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
Setting Up for Live Audio
do some live recording. Other audio recording for this, as opposed to the media recording, which we did before. So there's a few different things here and obviously makes sense toe explain them a little differently because of that. So I have this band. I'm working with cold, supercharged peoples, and they were nice enough to let us use this recording. So we're gonna record them in life and multi track, basically. So we're gonna have a bunch of drum tracks, some bass tracks, guitar tracks and vocal, all performing live for Reaper. So you get a feel for tracking and Reaper and we'll go through doing takes and some other stuff like that as well. All right, so let's just start getting into it. We'll start off now. We could do. Would you stop making tracks? But we probably should do first. When we're dealing with is a multi mic session is to go preferences so we'll go to our preferences there, which did not open so instead will use the menu to get their preferences. And if we go down to aud...
io right down only here, we can assign names for inputs and outputs. I already went through and did it. But I'll show you piri inputs on our sound card. But here are I went through and name them. All this is going to excuse me is going to kick tracks. There's gonna be a couple snares, snare top and bottom. We did a couple pair of overheads and a pair of room Mike's, then the bass player we put in direct, and then we did a bass pedal. He had a distortion pedal. We went through and we also might happen. Amp And then there's two guitar players left and right that we recorded. Well, we're gonna record, and then this thing is going to sing as well. We're trying to keep her takes on everything, but it may not want to be innkeepers. It doesn't matter. We're gonna record them all as one live performance to start off with. So going through in naming these, but you don't have to dio you could leave the names off and then they looked. Only problem is that when you go to make a new track and let's make it bigger and we go to our input, we go mano, it kind of looks like this. So it's a little hard to remember what you put in tow wear. So it's definitely beneficial to go select this first under audio and name them all. Based on what? You actually plugged into your mic inputs. So we went ahead and did that already. I won't bore you with my typing skills. So sorry for making a track. I put him on to input first. I'm not gonna do that. So from the last tutorial, So we go back, toe audio will go to our tracks and defaults will take a court arm off. So when we put really making the track, it would be record armed. Yet that's where the inputs already there. We don't distort our inputs and stuff. Now, the recording configuration, we could set up every track to start off a certain way. Well, to start with kick one in the most. Change it afterwards, but we're still gonna wanna leave monitoring and put on. Or we could just take Bordeaux style if we wanted. I'll explain that briefly take total style works. Where is he? Hit Play. You're not on record. You're not gonna hear the input away. An old tape machine used to work where's monitor input, even in play mode, Just still gonna hear it. So it's kind of good for overdubbing where you can hear what you previously recorded, and you don't hear input into you actually punch it. But for this, we're just gonna keep it to monitor input. So we're gonna hear it. One of the tracks in record or niece was going through the channel, so we'll hit. Okay, Now is the will of the force. We need to change for this, so leave it like that. So we made a new track, actually just started for another track. And, you see, it's already set to kick one. So already halfway there no, were 1 16 to the way there. So if I go into record on this track and I asked the German to play a little bit for me, we got some kick level. Now I should mention briefly. This is not really pertained to Reaper. But it does matter in recording. Recording level does matter. So you want to make sure you're hitting too hard. If you're watching the meter right here, you want to be about 3/4 of the way up. You don't get any quick, close to the red or even even 3/4 of anything more than 3/4 of the way up is way too hot. And because he's raised that game later in the Reaper. But you don't wanna hit it too hard. In fact, it's better to hit it a little too light and too hard because of the German starts, a hit after drum fill its that kick real hard. You're gonna have some distortion. There's just no reason for it in Digital. Just go a little lighter on that. So we have a kick track and we'll just name that kick that we're using to Mike's in the kick. So I just mean this one kick one, and then we'll make another track. We could get a duplicate the track or make a new one. Change the input on this one to kick, too, and when they make it, too, as well and let's see what that truck sounds like, I believe this microphone is on the outside of the kick drum, so it should send a little more ambient. Now, this is a good time to also check out the tractor full, which I track layout which I kind of mentioned before. But it kind of changes when you're doing this, because when you recording, you may want to see levels a little clearer. So you may want to go in tow options. Excuse me, Options track panel and choose something like small full meter. We could see more of a meter here. So from record on these two tracks, you could see the meter walk clearer. And again, you see how the level is set somewhere around minus C minus 12 to minus eight, getting a lot of headroom left over before going further. And this is not necessary a Reaper thing. But it's kind of a recording thing when you doing with to kick Mike's, you want to make sure the phases aligned or their polarity. So I'm gonna record a little bit so I could just see the different way forms. And this is gonna depending how you put your mikes. But if we zoom in real close, it's getting there. You could see how the way forms move with each other, and you could see that pretty close. This is going up and this one's going up. This was going down. Is this one's going down if they looked the opposite. Wherever I quit this and foot the phase or invert the phase or polarity you see these are the opposite. If we play this back with these two tracks, let's go back a little further so we can hear it so thin. That sounds because the flight, uh, phase inverted on this one. So if you have a situation where let's undo that stretch marker, you have a situation where it looks like this you're gonna want, preferably on your either movie mike around or on your actual mic pre amp. You should have an invert phase or polarity button on it. You can invert their so it records correctly. But you could always go afterwards, back into it and not choose this or choose it. And then it looked more like this. Sometimes you have a situation where it look more like this where total shifted. That should be okay, so it sounds good to you. You just don't want to shift in so far that it's like this because then you're again gonna phase issues. But you always let me switch this back to our original layout, which was large. You can always flip it on the track as well for the channel right here. Nope, Not that button. There's a button right over here. Let's make this bigger. Breaking a little button here. This will also reverse the phase. So if we listen back to this, let's record a little bit of it again. North. How it sounds full. We flipped it over here to get a record. It sounds very thin because it sounds actually at a phase. Are polarity reversed polarity. So I just wanna be aware that you doing multi mic or multi multi my kick or multi might snare or even the overheads with the kick and snare. But for now, these look pretty good when we recorded them, so that should be good. Now, before we go any further, let's do something Q and compression on those sounds. Usually I'll get the whole kid up and start playing with it. But being that we're working on the kick and snare, we might just get right there. I should say me that working on the kick, so put these in input. Anything we put on the track is not gonna be recording with the track, so I will get some rough sounds going. Well, put some compression on it. I'll put to me que on it, but you're not committing TV. This all this is being added after it's being recorded, and the people playing it will actually hear themselves in the headphones with what you do. So it's kind of good to make the germs sound good, But you're not committing to any of this. If you really did want to commit to it, you would set up over here we had set up, Um, see, right click track input effects chain. You could actually put inputs. You got you put effects on the input chain that would actually get recorded. But in this situation, I'm not gonna do that. There's really no reason to commit to that.
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.
Student Work
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