Reaper vs MIDI

[Armistice]

Hi

I'm trying to use Addictive Drums in Reaper. I'm not a MIDI person, and not a Reaper person - I normally record on standalone devices, which I understand, not software, which I don't

Here's my problem - I'm sure the solution is simple but I just can't figure the track routing on Reaper out.

I have created, in Reaper, via Addictive Drums, a drum track. There's a channel (#14) called Addictive Drums and I've been happily editing my drum track and have now finished. Under this track (#15 - 25) are the various individual drum tracks - snare, kick etc.

Essentially I have no idea how to route the MIDI to actually record the individual drums on the individual tracks - I only seem able to record ALL the drums on the individual tracks.

I've looked through the 400 page manual to try to work this out, but there are just so many routing options in Reaper I have no idea what to put where and which ones to be playing with. Clearly I need to change things, but I don't know where to start.

Can anyone give me a starting point?

Cheers

 

[gecko zzed]

As I understand it, there is no easy way to split a midi drum track into its respective drum components. Typically, a midi drum vst (or external module) uses a single midi channel for all drum sounds.

However, most drum vsts give you extensive control within themselves for controlling aspects of each drum component, so you can get away with not having individual tracks for these.

But if that's the way you want to do it, here's the method I would adopt.

Go to the master drum track that you've created and double click on it to open the midi editor.

Right click on the piano key that represents the drum component of interest (e.g. kick drum). This will select all of the kick drum notes. Copy these (ctrl C).

Highlight the length of the drum track.

'Insert' a 'new midi item' on, say, track 15. This creates an empty midi item on that track that is the length of the highlighted area.

Double click to open this. Make sure you are at the start of this item, and paste. This will give you a midi item of nothing but kick drum midi.

Repeat this for each drum part, with each going on a new track.

When you are done, you can delete the original midi, seeing as you now have the components all stored separately.

If your drum VST is in track 14, make sure that the component tracks (e.g. 15 to 25) are routed through 14 (for example, by using the folder option to make these a subset of 14).

That way you only have one instance of the drum VST, but you have all the components separate.

I may not have understood your question very well, so let me know if I have missed the bus here.

 

[Armistice]

Thanks Gecko - I was just coming back into to go "Whoops, I'm an idiot, clearly it doesn't work this way..." and can see that you've answered the exact question I asked.

Funny - I always assumed that was the whole point of these drum packages etc. Oh well. My problem is compounded by the fact that I'm not doing the actual song mixing in Reaper, just the drums, which I'd intended to then import track by track into my AW4416, submix and then mix into a previously recorded (to a click) and mixed song that's residing there...

So I guess I'm stuck with doing a .wav file submix (I worked out I'd need to do pretty much what you'd suggested to get it to work after doing some Googling...), importing that and away I go. At least if it's not quite right, it's easy to make some adjustments and do it again.

Because I'm using raw, unprocessed .wav files imported from the AW4416 into Reaper to program against, and don't really have the time to learn Reaper "properly" at this stage, I can't just do it all in Reaper, although I'll keep it in mind for next time.

I do have one question, however - now purely from an academic standpoint - were I to actually attempt what I thought I could do, and split each drum out separately - things like kick and snare and hi hat seem obvious enough, but there is, in AD as it sets itself out in Reaper (or anywhere else), no independent channel for ride or crash etc. - it's all captured under the "room" and "overhead" channels, which are all infinitely configurable, of course. So you can "hit" the ride or crash via the MIDI editor, but how you'd actually get it to be picked up anywhere I don't know...

Anyway, I have a perfectly good drum submix now as a .wav so I'll start with that and see how it goes..

Thanks for the help, and you need to see how the mods can get involved in the next OSC and resubmit Anklepants - I reckon you may just walk away with the prize!

Cheers

 

[Armistice]

Closing.....