Using Reaper
A useful tip in using Reaper is to develope keyboard shortcuts to try and eliminate having to use the mouse.
One shortcut I alter is the ‘Record’ shortcut.
As its stands to record you have to either use the mouse and click record or use the shortcut ‘Ctrl + R’
With tasks like record it suits me better to use on key stroke – ie pressing ‘r’ to record.
So with that in mind here is a run through of how to do just that.
In Reaper go to ‘Option’ – ‘Preferences’
The highlighted line in blue is actually a link that you can click to bring up a pop up screen to assign leyboard shortcuts to your preffered actions.
Once you’ve clicked the link you will be presented with the screen below.
In the highlighted part you can enter a search for the action you wish to add or alter a shortcut for.
By typing in transport record I can bring up the action I want – highlighted in green.
Click on the item that you want to assign your shortcut to.
Highlighted area is where the shortcuts are located – by clicking the add button we can create a new shortcut.
Another pop up will appear – the highlighted area is where we can add our new shortcut.
To create a shortcut that makes sense I’m going to use the first letter of the action ‘R’
Now press ‘OK’
If the shortcut you want to use has alreacy been assigned to an action you will get the following warning popup.
Make sure it’s not a shortcut you want to change and press ‘Yes’
You should now have your shortcut set.
Related Reading:
Quick and simple lessons on how to use Reaper.
Basic lesson 3 – Render.
When you’ve finished recording your track/tracks in reaper and you’ve mixed you can render the project.
Unless you’ve got lame installed to work with Reaper you will probably need to render to wav and then use another peice of software to convert that into mp3.
For the moment let’s concentrate on rendering to wav.
Open your project if it’s not already open.
Go to ‘File’ and choose ‘Render’
A pop up box will open giving you a few options.
Highlighted below we have the choice of where we want to save our rendered file – you can use the ‘Browse’ button to find a location that you’re comnfortable with remembering.
You can also change ‘File name’ to whatever you wish to call the track – Note: If your project is already saved this will already be here.
The screen below gives us a choice of format – if you have mp3 setup you can choose mp3 if not choose wav.
There are other options which I’ll go into at a later date.
Also I’ll explain how to get mp3 setup as a render option.
Related Reading:
Quick and simple lessons on how to use Reaper.
Basic lesson 2 – Recording a track.
Open Reaper on your PC or Mac.
Start a new project -
Insert a new track – Insert Track – Tutorial
Once a track has been added you can ‘arm’ it to record
Click the button – it’s a dark red circle – see picture below.
You should see the button go from dark red to bright red – see image below.
To record on this track we need to press the dark red button in the transport section of reaper – look at the bottom left hand corner.
Press the button or using a shortcut – ‘Ctrl + R’
The dark red button will turn bright red and the play button will become green – your track is now recording.
To stop the recording you can either press the red button or stop or better still hit the space bar.
Once your recording has finished you will see this pop up screen – if your happy ‘Save All’ if not choose one of the other choices.
I tend to ‘Delete All’ and try again.
You can now add more tracks and record.
Tips:
1. When you’ve finished recording press the bright red button,
The reason for this is if you hit record you won’t clutter this track with another take.
This can happen if you add more tracks.
2. Get used to shortcuts – saves having to grab the mouse all the time.
3. The ‘Space Bar’ can be used to stop and to play a track.
4. Give your project a name and save when yo start – record every time you record a track you’re happy with.
Related Reading:
Quick and simple lessons on how to use Reaper.
Basic lesson 1 – Insert a track.
Open Reaper on your PC or Mac.
Start a new project -
Look on menu for – ‘Track’ and ‘Insert new track’
Alternatively you can use ‘Ctrl + T’ – for those not sure on short cuts hold down the Ctrl key then press ‘T’
- How to insert a track in Reaper
Related Reading:
Save file to somewhere safe that you can remember!
If you’re using reaper to program drums using piano roll you can rename the notes to make it easier to find the kick, snare etc.
This file is based on the mappings of Cakewalks Session Drummer 2 – it’s a cheap alternative to a lot o drum samplers.
It could probably be adapted to be used with other drum samplers/vst as well.
To load you need to go into piano roll.
Highlight the midi file see below – double click on midi item.
In piano roll look for File – Customise note names – Load note names from file
Locate the downloaded file and click it.
Once loaded the keyboard on the piano roll should now look like the image below.
