File Management
Kenneth Gioia
Lesson Info
17. File Management
Lessons
Class Introduction and Overview
02:34 2Setting Up a Project
06:11 3Tracks and the Mixer Window
06:05 4Toolbar Items
10:36 5Menus, Themes, and Layouts
07:07 6Reaper Menu and Setup Questions
27:28 7Setting up a MIDI Track
06:11 8Editing a MIDI Track
18:02MIDI Drum Programming
30:51 10Adding MIDI Layers
23:42 11Markers, Regions, and Groups
12:45 12Setting Up for Live Audio
09:23 13Adding Effects on Audio Tracks
37:31 14Grouping and Folders for Audio Tracks
22:19 15Click Track and Headphone Mixes
17:12 16Takes, Lanes, and Groups
17:53 17File Management
23:10Lesson Info
File Management
So now File Management Way shut showed you before that when you're done getting set up in stuff you want to save into separate folders, it's also a good idea. A lot of times I'll do this on a separate folder as well. Once you're happy with the track and you got to keep our takes and stuff, you'll go into actually matter to save. As yet, I'm gonna show you the Project Bay we go to view down here. There's a project, Media Bay. I could find it a little Project Media Bank. And this is big, so it's make it smaller. Okay, So here is all our items or our files in the track. They could choose up here between different things. For instance, these are media items. These adjust the individual items. So you see this whole bunch of them, like we did record that guitar tracks with a whole bunch of items because every time we cut over here, it creates another item. But you can do things right from this window if you wanted to. For instance, you can make a track, make a sound inactive, you commute jus...
t this item, which is kind of an interesting way of working. This is kind of like you go to the filter right here and you type in, say, base and they see a lot the bass tracks. Right now, you could select them all, try to set them all, and you can go to mutes, which I just can't seem to find at this moment. Com It's right here in this status. Okay, so I did the filter. So always seeing right now under our media items based tracks. So now we could select all of these. We just slept in the base ones. You can go right here, and you can meet them all. So everywhere in a project, any track, this label base is muted, which is, I mean, it seems like a crazy way to work. But sometimes it's kind of nice to go. Well, I have 500 tracks. I don't know where what is. I want to just find things. I want to just mute all the vocals and you things like this. It's kind of a quick weight of going in there and doing that. So that's one little trick I wanted to show you with that. If I find but that's really not the main purpose of it. What's undo that? Everything goes back to the way it was before. But when this is more useful is if you go to the source media here, you can make sure off where everything is on your hard drive, because one of the things that's very easy to mistake is when you're recording, you might put you my grand things from different places, and they wind up on different hard drives. You go to back them up and you haven't really backed up your entire thing. So if you go over here your path, you could see all the source media, which is different than mediums. Source meetings actually attract that the actual file on your hard drive. So if you see this election, a lot less of them here is only a few. Where is the media items? Is a lot more because every time we cut them or split them, it makes a new one, but they relate to each other. So if we go to source media, you just want to check over here in your path and make sure none of them stick out like this. One the cow bell the cow bells in a different place. So what you could do everything else is in the right place. You could just grab this one right here and right. Click it and choose. Move. Copy, file, move. File to me Directory. You don't want to move it because you want to keep it where it originally was copied from, but want a copy to the media directory? So you hit that. You see now it has the same path as everything else. And you want to scroll through this before you save or you copy. Back up your hard drive and make sure the path is the same for everything. And as long as the scene, when you know when you say that all your father's going to the same place. But if you really want to be sure, you could just simply go to save as safe project as create some director for Project Copy Old Media into Project directory. We're not gonna convert it and then go to here will call this new recording, too. It's going to be a new folder with everything we have in this project in that folder. So it's what you know you have everything. It may duplicate it, but at least hardware space is so cheap. I think it's worth it to always copy to a new folder. And this way, you know, the entire thing is there. Now, if you'd save, it's gonna copy all that stuff to that new folder, and you're not worried that any files have drifted off. The different hard drives are in different places, so if we go back to a directory, we should be able to go to new recording to in this folder called Audio Is Everything. So it's no feel. They don't have everything we just recorded. When you go to back up, hard drive you can do is copy this folder. I should also mention the reason that these Aaron audiophile called audio by the fault they would usually just be sitting out here because I set up in our preferences. Let's see where it is. What do you know what they say that a different place because those preferences of for your entire project there's a thing called project settings, which is just for this particular project. And here see path to save media files and you could just name it. Audio like this sided here hit. Okay. And whenever you're working, it's gonna create this fully here. Cool audio. This way your audio files are always in a separate folder. Your project files a little need or over here, and there's everything I want to show. I should show you one other thing to go back to the Project Media Bay. Whenever we call that, it's never find things in this folder. For some reason, I memorized all the key commands for it. So that's where I'm much more useful by far better to show you where it is Here. So your project Media Bay, there's another option. I should show you that part of that under file, and it's called clean current Project directory. Now, this has no one used files toe clean. So I can't really show you me so I can show it to you without what would normally happen is that thing would open up? Let's Sorry again. No, doctor one but normally happened. You gotta clean current project that would pop up with all the files. 