursor couldn't grab it for deletion. That little bugger was overlapping one of the first drum notes in the next item causing phasing something awful - but only on alternate playbacks. I had to cut off a good piece of the end and rebuild leaving that problem note out and that fixed it. Damn!
 
Interesting.

I was building a drum track using samples from my Zoom R24. It came with a 2GB flash drive and had various sampled grooves. They are actual recorded patterns, so I thought that it might not sound "canned". I copied the ones I needed onto a track, and copy and pasted the various pieces together. Unfortunately, when I started to play it back, the volume was weird. Some were loud, some were soft. But they all came from the same snipped pattern. I never figured out what the heck happened. I finally gave up and went to MTPDK.

Sometimes I wish I had learned to play drums when I was young and my brother had a drum kit.
 
Yeah, they are basically just wav snippets, analogous to the grooves in MTPDK. I figured if I put 10 patterns in track one (separated by space), I could copy and paste the patterns into a second track, the heal the track into a seamless audio track. If I remember correctly, if I pasted the same pattern 5 times in a row, each instance got a little quieter. It was weird, and after spending a couple of hours one night doing it, only to find it didn't work, I just nuked the track and went to bed. It was late.
 
Reading through, that doesn't seem to be the problem. There's no different bit rate involved and the sample rate is the same for all the samples. The weird thing was pasting multiple instances of the same bit changed. Maybe someday I'll attempt it again in the future when I have some free time to kill.

Yesterday was about 3 hours trying to do Simon and Garfunkel's America. When you usually play alone, your timing isn't a problem. When you start recording, you're playing along and timing is important, and although I was getting some decent sounding vocals, the timing was awful! I need to practice that.

But that will come later. Tee time is in an hour. I've finally cracked 80 and it feels good.
 
TalismanRich said:
Tee time is in an hour. I've finally cracked 80 and it feels good.
Click to expand...
I am so trying to break the 90 line I hate you......seriously :ROFLMAO: Going out at 8 AM tomorrow at the Vineyard nice course in San Diego area ..Currently staying about 5 miles from Torrey Pines but it's stupid expensive for non San Diegans and I've made a deal with myself that I can't play it until I can break 90 regularly...That may never happen...But....,I am hitting it straighter and longer...I'm normally lucky to get 200+ out of my drive but the stars were aligned and I smacked one 250+ on flat ground the other day...That put a smile on my sorry assed face!...turn 70 this week still able to get around hope I can play this game for a few more years or so...
 
I’ve doubled up on midi drum notes and got a flange type effect, so now when this happens I always check to see if I have overlapping notes. Worth a look for the time it takes.
good luck
 
Keep at it, TAE. I finally moved up to the senior tees in July when I turned 70. That made a difference of about 5 strokes. But the biggest help has been getting chip shots close. Lots of one-putts will really help the score card. I've improved my irons and wedges and that saves me a lot.

I still have my days. A couple of weeks ago, I played 3 days in a row with my son. The third day was on Robert Trent Jones - Oxmoor Valley course in Birmingham AL. Between the temps in the 90s, high humidity, and being tired, I was toast on the back nine. I think I shot about 100 that day.


RE: drums
The one thing that I want to get worked out is to take the midi out of MTPDK, and feed it to my SR18. The Alesis has some nice drum sounds. The only issue is that I need to remap some of the drums. They don't match up exactly, and some of them trigger the 'bass' notes in the SR18.
 
kip4 said:
I’ve doubled up on midi drum notes and got a flange type effect, so now when this happens I always check to see if I have overlapping notes. Worth a look for the time it takes.
good luck
Click to expand...
Yeah. That's what happened to me. But because it was at an edit point, the overlapping note was a mere sliver which was virtually invisible until I zoomed in on it.

TalismanRich said:
RE: drums
The one thing that I want to get worked out is to take the midi out of MTPDK, and feed it to my SR18. The Alesis has some nice drum sounds. The only issue is that I need to remap some of the drums. They don't match up exactly, and some of them trigger the 'bass' notes in the SR18.
Click to expand...
I can see MTPDK's mapping, but no way to change it from within MTPDK. . ? Can it be routed through ReaSamplOmatic5000 using that to remap? I haven't messed with remapping so dunno what or if that'll work.
 
