What I've never worked out how to do in Reaper is to get my MIDI to add to the previous stuff on the MIDI strip instead of overwriting it.
So I can't just, say, put my kicks and snares in then add the high hats on a 2nd pass. So I've never really got into MIDI programming using a keyboard.
I also don't know how to adjust sensitivity so you can get decent strength drum hits without smashing fuck out of your keyboard.
Can anyone (@Tadpui ?) give me a step by step on this. I'm finally starting to get pissed off with point and click with the mouse.
MIDI programming
Re: MIDI programming
@JD01 if you right click on the record arm button for that track, you can change the record mode. One of the options is "overdub" and that'll retain what's already been recorded to that track when you record over it. Ive used that to add hihat pedal expression before. I'm not in front of reaper at the moment so I'm going by memory. I'll double check in a bit when I return to my cave 
Re: MIDI programming
Great. I hope to arrive in my Cave in a couple of hours too.
Re: MIDI programming
I was pretty close, just didn't remember the whole names of the things.
Right click on record arm button -> Record:MIDI Overdub/replace -> Record:MIDI Overdub
That should get you going!
Right click on record arm button -> Record:MIDI Overdub/replace -> Record:MIDI Overdub
That should get you going!
Re: MIDI programming
I'll get onto expression pedal for hat articulation next.
Re: MIDI programming
If by keyboard you mean the thing with black and white keys on it rather than the thing with letters on it - I imagine there are some settings intrinsic to it (I know my newbie has them, but I haven't touched them as the default is fine) that affect sensitivity curves - so checking its manual may help and show you how to choose a different set of responses.
If you're using an expression pedal, does it have a knob on the side of it? The one I just bought - Nektar - does, and I wondered what it did, seeing there was no manual with it, so I gave it a bit of a tweak from what was the "off" position, further up the dial. What it did was restrict the end MIDI hit volume between a low number (0 in the off position) and 127 - so if I gave it a tweak further around from "off" all of a sudden all my hits (and I was playing keyboards, not drums) were never less than (say) 60. So it puts a minimum hit level on what you're doing, essentially. You could make it higher if you wanted, obviously. There was no difference to the actual physical range of the pedal.
So between those two things, if you wanted your basic kick drum at about 70, you'd wind your pedal up and tap away quite gently, and they'd all be 70 or thereabouts, and give it a bit more welly when you needed 80s and 90s, etc.
Also, my VSTI drums have response curves in the GUI which I presume could also be affecting physical inputs.
Most of the MIDI learning I've done to date has led me to the VSTI I'm using, not the physical keyboard, for the answer.
Good luck!
And @Tadpui - I never knew that about stacking MIDI inputs on the same track! Just shows, you should always right click everything... Thing I'm loving about MIDI is that you really can fix it in the mix.. oh, that note is a bit out of time, and too loud - no problemo! And I've stepped on the sustain pedal for too long here and it's interfering with everything else in the mix... also, no problemo!
Would that guitar recording was so easy.
If you're using an expression pedal, does it have a knob on the side of it? The one I just bought - Nektar - does, and I wondered what it did, seeing there was no manual with it, so I gave it a bit of a tweak from what was the "off" position, further up the dial. What it did was restrict the end MIDI hit volume between a low number (0 in the off position) and 127 - so if I gave it a tweak further around from "off" all of a sudden all my hits (and I was playing keyboards, not drums) were never less than (say) 60. So it puts a minimum hit level on what you're doing, essentially. You could make it higher if you wanted, obviously. There was no difference to the actual physical range of the pedal.
So between those two things, if you wanted your basic kick drum at about 70, you'd wind your pedal up and tap away quite gently, and they'd all be 70 or thereabouts, and give it a bit more welly when you needed 80s and 90s, etc.
Also, my VSTI drums have response curves in the GUI which I presume could also be affecting physical inputs.
Most of the MIDI learning I've done to date has led me to the VSTI I'm using, not the physical keyboard, for the answer.
Good luck!
And @Tadpui - I never knew that about stacking MIDI inputs on the same track! Just shows, you should always right click everything... Thing I'm loving about MIDI is that you really can fix it in the mix.. oh, that note is a bit out of time, and too loud - no problemo! And I've stepped on the sustain pedal for too long here and it's interfering with everything else in the mix... also, no problemo!
Would that guitar recording was so easy.
