Reaper Guys Help!!!

[nuke_diver]

So I downloaded Reaper and I want to like it. The price is certainly right for my needs. But I'm beginning to find some things very user unfriendly and I thought it might just be my unfamiliarity with software not that it cannot do certain things. Some of these are silly little things but they bug me.
1. In PT I could select a tool to grab tracks/select portions of tracks and manipulate them. In Reaper the mouse click only selects the entire track. I often find myself moving the record/play start area because I clicked someplace and didn't notice . Is there anyway to change or avoid this?
2. While trying to make a drum track in Midi I lay down a few bars of say hihat and then copy it for the song as essentially a metronome. I then want to come back and embellish the track but everything I do, say add a crash at the end of one bar gets added to the end of every bar...I want this in one place not every place and I can't seem to find a way to stop that
3. In tracks there can be dead space at the beginning/end or middle even. If I'm recording a guitar with gain it won't be silent. Again in PT I could trim the ends how I wanted to get rid of this but I cannot find a way to do that kind of trimming in Reaper. I can't believe that there isn't a way. I think I can do that in Audacity :P
4. Is there any way to write midi in standard notation? I could in PT and for me as a non drummer it was easier that trying to pencil in notes since if I wanted a 1/16 note I would be sure that I got it in SN (I can still sort of read music and know the difference between a whole/half/1/4 etc). I find coupled with #2 doing midi in Reaper to be tedious and painful.

I'm sure there are other things but if I can get around some of these above I will probably buy Reaper but if not I'm not sure. After an hour of trying last night to do some of the above I gave up without any success at all

 

[Punchy]

So I downloaded Reaper and I want to like it. The price is certainly right for my needs. But I'm beginning to find some things very user unfriendly and I thought it might just be my unfamiliarity with software not that it cannot do certain things. Some of these are silly little things but they bug me.
1. In PT I could select a tool to grab tracks/select portions of tracks and manipulate them. In Reaper the mouse click only selects the entire track. I often find myself moving the record/play start area because I clicked someplace and didn't notice . Is there anyway to change or avoid this?

Click to select the track, then make the time selection in the time selection bar. Then right click and "Copy selected area of items". Or cut selected area of items. If I'm trying to apply an effect to just one section, I'll paste the selected bit in it's own track and then modify it there.

2. While trying to make a drum track in Midi I lay down a few bars of say hihat and then copy it for the song as essentially a metronome. I then want to come back and embellish the track but everything I do, say add a crash at the end of one bar gets added to the end of every bar...I want this in one place not every place and I can't seem to find a way to stop that

Again - multiple tracks are your friend. If you've got a short loop like that, and you only want the crash every so often, put the crash in it's own track and then copy the midi part wherever you want it. Otherwise, you'd need to extend the length of the midi track and copy-pasta your high hat rhythm to fill the track. It'd work, it's just more work than I like to do.

3. In tracks there can be dead space at the beginning/end or middle even. If I'm recording a guitar with gain it won't be silent. Again in PT I could trim the ends how I wanted to get rid of this but I cannot find a way to do that kind of trimming in Reaper. I can't believe that there isn't a way. I think I can do that in Audacity

If you run your mouse to the edge of the item, the cursor should change to a horizontal arrow with a page edge looking thing (great description, I know). Click and drag to trim. If you run your mouse to the corner of the item, it'll adjust your fade in/out.

4. Is there any way to write midi in standard notation? I could in PT and for me as a non drummer it was easier that trying to pencil in notes since if I wanted a 1/16 note I would be sure that I got it in SN (I can still sort of read music and know the difference between a whole/half/1/4 etc). I find coupled with #2 doing midi in Reaper to be tedious and painful.

I'm sure there are other things but if I can get around some of these above I will probably buy Reaper but if not I'm not sure. After an hour of trying last night to do some of the above I gave up without any success at all

I don't think there is a way to do standard notation in REAPER - and I agree, doing anything other than basic drum tracks is a pain in the ass.

Hope that helps?

 

[nuke_diver]

Thanks Punchy I'll give it a try when I get home
I'm also checking out some stuff online to see if I can find some more tricks and tips

 

[Punchy]

Yeah, the official forums are pretty awesome for info, too.

 

[micwalt]

Yeah, the forums are great.
Punchy pretty much covered it. I would just add that, in order to make the time selection after you click the track to select, you can just click and drag above or below the track to create a gray area. That's now your time selection.
Also, why not just use the built-in metronome?
Oh, and with the drums, it's easy to just copy/paste all the sections that are the same, then just create a new one with the fill or crash you want--all on the same MIDI track.

 

[micwalt]

Here's a pretty good tutorial about creating MIDI drum tracks in Reaper. Looks like it's better to do your copy/paste inside the MIDI editor rather than just in the track.

 

[nuke_diver]

Oh, and with the drums, it's easy to just copy/paste all the sections that are the same, then just create a new one with the fill or crash you want--all on the same MIDI track.

It wasn't yesterday. Every time I added 1 thing it added it everywhere wtf. I'm sure I was doing something wrong but still not sure what that something is. I watched a utube on using EZdrummer in Reaper and it seemed like the guy just added things at will...must be some setting or something.

Thanks for video

 

[Punchy]

It wasn't yesterday. Every time I added 1 thing it added it everywhere wtf. I'm sure I was doing something wrong but still not sure what that something is. I watched a utube on using EZdrummer in Reaper and it seemed like the guy just added things at will...must be some setting or something.

Thanks for video

You'd need to drag the "repeat bar" or whatever it's called to the end of your track. Otherwise it will repeat that section over and over.

 

[nuke_diver]

Some success yesterday evening. I was able to make a drum track and add some crashes later on by using the "glue" function first. I'm not totally sure what that does but the problem (in my view) is that when you copy a midi track it (Reaper?) remembers that they are copies and thinks you want to add something to the copy. Gluing them seems to remove that copy. I need to understand that more, I didn't try but somehow I think that once you glue something it will be set and you won't be able to go and change ..say the hihat for a ride for a couple of bars.

 

[OGG]

I greatly dislike Reaper and Audacity. Very clunky and non-intuitive.

Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk

 

[Punchy]

I greatly dislike Reaper and Audacity. Very clunky and non-intuitive.

Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk

I had the same problem trying to use ProTools LE or whatever it was that came with my M-Audio interface. I guess that's why there's a handful of softwares out there

I used to love Cakewalk. Think I had version 7 or thereabouts. Good times.

 

[micwalt]

Wow, I love Reaper. I find it to be easy as pie to use, and I haven't come across anything that it can't do yet (except for the standard notation-MDID thing, but that's a non-issue for me).

 

[OGG]

I had the same problem trying to use ProTools LE or whatever it was that came with my M-Audio interface. I guess that's why there's a handful of softwares out there

I used to love Cakewalk. Think I had version 7 or thereabouts. Good times.

I had cakewalk 1.0 back in 1988 running on an Atari 1040ST...

Old school yo.

Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk

 

[nuke_diver]

Reaper's advantage is that it is highly customizable and therefore comes without a lot of preset conditions. The disadvantage to this is that it presents you with almost too many options making it somewhat confusing IMO. I don't find it clunky but I do find it can be confusing to do specific things. I also know that in my case I'm not a recording engineer nor do I have the time to spend hours on a software package so it's going to be somewhat more difficult because I'm not going to be using the software on a regular (say weekly) basis

But the price is right and it is much more powerful that Audacity (who's price is even righter )