HELP!!

[Alison]

In the first song I recorded on Reaper, the tracks were lost (even though I clicked "save" before shutting down). I managed to find them although I sure can't tell you how!!

I have started recording for a friend and TWICE now, the files (tracks) have not been saved even though I clicked save every so often during the session and before I close the program. Fortunately, this time I rendered the song to send to her for practice purposes and have popped that into the project so I can redo all the drums and markers but, frankly, I am scared to death to close the program since for some reason it isn't saving the recording, not even the drums that I painstakingly plotted out! Ugh, I am frustrated and fried!! HELP!

I have watched a shit ton of videos and none of them can tell me why this is happening!

[Tadpui]

Are you saving your project file and/or recorded media to an external drive or something?

Reaper defaults to opening the last project you had open when you open it back up. When you open up Reaper, is it telling you that the project isn't found, or is the media all offline when the project loads?

[Alison]

Are you saving your project file and/or recorded media to an external drive or something?

Reaper defaults to opening the last project you had open when you open it back up. When you open up Reaper, is it telling you that the project isn't found, or is the media all offline when the project loads?

Not saving to an external hard drive, at least not that I'm aware of. I do have an external hard drive connected to my computer though. Reaper tells me nothing when I open it. The last thing I worked on was the project with my friend and when I opened it up today, none of the work we did on it yesterday was there. . . none of it! Nothing is offline because nothing is there!!

[rayc]

Next time, after doing something significant or at the end of a session, try SAVE AS rather than save, (it's in the drop down menu), and add an extension to the current name ...add B or 2 or similar.
A lot of folk won't do this as it takes a little more space, but not much. Doing it this way I can call up a previous mix of a project etc. I usually use the date as the extra part of the name & if I make significant changes to that on the same day add by alphabet to keep track after that date...for example Kiss me 11/02/67 B.
Make sure you've selected the save options under save as that suit like save to project folder, COPY all media to or MOVE all media that work for you.
You can also set preferences to auto save every X minutes.
Bon Chance.

[Armistice]

How did you "open it up today"? What were you opening up, exactly?

Also, check under Recent in the File menu (I think - 1000km from Reaper just now).

Don't panic, it's all there somewhere - just a matter of finding it.

[JD01]

Alison, what I think is happening is that you're starting tracking on your project before you've saved it. Then the individual tracks automatically get saved to a default location.. usually called Reaper Media probably located in my documents.

First thing, when you start a new project, before you record anything click save as.

Also, if you've not done this, when you click save as on a project that has tracks saved in weird places you can correct it. There's a check-box at the bottom when you save. "Move all media to new directory" or something like that. I'll put everything where it's supposed to be.

Hope this helps.

[Greg_L]

Alison, what I think is happening is that you're starting tracking on your project before you've saved it. Then the individual tracks automatically get saved to a default location.. usually called Reaper Media probably located in my documents.

First thing, when you start a new project, before you record anything click save as.

Also, if you've not done this, when you click save as on a project that has tracks saved in weird places you can correct it. There's a check-box at the bottom when you save. "Move all media to new directory" or something like that. I'll put everything where it's supposed to be.

Hope this helps.

All that ^^^^

Your tracks are being saved...just not where you think they are. You need to tell Reaper where your project folder is and save your stuff there.

For future reference....next time you start a new project create a new folder for it wherever you keep your ongoing musical projects. Then open Reaper, and before you do anything, save that just opened blank new Reaper project to your new folder using "Save As". Now whenever you want to work on that project you go to that folder, open Reaper from there, and anything new you do will be saved into that project folder.

[Alison]

Oh man, I am such an idiot! Guess I assumed Reaper would save stuff the same way Studio One does .

Anyway, we are pretty housebound today due to a big winter storm so, I should have time to go searching. Do you not save stuff in Reaper? Do you save it somewhere else? When I open Reaper, I usually either start a new project or go to "projects" and find the one I want to work on. I'll try and find a video about all this as I am a bit confused.

Sorry for the panic. I appreciate all the comments!

[WhiskeyJack]

Nailed it. I have no thing more to offer.

[Lt. Bob]

Oh man, I am such an idiot! Guess I assumed Reaper would save stuff the same way Studio One does .

Anyway, we are pretty housebound today due to a big winter storm so, I should have time to go searching. Do you not save stuff in Reaper? Do you save it somewhere else? When I open Reaper, I usually either start a new project or go to "projects" and find the one I want to work on. I'll try and find a video about all this as I am a bit confused.

Sorry for the panic. I appreciate all the comments!

I 'save as' stuff ..... and Reaper won't shut down without asking if you want to save the project.
it's basically like any file you might save on your puter .... you hit the scroll down and it'll give options such as 'save' or 'save as' ...... I use 'save as' because I want to overwrite the previous version or write a new name for it..
If you hit just 'save' then it saves as an additional file under the same name .... maybe Great Song 002 alongside Great Song 001.

But when you close Reaper it always asks if you want to save it ..... always.
Also even if you don't save it , Reaper will open with whatever was on it last time you used it.

