Reaper By The Numbers: Following Kenny Gioia's Tutorial Videos

Just finished:

19. Markers & Regions
20. Stretch Markers
21. Ripple Editing
22. Media Item Properties

I found Media Item Properties to be most interesting. I've yet to lay a full keeper take, so I'm not making much use of the editing features. I keep re-watching them, though. ;)
 
I 'discovered' Kenny's Reaper videos this morning. I was/am struggling with GarageBand and a possibly defective interface and somebody on another forum suggested Reaper saying it works great with a Mac (macavangelist here :D). Off to google I went and looked for videos when I saw "Kenny Gioia's Introduction to Reaper." I was familiar with Kenny from my days at the erstwhile Womb Forum by Mixerman, and I knew him to be a straight shooter. I watched the intro video and ended up subscribing to his channel and basically plan to take the month of November to watch the 30 videos. Naturally he makes it look so easy as does anybody who is really good with something.

Your comment about playing along with Reaper while watching the video is interesting. I hadn't thought about that. I'm still on the fence about downloading Reaper. I saw something about the updates are free and something about a license, which I'm assuming you probably purchase?
 
The download for Reaper is around 16mb for Mac. A non-commercial licence is $60. A commercial licence is $225.

You can download Reaper and trial it for sixty days (from memory). It is uncrippled, and after the expiry of the trial, you can continue to use it. You get a nag screen on opening it, and that's it.
 
I 'discovered' Kenny's Reaper videos this morning. I was/am struggling with GarageBand and a possibly defective interface and somebody on another forum suggested Reaper saying it works great with a Mac (macavangelist here :D)...

I think Kenny's videos are done on a Mac - most of them, anyway. So that should make you feel at home.
 
# 16 Takes and Comps [Reaper 5 Explained]

I've reached the point where using Takes and Comps is going to come in mighty handy laying down my guitar and bass parts.

So far, I've been doing a lot of experimenting recording separate tracks and am about to get serious.

Just finished Kenny's video and it actually looks like fun.

Over on the Cockos Forum, there are some threads concerning this feature's lack of stability - glitches - not performing as expected. From what I saw in the video, it's fairly simple. Can't say if it's a bug or user problem.
 
Over on the Cockos Forum, there are some threads concerning this feature's lack of stability - glitches - not performing as expected. From what I saw in the video, it's fairly simple. Can't say if it's a bug or user problem.
Most of the complaints I see on the Reaper forum are from people who are used to the way other DAWs do it and frustrated that Reaper doesn’t work the same. If Reaper is your first DAW, you won’t have that problem. :) Well, until/unless you try some other DAW...
 
Currently on the Reaper page, under Useful Techniques, there is a video titled Recording Guitar Direct. I said "Hmmm... I know how to do this, I do it all the time.. oh, WTH.. maybe there's something in there I don't know." Turns out there's plenty. Very cool techniques for reducing FX CPU drag.

 
Of all of the Reaper vid's I like kenny's the best. I haven't watched all of them but anytime I need info on a certain feature I check to see if Kenny has a vid. His examples are excellent and give info not contained in the manual and that I would never have figure out on my own.
 
This is so true. He should teach a course on how to make similar videos.. showing people how to get to the point and stay on the subject. What Kenny delivers in a 12 min video seems to take everyone else 40 min or more.
 
Yeah, I know. Right? :-) I knew about freezing tracks but haven't actually used that yet. This seems to offer many more possibilities, the least of which is reducing CPU drain from multiple plugins.
 
I've never had any issues with multiple guitar sims running at the same time, even with my not-fancy computer, in fact a song I just did had 4 PodFarms running on it along with one VSTi (BBC Symphony) plus EZDrummer. When I freeze/render a track, I do it to a separate track, rather than to a take, I just find it easier to use during mixing.

Didn't know a lot of those little shortcuts shown in the video, that's for sure!
 
On Reaper's video page under FX and Plugins is one on Frequency Specific Compression.

Prior to watching this video, when recording my bass and then thinking of cleaning up some low end spots later, I had the thought of just splitting the trouble spots in the track and applying some EQ to them so as not to affect the other parts. Then I watched Kenny's video.