Fun With Media Explorer

A while back, I purchased the Led Zeppelin II album download to use as reference. I started checking it out this evening. I decided to begin with What Is And What Should Never Be.

Instead of just dragging the mp3 from my downloads folder onto the Track screen to add it, I instead went to the top Menu and, under VIEW, I opened Media Explorer. I used that to navigate to my Downloads folder and opened the album there, in Media Explorer. I then dragged the mp3 from there to the Track screen.

I loaded the JS: Frequency Spectrum Analyzer into the FX and hit play. I mainly focused on the bass line and it looked good sitting right around 90Hz. So then I added a test track of my Jazz bass and it was nearly identical. . . in the 90-100Hz range. JPJ's bass was hitting the -12dB to -10dB fairly steadily. Mine was coming in just under 0db with some clipping, so I pulled the volume down to -10dB.

That's about all I did with that for now. Then I went back to Led Zep's song and started playing with the parameters at the bottom of Media Explorer's window. I first tried playing the track I previously loaded into Reaper's Track screen and messing with Media Explorer's Pitch and Rate - no affect on the song. Then I noticed Media Explorer had transport controls in the bottom left of the screen, so with the song highlighted in that window, I hit the Media Explorer Play button - and the song played! Huh... kinda like playing grooves in MTPDK. Then when I fiddled with the Pitch and Rate it affected the playback. Cool! So with the Pitch and Rate adjusted, I dragged that mp3 to Reaper's Track screen and hit Play. It played back with all the adjustments I made - totally different than the first, original mp3 that was loaded above it - which played normally.

That was it. I had enough fun for the night and closed it down until tomorrow. I'll do some more analyzing, referencing Led Zep's song and see what else I can get into.
 
I think I can see a mechanism where the difference between sample timing and midi ppq timing and the sort of random spot in the buffer block where playback starts could lead to that little sliver getting “rounded” in different directions each time you start playback. Sometimes it ”rounds up” to be in time with the following midi note, and sometimes it “rounds down” to be a little early and there’s no good way to predict which it’ll be.

There is a setting somewhere to force tempo to sample timing, but I don’t think that super helps this situation and the right answer is to just not do that. :) Deleting that sliver was the only real fix.
 
ashcat_lt said:
I think I can see a mechanism where the difference between sample timing and midi ppq timing and the sort of random spot in the buffer block where playback starts could lead to that little sliver getting “rounded” in different directions each time you start playback. Sometimes it ”rounds up” to be in time with the following midi note, and sometimes it “rounds down” to be a little early and there’s no good way to predict which it’ll be.
Click to expand...

Wow man, this is like getting to spill over into quantum physics stuff. That spooky action at a distance Einstein thing 👀
 
ReaSamplOmatic 5000 - a one ana two ana . . .

Man. I just spent an hour in a small room alone with RSO5K and . . .

pow.jpg

I had my laptop set up next to my desktop, fired up Kenny's video: Creating a Drum Machine (ReaSamplOmatic 5000), then opened Reaper on my desktop. Since I've only played with this a few times, I used the video to walk me through it. I didn't need to do everything he did, but I did it anyway just to make sure I got the overall procedure down.

I've got a bunch of freebie drum kit samples I've scrounged from around the web. I like many of them better than the ones in MTPDK. They come with the added bonus of being accessible for editing and such, unlike the ones in MTPDK which we're stuck with.

Kenny uses Reaper's virtual keyboard at the bottom of his screen for visuals only as he's using some piece of hardware Keys/ MIDI controller to trigger. So . . . I followed along and added the virtual keyboard. Then I got tired of playing by mouse-click and switched to my SE25 Mini 25-key controller. As I was mapping the samples to keyboard notes, the last two samples ran off the end of the octave. I freaked, then I realized all I had to do was slide the Mini's octaves over a bit and I got all the samples on the same page, so to speak.

Even though they're scattered all over, It was super easy to get at all my samples. Using Media Explorer they just seemed to magically come together without me having to waste time digging through a bunch of folders where I hoped they might be. I was able to scroll through and audition all of them, then drag the ones I wanted over to RSO5K and do the mapping as well as any edits I may wish to make to how the sample(s) played back.