And to search for whatever has been saved, just look for Reaper Media Files ..... I'm not really sure what folder it's unbder but I'll take a look tonight.
Your stuff isn't lost ...... I do wonder why it wouldn't open to the last project.

[Greg_L]

Whenever you "misplace" something with Reaper, you can almost always find it by going to the main default Reaper folder on your harddrive.

Also, you can open a project, click "Options" from the top menu, and then click "show Reaper resource path in explorer/finder". This is the magical land where things like presets and templates and themes are stored.

[rayc]

Oh,
I've hidden the simple old 5" floppy save icon so that I don't hit it without having lined up destinations etc. I means I have to do an extra step each time I save BUT it prompts me to save to a pre selected location consciously.

In the early 90s my wife was using a Commodore 64 & Speedscript to write her major assignment foe her librarian degree.
When one hit save the prog would pop up a brief top of screen message to say saved or anything else relevant. Kim was in the habit of hitting it and moving on. Unfortunately, for the last several hours of the writing she didn't look up to see that the disk was full. As she ploughed on, lost almost her entire work due to the disk crashing from being constantly bombarded with save and no acknowledgement of the FULL message.

I did have to restrain her from tossing the computer through a closed window before getting her to calm down, (that took some toke help).

She had to write 90% of it again. I think she did a better job of it though.
sadly her computer use, in terms of saving, knowing where she's saved stuff, keeping back ups and paying attention to prompts hasn't improved since then.

[Lt. Bob]

lol ............ back in the days of 5 1/2" floppies wife had a co-worker that kept losing her work.
The office puter guy would come in and fix things and next day she'd lost it all again.

Kept happening for a while until they noticed at the end of the day she'd take a magnet and use it to hold the disc to the side of her filing cabinet!

[Alison]

Oh,
I've hidden the simple old 5" floppy save icon so that I don't hit it without having lined up destinations etc. I means I have to do an extra step each time I save BUT it prompts me to save to a pre selected location consciously.

In the early 90s my wife was using a Commodore 64 & Speedscript to write her major assignment foe her librarian degree.
When one hit save the prog would pop up a brief top of screen message to say saved or anything else relevant. Kim was in the habit of hitting it and moving on. Unfortunately, for the last several hours of the writing she didn't look up to see that the disk was full. As she ploughed on, lost almost her entire work due to the disk crashing from being constantly bombarded with save and no acknowledgement of the FULL message.

I did have to restrain her from tossing the computer through a closed window before getting her to calm down, (that took some toke help).

She had to write 90% of it again. I think she did a better job of it though.
sadly her computer use, in terms of saving, knowing where she's saved stuff, keeping back ups and paying attention to prompts hasn't improved since then.

Sounds a bit like me! And, since we moved, I lost my computer go-to person. . .my daughter. I have improved a bit (didn't dive into the computer world until early 2000, my kids called me a Luddite!) but there have been MANY times when I've wanted to through the whole kit and kaboodle out the window!!

[Alison]

By the way. . .I still can't find the files but, because I rendered a practice mp3 of the song for my friend, I was able to pop that in and re-create the drums and general layout of the song. She is coming over on Sunday to lay all the tracks down. In the meantime, I'm watching more Reaper how-to videos!! Thanks for all your input, I do appreciate it!

[JD01]

By the way. . .I still can't find the files but, because I rendered a practice mp3 of the song for my friend, I was able to pop that in and re-create the drums and general layout of the song. She is coming over on Sunday to lay all the tracks down. In the meantime, I'm watching more Reaper how-to videos!! Thanks for all your input, I do appreciate it!

Get yourself a need to learn list and we'll do another tutorial in a few weeks. Tad is likely a better resource than me though

[Alison]

By the way. . .I still can't find the files but, because I rendered a practice mp3 of the song for my friend, I was able to pop that in and re-create the drums and general layout of the song. She is coming over on Sunday to lay all the tracks down. In the meantime, I'm watching more Reaper how-to videos!! Thanks for all your input, I do appreciate it!

Get yourself a need to learn list and we'll do another tutorial in a few weeks. Tad is likely a better resource than me though

I'm not sure what I need to learn but, I really will work on a list! I didn't realize I needed to learn how to save in Reaper. This thread has been a big help!

[Armistice]

Perhaps instead of chasing your tail with Reaper YouTube videos, learning about how the Windows (or Mac, if that's what you use) organises files would be useful.

You know, a week doesn't go by without me having to call my girlfriend up on the phone, even though she's standing right next to me, so that she can find her damn phone, because she just leaves it in random places all the time. Just puts it down whenever she's finished with it, and then forgets where that was. I don't do that and so the ratio of her losing her phone to me losing my phone (because we all do it sometimes...) is about 100:1. My phone is only ever in a quite small number of places and I know where they are - so is usually easy to find. Hers could be anywhere...

Software is incredibly clever and forgiving these days - but there are limits. Your files are all there. Greg told you where you might find them. I told you how you might find them. You still talk of finding "the files" - but there is only one file you ever need to find and that's the Reaper project file. Everything else will be wherever you put it - it's just that you didn't put it in a place that's useful, and you don't know where it is. This is less to do with Reaper and more to do with using a computer in an efficient manner.