This looks much easier. Just EQ (or whatever FX) the offending frequency without splitting the track into sections. The process was a little complicated at first because 3 plugins had to be added to the track, then have their settings adjusted, but once that was done it could all be saved as an FX Chain to be recalled later, saving some time.

I haven't tried this yet but what could go wrong... right?



Here's more along the same lines. Splitting a bass track to treat high and low frequencies separately :

 
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ReaSamplOmatic5000

Kenny has a 3-video series using this to create a live drum kit.

I'm starting to get into this ReaSamplOmatic5000 thing. I'd been wanting to go with SD3 or EZD3, but figured I'd try Reaper's ReaSamplOmatic5000 to create kits from free samples and see how it works out. They're more realistic than the MTPower Drumkit I'm currently using.

I started on this a couple years ago and got sidetracked with some music stuff. The drum samples I had downloaded somehow got themselves dee-leeted. So I started over with Kenny's 3-part video series on creating a live drum kit.

I have to say up front, the hardest part of all this is extracting the downloaded samples. Make sure you direct the extraction to the correct folder so they'll show up in Media Explorer when you go looking for them. That's it. Pretty easy from there on.

ReaSamplOmatic5000 lets you modify the samples in various ways to suit your ears, such as pitch; duration; etc. You can even pan each one L/R independant of the track setting. When using hi-hats you'll want to add the JS: MIDI Choke to the track's FX chain - included in Reaper's FX library.

I think the coolest thing so far is these samples can be added to a track via a MIDI keyboard and show up as audio waves in the track screen. Or they can be placed into the piano roll via step-edit and appear as MIDI notes in a MIDI item in the track screen.

Each sample can be assigned to any keyboard key or range of keys. If you load 5 samples of the same hi-hat with 5 different velocities, you can trigger the velocities from one key by the usual keyboard method, or assign each one to it's own key in a sequence so C2, D2, E2, etc. will increase in velocity - or add them in reverse.. whatever.

Maybe one limiting factor is getting enough samples. There are gazillions you can pay for - not so many freebies. But the freebies which are available appear to get the job done well enough.

I'm starting with the samples Kenny uses in his video : http://juddmadden.com/drum-samples.html
 
My biological clock currently has me wide awake in the neighborhood of 3am-5am so I've taken to sitting down with a cup of decaf and watching random Reaper videos by Kenny Gioia. Maybe 2 or 3 then back to sleep for a couple more hours.

I'm finding that watching videos on subjects I'm not particularly interested in tends to reveal little Easter eggs of technique and processes I had no idea existed. Though Reaper does seem to let you do just about anything you can think of, either by current options and actions, or by custom actions, there doesn't seem to be an index of these directing you to the related video(s).

For instance, I randomly chose Editing MIDI Drums and learned how to reconfigure the Piano Roll (verticl keyboard at screen left) to make it easier to identify instruments as well as rearrange them after recorded. Then having instrument names (or velocities, etc.) displayed next to all MIDI notes. I'm not liking the Triangle or Diamond note shapes myself, I prefer the rectangles. Basically, you can configure and edit the Piano Roll keyboard as well as the lanes the instrument MIDI notes are in just as you might in Reaper's main track screens. I.E., name the instrument (track), reposition their order top to bottom, remove empty or unused "lanes" (tracks)..

a.jpg
 
I found out about some of this with MTPDK. They have a file that you can load that shows the name of the particular drum on the key, so you can tell the difference between the Ride and Ride Bell notes. It is really handy when you're editing a groove.
 
I never name my keys so I'm always clicking up and down the keyboard looking for one instrument or another. This will streamline that quite a bit.
 
The 80's Huge Snare Technique

I'm not looking to actually do this with my snares, but watching Kenny's video I thought this might be a good way to modify some of the drum samples in MT Power Drumkit. This technique lets you convert any of MT's drum hits back into a sample waveform which can be used to either replace the original MIDI note or added as a layer over the original.

MT's toms, especially, need some "real drum" added to them. The cymbals could use some love too.

This technique may not be enough to get exactly what I want, but since it will convert the MIDI note sample back into a waveform, I should be able to pull that into ReaSamplOmatic5000 to further shape it.

Maybe there's a shorter, easier way to go about this but I'm just taking off with the idea as it is.


 
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