0 104 files are not used. So all the files are being used during the project. But if you had a whole bunch of stray audio files that you weren't using, they would show up in a list here. You could decide over here to remove them or send the files to the trash. That's where they removed. But there in your trash, you could decide later. So again, this is gonna open because we don't have any unused files. This is a good place to go to keep everything nice and clean. But again, the easiest way to keep it clean. It's just to save as as a whole new folder than everything is copy there. I think that's the only other thing I needed to show you. We got in questions we got. We got a question about side chaining. Yeah, great. Wants to know. Is there a way to quick side chain or quickly side Jane, uh, effects compression, e que etcetera made without too many menus. Yes, you do about menus at all. Really? Let's. This is something to say. This, which is sort of safe. Let's make a new session so I could give you an idea what's put in. But, uh, open those loops I did earlier today. Can you stuff sound? Library? And if we go to tracks and loops, we'll start off with that cool drum Be and reported me. Let's try the piano and see if it works. Not sure. Try this synth line that works. All right, this is locked. Unlock it. Line them up on the grid. I would say wanted toe compress this, but have being triggered by this. You put a compressor on here. Not there, but over here. If X we compressor and I will put this afford a one because I always do that. Now, if we leave it like this is gonna compress itself, the detective inputs will be based on itself. So let's just hope that would sound like if you want to side chaining, you could send it by. This is a long way. You would grab it from here. You drop it onto this track, and then you now have a send an audio. Send what you could get rid of the media if you wanted to, but it's fine to have in order to send going from one to the other. But you switch this from audio 12 You actually keep it one and two. So audio from morning to from this track, you want to goto audio three and four. So you gonna make new channels on the receiving track? So now it's separate This way. You're not hearing the drumbeat. Play on top of this be here. Still sounds normal, but this is actually sending to this track on two extra channels. So if you go into this track on the routing, you'll see this is now four channels. Most tracks start out as two channels because Channel three and four is what's being sent from here to here. I'm giving you the long way. I'm gonna show you a shortcut afterwards afterwards, But I kind of like showing a long way first to get you understand what's actually happening. So now this is going from here to here now they could go back to a compressor and we could switch this detective input toe auxiliary left and right. And that's gonna be three and four. So now what's triggering? This should be a drumbeat. So if you watch this meter here changed before, look like this now it's being sent from here. So the compresses being triggered by the drumbeat, but the quick away we could have done it is. Let's just delete it all and start again. No, thank you for the effect. Okay, So what's turned the send off a swell? Delete it. Well, we could have done, which is go to this compressor or make a compressor again for the last time today. Make this 4 to 1. It's so that would make a being simply drag from here from Giambi onto here and drop it and automatically makes Ascend see audio. 1223 and four. So ultimately did that stuff for us, so don't even see that. And it automatically made this track again for inputs. I mean, four channels. We don't do any of the routing and stuff like that just happens. And then just switch it here, left and right, and that's being triggered. And now it's being triggered by the drumbeat and said it by the actual synth. I think it's a pretty quickly doing it, just opening that any plug in and just drag and drop it, I should mention whenever you want to try things. Dragon drop is always a good thing to try, because, for one thing, I don't get a chance to mention, and I'm not sure didn't even get to mention it tomorrow. Is that not only could we have effects on tracks, we could have effects on items. So we have this, like, compress. So we just did here, right? That said we don't want to have it on this track as it does on the total track. I just wanna have it on the item. Just grab it and drop it onto the item. And now this is on the item that we should take it off of here as well. So it's grab this and move. It sounds. No effects on this track was in effect on this item, and it's the same one was set up before, So we still have it side chained if we switch it here. But this effect could be turned on and off by simply splitting this and now take the effect, actually could just delete it this way. Hold on. Option on the Mac ultimate PC and just turn the effect off. See? Right there. Those buttons go away now the compresses not there. So you'll hear it here and then Not here. It bypassed the effect actually be easy to keep the effect, get rid of struggle together. And let's put this is like one of my favorite things to do and one of things I find so powerful about being able to do it this