Here's how to solve the problem in the future. I'm assuming Windows. Go into File Explorer, click on the Documents folder and create a new folder called AlisonMusic. This is where you will store all your Reaper stuff in future. Now open Reaper, start a new project - do not record anything or initiate any tracks, and just Save as "NewProject1" inside Documents/AlisonMusic by browsing to that location - but before you click the Save button, tick the option in the dialogue box that saves a new named folder. Close Reaper.

Now go look in File Explorer again and you'll find a folder - Documents/AlisonMusic/NewProject1 has been created - look inside that folder and you'll find a file NewProject1.rpp - that's the Reaper project file should you ever need it - but you generally don't. If you double click that file (but don't do that just now) then Reaper will open up NewProject1.

Instead, just open up Reaper from its shortcut, and the last project you were working on - NewProject1 - automatically opens up. Now, whilst in NewProject1 look under File / Recent (or whatever it is, as I said, I'm not anywhere near my studio for days) and you'll find all the other projects you've ever worked on listed there and you can open them up from there - it stores dozens of the damn things in order of when you last opened them up.

These simple steps will solve all your file problems forever, so long as you exercise just that little bit of file discipline of naming a new project at the start and saving it in the same place. The principle also applies to everything else you lose track of in your daily life.

[Alison]

Perhaps instead of chasing your tail with Reaper YouTube videos, learning about how the Windows (or Mac, if that's what you use) organises files would be useful.

You know, a week doesn't go by without me having to call my girlfriend up on the phone, even though she's standing right next to me, so that she can find her damn phone, because she just leaves it in random places all the time. Just puts it down whenever she's finished with it, and then forgets where that was. I don't do that and so the ratio of her losing her phone to me losing my phone (because we all do it sometimes...) is about 100:1. My phone is only ever in a quite small number of places and I know where they are - so is usually easy to find. Hers could be anywhere...

Software is incredibly clever and forgiving these days - but there are limits. Your files are all there. Greg told you where you might find them. I told you how you might find them. You still talk of finding "the files" - but there is only one file you ever need to find and that's the Reaper project file. Everything else will be wherever you put it - it's just that you didn't put it in a place that's useful, and you don't know where it is. This is less to do with Reaper and more to do with using a computer in an efficient manner.

Here's how to solve the problem in the future. I'm assuming Windows. Go into File Explorer, click on the Documents folder and create a new folder called AlisonMusic. This is where you will store all your Reaper stuff in future. Now open Reaper, start a new project - do not record anything or initiate any tracks, and just Save as "NewProject1" inside Documents/AlisonMusic by browsing to that location - but before you click the Save button, tick the option in the dialogue box that saves a new named folder. Close Reaper.

Now go look in File Explorer again and you'll find a folder - Documents/AlisonMusic/NewProject1 has been created - look inside that folder and you'll find a file NewProject1.rpp - that's the Reaper project file should you ever need it - but you generally don't. If you double click that file (but don't do that just now) then Reaper will open up NewProject1.

Instead, just open up Reaper from its shortcut, and the last project you were working on - NewProject1 - automatically opens up. Now, whilst in NewProject1 look under File / Recent (or whatever it is, as I said, I'm not anywhere near my studio for days) and you'll find all the other projects you've ever worked on listed there and you can open them up from there - it stores dozens of the damn things in order of when you last opened them up.

These simple steps will solve all your file problems forever, so long as you exercise just that little bit of file discipline of naming a new project at the start and saving it in the same place. The principle also applies to everything else you lose track of in your daily life.

Well, I feel a little bit like you are slapping my hand but, I have followed your instructions and the file is in my documents.
I have to say though, in my defense, that I am a pretty organized person, there is a place for everything and everything gets put back where it belongs after I use them. Computers however are not intuitive to me. I've come a long way with them but they still baffle and mystify me, it's not like putting my phone down in the same place every day or putting the good kitchen scissors back in the same drawer, which is something I've had to get after my husband about. To me, computers have a lot of black holes that I have no idea how to get to or what they do. I just fairly recently "upgraded" to Windows 11 and couldn't find anything. I had to google how to find things like "my documents" and my easy store external hard drive or even the calculator.
I am totally enjoying learning Reaper but, to me, it is not as simple as Studio One. In Studio One I just simply hit "save" and it's all there the next time I open it up but I can see that Reaper has a LOT more possibilities and more ways of fine-tuning music than Studio One does so, I'm going to keep going with it.

I do thank you for your help.

[Armistice]

That wasn't the intention - but the test here is not whether you're successfully opening and closing Reaper and not losing projects - it's whether you can find your stuff in your system should you need to. How, for instance, are you backing up anything if you're not sure where it is?

It's far better to tell Reaper and Windows "put my stuff HERE" than leave it to the software to work it out.

It will bite you eventually if you don't - and this is irrespective of whether it's Reaper or StudioOne or anything - as I said, this isn't so much about Reaper as it is about logically setting up your tools in a way that minimises the potential for disaster.