Each sample that is dragged into RSO5K gets added to the Track's FX window just as any plugin would be. Each sample is added beneath the previous one and an FX chain is formed. When I've added all the drum kit piece samples - making a kit - I can save the track as a template, which saves all the drum samples as a kit that can be added to any future track.

Well, I followed Kenny and added similar kit pieces plus a couple of my own to sub for the ones of Kenny's I couldn't match. I played around with recording and it all works very well. Now all i need to do is refine my choices of drum samples to get a decent kit.

Recording MIDI drums via MIDI Keys Controller. . . hmm. . . I find myself not actually using the keys to get the desired patterns. I'm more or less just hitting the Kick key a random number of times just to get a bunch of kick notes onto the track which I can arrange later. Then I repeat with other kit pieces and the track looks like someone spilled a bucket of poker chips on the floor. Playback sounds like eight different songs going at the same time. I'd be going in later to rearrange them all into whatever song I want.

The other way - Kenny's - is to begin by using the ruler to draw in a section item instead of adding New MIDI Item. Then turn on looping in the transport section. A few more settings and this will loop while recording without recording over itself each pass. You can add more notes with each pass and keep building it up.

Whew! That's enough for today. I'm fried.

 
Last edited:
Well, I cobbled together a so-so drum kit in RSO5K from various free samples I scrounged on the web.

Most of the time I was auditioning samples for the kit via (Windows) Media Explorer and that took quite awhile. Then I opened MTPDK's map and picked samples to match those in name only (hi-hat, snare, etc.) and mapped those RSO5K samples to match those in MTPDK. I saved the RSO5K Drum Kit as a template in the Drums Folder.

Then I opened MTPDK and built a short track using several grooves. In Reaper, I added the first track just by double-clicking in the track control area, put MTPDK on it, then added the composed grooves to that first track and hit play. Everything played back nicely in MTPDK.

Then I added a second track by choosing "insert track by template" and selecting the saved template for RSO5K's Drum Kit which I built earlier. I copied the drum item from track 1 to track 2. Then I muted track 1 and hit play. Everything played back with the samples I built the kit with - the process went well.

The RSO5K kit sounded. . . not so good. Some pieces were too loud, some too soft, a couple just sounded like crap when played as a kit even though their individual sampled sounds seemed ok. I replaced the kick and snare and got closer to a fairly good sound. Then I tweaked the volume on a few pieces and let it be. Now it at least sounds somewhat similar to the MTPDK version. One problem is when auditioning the samples in Media Explorer, they sound softer than their playback volume in Reaper's track, so that needs compensating for when building a kit.

I'll be doing some more tweaking, looking for different samples. But for now I'm letting that go until tomorrow or the next day. I did render each version and have added them below so you can get some idea of what this can sound like. This RSO5K kit here can sound a whole lot better with more effort. I haven't added any processing to either of these tracks - the samples have their own built-in FX and MTPDK is totally dry.
 

Attachments

  • RSO5K Test MTPDK.mp3
    329 KB
  • RSO5K Test RSO5K.mp3
    329 KB
I spent a few minutes scrounging for more drum samples and downloaded a new series. These samples were all recorded with a mono mic. I like the kicks better - haven't checked out the rest yet. Here's a couple revised versions of the RSO5K Test RSO5K with a tamer kick.

The second one, I lowered crash and ride and snare, then added a bit of reverb. I also extended the tail to let the cymbal ring out.
[That kick's got to come down a bit more]

It's coming together - getting tighter. I'll spend some more time going through the new samples I downloaded this morning and see what happens.
 

Attachments

  • RSO5K New Kick+.mp3
    329 KB
  • RSO5K ReaVerb Added+.mp3
    422.9 KB
Last edited:
Sounds like a basketball on that last one... I have to admit... the 1st.mp3 is the best... it's in the round robin samples... they are different and not the same exact sample/velocity over and over.
 
The first mp3 (MT Power Drum Kit) is more refined, for sure. Velocities balanced. I've adjusted a few velocities in the last mp3 (ReaSamplOmatic5000). The kick isn't there yet, and the snare rolls sound like a drum machine.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top