Perhaps I didn't make my question clear enough. Let me try again...
In Sonar, when I'm recording, say, a rhythm electric guitar track; let's say I've laid down the first verse. Now, on the same track, I want to lay down the pre chorus or something, and I want it on the same track because I want it to sound continuous, like as if it was played in one attempt. Or maybe I want to do something fancy like a pick scrape before going into the pre chorus (and let's ignore the fact that normally people put that kind of thing on a separate track - let's just say I don't want to do that).
What I would do in Sonar is just move the Now time to maybe 2 measures before the pre chorus part and start recording there. Sonar will start recording, the verse that I laid down earlier will just continue to playback as per usual; I'll just stand by and wait before finally coming in. I do NOT use count-ins here because I actually want any sound that comes in before the pre chorus to be recorded (in the case of the pick scrape).
The result will be two overlapping recordings (clips as it's called in Sonar), hence the name "sound on sound recording"... the verse and pre chorus clips will overlap, and upon playback, both will be played. If I performed it well, it'll sound like a single take.
So I want to do the same thing in Reaper. Recorded the verse, now I want to record the pre chorus. I move the Now time to 2 measures before the pre chorus section. I hit record.
What's this? The verse that I recorded before suddenly goes silent. Nevermind, I think in that split second - I have the drum tracks to guide me so I know where the pre chorus is. So I play the pre chorus part... now it's time to playback to see how it turned out.
Oh noes, it looks like Reaper cut off the verse track from the point where I started recording (2 measures before pre chorus) and replaced that with the silence that comes from my pre chorus recording attempt!
So now I have to do the tedious job of actually dragging the end time of the verse item (I believe that's what it's called in Reaper, correct?) so that the sound doesn't cut off 2 measures before the pre chorus. But then Reaper does some strange things to overlapping items, it automatically cuts them into pieces and it's just confusing me. Basically, it's now a lot of work for me to do what I could originally do in Sonar... the only way for me to do it properly is to create a separate track for the pre chorus. But that's not a smart idea if my CPU isn't powerful and I need to conserve as many tracks as possible.
Hope you understand my problem now. Thanks in advance.
(PS: no "just play the guitar in one take you lazy bum" posts - if I wanted to do that, I shouldn't even bother with digital recording in the first place but that's clearly not the case here)
lay all takes
