Lt.'s "Reaper for geezers" thread ....

[Lt. Bob]

OK ..... anyone that needs help with Reaper ( I don't fear him ) will prolly find it right here.
Why should I look thru the 444 page manual, which I'm ordering in book form, when I have youse guys!

Starting question:
Right now the grid where I always see people's waveforms merrily prancing across the screen is blank and not moving.
At the top it looks like it's subdivided by measures ...... I assume you can choose to subdivide it by time which I'd prefer.

Also I'd like the prancing waveforms to scroll across my screen like you guys have.

And I'd like to be able to FF or RW from wherever I stop.

I got an answer on handsfree punching-ins but let's go ahead and put that in this thread too as someone else might not see my Listening Room thread.

However I can't do the handsfree punch-in as shown without having the dancing waveforms and scrolling grid.

[WhiskeyJack]

I got an answer on handsfree punching-ins but let's go ahead and put that in this thread too as someone else might not see my Listening Room thread.

Done...

Man for a first kick at the can you don't have much to be ashamed about here at all man. I can tell you it sounds jillion times better than my first digital recording. You will get there no doubt. you know so much more analog fundamentals than probably all of except maybe Ray, that will really help with you with cool stuff like routing and FX routing (to name a couple off the top of my head)

If anything you could go back and play with some compressor settings on your vocal track. I find it comes in and out and it is not quite as full as smooth and level as other songs i have heard of yours.

Just learning curves. Still infinitely better than most digital newbies!

That's literally all I know how to do ...... I don't know how to punch in .... well, I do but doing it with the mouse is hard, I'll have to get a footswitch.

Buddy are in you in for a real treat!!!! You don't need to do either of those with reaper. Ever!!!!

It's literally just a right click on one of the buttons down by "play - record" to toggle to punch in kind of setting, and then highlighting a time selection of the problem area you want to punch in on. that's it. Maybe a little bit of editing on your part on the final clean up but you won't need to be fussing around with mouse clicking or stressing out buying another piece of gear.

Ok so this guy set's up a bit different from how i do it. He sets record mode via the options drop down menu but you can also change that by right clicking the loop button down by the record button. Just follow along with how he does it Lt.

[Tadpui]

It just occurred to me that I put a custom theme on your install of Reaper, so that might complicate trying to translate what you see in online tutorials versus what you see on your screen. If you'd like to restore the default Reaper theme, you can go to Options->Themes->Default. The one that I installed is that one with the obnoxiously long name, something like Janne_2015_Compact_Analog_somethingsomething.

I'd just put that theme on there because it's what I'm used to using, I didn't consider that it might hinder learning Reaper!

But the theme shouldn't affect whether or not you see waveforms in the track window. I'm not sure why they wouldn't show up. When your mouse is positioned anywhere in the track window, the mouse scroll wheel zooms in/out along the timeline. Maybe it's zoomed way way way out and the waveforms are too tiny to see?

To change the grid to show time or beats or other options, you should be able to right-click anywhere on the ruler at the top and select the display option that you prefer.

You can click the mouse anywhere in the track window to set the "play head" at that position in time along the timeline. But it sounds like we'll need to get things set so you can see the waveforms before we go much farther.

[Lt. Bob]

It just occurred to me that I put a custom theme on your install of Reaper, so that might complicate trying to translate what you see in online tutorials versus what you see on your screen. If you'd like to restore the default Reaper theme, you can go to Options->Themes->Default. The one that I installed is that one with the obnoxiously long name, something like Janne_2015_Compact_Analog_somethingsomething.

lol .... that explains why the illustrations didn't seem to have anything to do with my reality!

So if I went to the default but preferred yours, can I as easily go back?

The only one I've seen is yours and I kinda like it but I might like the default too so I wouldn't want to lose your theme if I try the other.

I will be trying all this stuff out this evening.


.

[WhiskeyJack]

And I'd like to be able to FF or RW from wherever I stop.

space bar on your keyboard is set up out of the box to to start and stop a recording or playback. By default "Stop" will send your cursor thing back to the last known point you clicked or to the beginning of the song if you haven't clicked anywhere yet.

If you us the ctrl key plus the spacebar this will "pause" your playback where you want it to stop. From here, If you want to ff and RW at that point just you your directional arrow keys on keyboard as well. ⬅ for RW and ➡FF.

I think this should work for you. If it doesn't then you may have to get Tad or VHS or someone else to help you with some custom transport configurations.

[Lt. Bob]

And I'd like to be able to FF or RW from wherever I stop.

space bar on your keyboard is set up out of the box to to start and stop a recording or playback. By default "Stop" will send your cursor thing back to the last known point you clicked or to the beginning of the song if you haven't clicked anywhere yet.

If you us the ctrl key plus the spacebar this will "pause" your playback where you want it to stop. From here, If you want to ff and RW at that point just you your directional arrow keys on keyboard as well. ⬅ for RW and ➡FF. .

I thank you sir and my cats thank you ..... dog doesn't care if you don't have treats.



Let's also talk monitors .... 1 or 2?

I have a huge 32" puter monitor ....... I like it a lot and am tempted to just go with the one monitor for now ...... can't I split the screen to use it like 2 monitors?
You wouldn't do that with a smaller monitor because everything would get so tiny .... but this thing is huge!

What are the advantages of going with 2 monitors ?
Are some of the advantages offset by the large size of my single monitor?

Is this something I should just leave for later as I still don't have basic operations sussed?

[WhiskeyJack]

space bar on your keyboard is set up out of the box to to start and stop a recording or playback. By default "Stop" will send your cursor thing back to the last known point you clicked or to the beginning of the song if you haven't clicked anywhere yet.

If you us the ctrl key plus the spacebar this will "pause" your playback where you want it to stop. From here, If you want to ff and RW at that point just you your directional arrow keys on keyboard as well. ⬅ for RW and ➡FF. .

I thank you sir and my cats thank you ..... dog doesn't care if you don't have treats.



Let's also talk monitors .... 1 or 2?

I have a huge 32" puter monitor ....... I like it a lot and am tempted to just go with the one monitor for now ...... can't I split the screen to use it like 2 monitors?
You wouldn't do that with a smaller monitor because everything would get so tiny .... but this thing is huge!

What are the advantages of going with 2 monitors ?
Are some of the advantages offset by the large size of my single monitor?

Is this something I should just leave for later as I still don't have basic operations sussed?

I mean, you can add a second monitor now while you are still green and figuring shit out and just incorporate it into your workflow and probably be pretty smitten with it if you have the room to do it? Dual monitor seems almost standard now but i also know plenty of folks who get by just fine with one. I like to have my tracks and wavs completely on one monitor and my faders, VST's plug ins etc on the other. It works fine for me but it might not work fine for you or greg or JD or anyone else. A 2nd monitor is just another tool.

that being said, once i moved my work office into my home office i have had to resort going back to one screen on my daw becasue the KVM switch i have only has room for one monitor. So when i switch between computers i only now have the one screen on my DAW computer. it was a bit of a struggle at first to go back to a one screen set up but it it still works, i just had to get over the fact i have literally everything back on one screen.

Other than organization i can't speak to any great musical / recording advantage to having two monitors.

[Armistice]

Two monitors allows you to pile other stuff you may have open over on the second monitor and keep Reaper on the main one.

Depends a lot on your set up. I mainly use it to put the interface mixer and the Kemper library app on. But I'm often not actively using either, so could work with one easily enough.