way, putting effect on the item and set it on the track. Let's start off with it on a track and what's do my favorite effect, which is the cue and my low pass. And I love filters. What say we like this effect for the intro but don't want the whole song? Well, instead of automating it like you have to do with some other applications, you don't the automated all you could just leave it on here. So it's Dregg and drop the effect over here. That go It did, and again will turn off on this one. So still gonna hear it. We're hearing it from here on the item on the track. And then we could do things like turn it off from here, split it and then turned off here just by passing it on that fault in the PC option back then, it's gonna switch from the effect to no effect and where that becomes kind of fun is if I have course feeding turn on you can drag from this one to this one. Here. There's a cross fade course fate, and it's actually a course fade the effect, because the sound is basically seems sound. But this item is gonna course fate to this item, with the effect on first being off. So it's slowly transformed from one sound to the other just by having effects on items first, not IAM's. I don't think I answered that question, but I jumped into another. Another thing. There is so much on Reaper that it's hard to keep track of all of it, so I don't have anything of a jumping off point. I'd like to explain it, but that's one of the unique things that's part of it. Awesome I've been using. We got a lot of shots, a lot of love from the Internet. I've been using River for some years now, and this was a really good help. Thanks a lot. Creativelive and Kenny, uh, tone beats says, Hey, Kenny, you're doing a great job at some point. Can you reveal your workflow on exporting stems to take to the studio to mix and pro tools or another Daw. Thanks, bro. Gotcha. So I think of the easiest way to do that. There's a few different ways of doing it. You see, if I could think of and easiest way to do it, let's go back to the previous one on recording. Okay, Let me think. Now there's a few If you wanted to have all of the effects, um, intact, Like assuming you don't want to pull off all the effects you don't want to do, you could do it in stems where you can just take great the easiest way to do it. Probably just a free some of the tracks. Like for instance, this this folder right here. Our drones. Well, you probably wouldn't do the entire drums, but you could take this whole track here and freeze it with the effects. Or you could do all the tracks. Let's just do it with ease. Say these drum tracks here, just go to you. Track freezes right here. And you don't think you extract freeze by the easiest way to do it and then go free strikes the stereo, and it's gonna turn into one piece of audio with all the effects that are on the tracks. So if you wanted to have the compression in the queue as part of it, you can do that and then just take these files and there is a way of showing them where they are. Or you could just save this project with these files and these files will show up with. But as frozen tracks like that and they just send those off that way, that's probably the easiest way to do it. Um ooh, I do use Reaper primarily as as your primary dog, as opposed to other up, more standard options and industry such pro tools able to logic, um, also, why do you think that Reaper isn't taken as seriously as other Dawes? In the professional realm, it seems to have more of a stigma of being a beginner's. Daw. Um, I don't know. I think a lot of beginnings jump into it, because if the jumping off point is so easy, you could download it. You get 60 days, I believe to try it out and see if it works for you. So, um, it's kind of no brainer to try. I mean, pro tools, I think had their 30 day. Or they may still have a 30 day thing, but it's a little more, um, complicated to install it. It's a big installed gig and say, This is such a small install. It takes nothing to try it. So I think it's the opening point is a lot easier. The entrance level. It's much easier in terms of what the easiest way to explain why it's not taking office simply because they don't do any marketing. I'm just Tito to break down one of the door, the walls, the fourth wall. Here I was asked by Creative life to contact them directly to see if the marketing teams could talk about some kind of cross promotion. And they pretty much laughed at me because they don't do promotion. They're, ah, group of guys who love coding, lovemaking, audio lovemaking, musicians themselves. So they made this for themselves, and they created it for their own use, and their whole argument is they're not trying to conquer the world. They're not trying to knock down problems and trying. Not that anyone they're trying to just me. If you don't like Reaper, don't use it If you do, I'll try to make it better for you, and they try to make it better all the time. But they did not try and world domination. They just put it out there like, If you like it, use it. Um, as far as why I use it I'm trying to get is another way of answering that question. That's part of it. But like I said, they're they're a different company. They're not pro tools, which is a publicly traded company there, there a punch. Like I said, a bunch of guys who were just trying to make music and support that users they well of doing what they do. And so it comes from a good place. Um, as far is why I prefer it over all the Dia Davies one is to give you an idea of, ah, full story I had was The download is so small that if you happen to be your neighbor's house and a client calls you up and says, Hey, you did a radio mics for me the other day and this actually happened, do you radio mix me today and I really need you to cut like 10 seconds out of the song. They want to cut it down. I could have run home, turned on my pro tools rig, waiting for the 5 10 minutes for it to open up, then open the session for another 5 10 minutes. Turn