By fdodds
Sat Jun 28, 2014 3:18 pm
this thread has motivated me to get into reaper more, so i'm just going to share tips as i find them.
number one, something i wanted in reaper for a long time but never bothered to look into where it was (i believe reaper has every feature you could think of, it's just a matter of googling how to do it)... the feature is individual envelopes for each clips parameter. the regular automation lanes are good for adjusting effects that run over a lot of bars, but sometimes you want to throw a quick pan edit, or accurately sculpt the volume of a clip... well if you right click an audio item and then go to Take, there are options for take volume, pan, mute and pitch envelopes, which you can then add points to and change like a normal envelope before it hits the track mixer.
these sorts of edits are non destructive, but it's often useful to render the edit destructively. you can right click and render it as a new take, and i love the take system but for simple stuff it can quickly crowd the visuals of a project when you have heaps of takes for all your different edits. Glueing an item renders the non-destructive edits that you've applied to the clip (doesn't render FX)
an added benefit of glueing an item is that it is no longer associated with the original clip that it was cut out of. that means that when you click and drag the left or right edges the clip will loop straight away. good for chopping out drum loops, find the loop, cut it out of the original clip, glue it, timestretch it to fit your bpm by just alt clicking and dragging the edge to the end of the bar, then click and drag it to loop it as long as you need.
i've always used the 's' key to split audio files, which automatically puts a small fade at the end and beginning of each split file. thats good for when you're chopping samples but it's obviously no good for cutting drums. i just found out if you hit alt + z it finds the closest zero crossing (for stereo files it finds the closest position where both channels zero cross at the same time) and then splits the files without applying a fade. very nice.
finally, hit ctrl, alt + x to bring up the media explorer which lets you audition files, and you can drag and drop files into your session from it. it shows the wave form down the bottom, you can click anywhere in it and it will audition from that point, but if you highlight an area of it you can click and drag it directly into your project and it only imports that portion.
reaper
number one, something i wanted in reaper for a long time but never bothered to look into where it was (i believe reaper has every feature you could think of, it's just a matter of googling how to do it)... the feature is individual envelopes for each clips parameter. the regular automation lanes are good for adjusting effects that run over a lot of bars, but sometimes you want to throw a quick pan edit, or accurately sculpt the volume of a clip... well if you right click an audio item and then go to Take, there are options for take volume, pan, mute and pitch envelopes, which you can then add points to and change like a normal envelope before it hits the track mixer.
these sorts of edits are non destructive, but it's often useful to render the edit destructively. you can right click and render it as a new take, and i love the take system but for simple stuff it can quickly crowd the visuals of a project when you have heaps of takes for all your different edits. Glueing an item renders the non-destructive edits that you've applied to the clip (doesn't render FX)
an added benefit of glueing an item is that it is no longer associated with the original clip that it was cut out of. that means that when you click and drag the left or right edges the clip will loop straight away. good for chopping out drum loops, find the loop, cut it out of the original clip, glue it, timestretch it to fit your bpm by just alt clicking and dragging the edge to the end of the bar, then click and drag it to loop it as long as you need.
i've always used the 's' key to split audio files, which automatically puts a small fade at the end and beginning of each split file. thats good for when you're chopping samples but it's obviously no good for cutting drums. i just found out if you hit alt + z it finds the closest zero crossing (for stereo files it finds the closest position where both channels zero cross at the same time) and then splits the files without applying a fade. very nice.
finally, hit ctrl, alt + x to bring up the media explorer which lets you audition files, and you can drag and drop files into your session from it. it shows the wave form down the bottom, you can click anywhere in it and it will audition from that point, but if you highlight an area of it you can click and drag it directly into your project and it only imports that portion.
reaper 