on my pro control on my controller or my interface and all that stuff. Heat up the room, get everything ready to go and then bounce it. And at a time when this came up, you could even bounce in real time in pro tools. So you have to then dance in real time. Well, I did was I was my neighbors house. I just went to their computer, opened up, opened up the Reapers Web page. Download it. It's 10 megabytes, 12 megabytes and most within seconds. You have the application I had the other, the mix they sent to me on my email. When my phone pulled it in, I made the edit send it right back to them through an email, and it was done. So having that ability to know that wherever you are, it's going toe work. For instance, like when I came here, you have to do with things like I walk if the do it all kind of things that plug into stuff. I knew one thing that was gonna work was Reaper. You know, I could download it anywhere. I could throw it out. I can put all the preferences. I haven't gone through it all with preferences. We set up all those key commands, custom key commands. You could just go into the the actions menu right here. And once you get all your actions set up exactly how you want and you custom ones, you could just go right down here to import export export all. And you could save it to either your hard drive to a little flash drive or save it to a dropbox. So, you know, we know that all you got to do is go back to any other project you work on down. Will Reaper go to your Dropbox and go over here in port import all your actions, and then Reaper's gonna work exactly the way you set up. So if you spend 23 years getting it exactly how you want to, it's always gonna be there. And you never have a problem down money. Even if God forbid you don't have. You don't remember your your cold, your key to get it working. They still give you the 60 days or that it still opens up. You know where protests goes. I'm not opening, you know, logics pretty cool with that, too. But it's just and I understand piracies an issue about saying they shouldn't. But I'm saying that I like that flexibility of knowing I'm always going to have to use Reaper. There's no place I'm gonna be like, Oh, I just can't use it. It's not working. Always gonna And protest always gave the opposite feeling. I locked. I forget it that I did that. You know, you're panicking that you have all the right code you need toe, get it working. But really, the other thing is the customize ability of it. I mean, I've always been if you've watched any, my early tutorials have always been a fan of quickies, which is a mackerel program that what you do things you could hit one key. And then when I used to, like, calm focal in pro tools, it would cut it moving to another track, comp it normal who do like six different things in one keystroke. But in Reaper you could do all those same things with one keystroke without even using quickies. It's all built right into the program. So and this key strokes, you can do that, like even in pro tools that don't exist. Like, for instance, how quickly I can compa vocal by just hitting T. You know, you just go through and change all the takes and stuff. I don't believe it's so no keystroke in protest. So just quickly go take one take to take three, in fact, to give you another perfect example when I talk to someone, it wasn't the main people call at Reaper, but it was a few people on the side I was talking to, and I trust what they're saying. And basically I mentioned to them Why don't they do what logic does? Because I teach schoolchildren in Charleston, South Carolina, on school days. I go after school and teach some of these kids how to use recording 10 things. Logic for that, and the reason I do that is because logic If you've used logic, it's the easiest program to just open a track. Click piano click Oregon and the sounds pop up, So for the kids, it's a little bit easier to use. So I when I went to report, I said, Why don't you guys include the 40 gigabytes of sound? That logic does? And they're all getting back to me, and I thought was amazing. Answer was that there's so many third party companies and not talk about the big companies. I'm talking about small companies that there good friends with that make these little sound sets like we don't want to put these people out of business. You know, they have a whole business both around building plug ins and stuff a Reaper and, like we want to support them. We're not trying to give them everything they possibly need and then put these other people out of business. So they really wanted to support all the other third party uses that make plug ins and things like that. So their goal was never to be come with 40 gigabytes of sounds. You know they like it's an audio recording program. If you want to do other things in it, we're happy to tweak it, to make it through that. But it is what it is that makes any sense. That's cool. So I think those are My answer is gonna stick with those is great, Kenny.
Ratings and Reviews
Buckeye Pete
Outstanding teacher. Kenny is by far the best of the Reaper instructor, and there are many good ones out there. He uses very understandable examples and presents in a fashion that the novice and expert can learn from. Great job Kenny.
user-603376
Kenneth Gioia best teacher on Reaper. thanks so much for time to teach. Reaper is my primary daw since last year - great daw. Thanks Creative
Grae
Mr. Gioia's "Kenny Mania" channel on YouTube has always been a TERRIFIC resource for my beginning to learn REAPER. That being said, his unique speech patterns always got old really quick. It's nothing against him, just a personal tick. Thankfully, Kenny is in top form during this course, and this is one of the most useful and feature-packed CL courses I've seen. Unless you're an absolute expert in REAPER already, there's plenty of information here to get you into becoming more familiar with my favorite DAW.
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