Introduction

Digital audio has come a long way since the early days, when we all marveled at being able to compose and play back a nice little MIDI tune on an Atari. It’s hard to believe that was less than 20 years ago. If you’re too young to remember what an Atari was, don’t worry. You’re probably better off not knowing!

The capabilities of digital audio workstations (DAWs) today are simply astonishing. They incorporate features for creating music that the sound engineer of 20 years ago could never even have dreamed of. Their stellar capabilities are there at your fingertips every step of the way, for setting up your project files, recording your material, putting together the building blocks of your songs, editing the material, enhancing it with effects and automation, creating your mixes, and finally rendering your finished material for your audience in any of a number of required formats as varied as audio for CD and iPods.

But there’s a catch. It’s one thing to have these facilities at your fingertips; it’s another to know exactly what they are and where they are all tucked away within the program. And it’s yet another to understand how they can be used to your best advantage. Indeed, so big is the digital toolbox that comes with most audio software that for most users, it can be a major challenge even to be aware of the range of tools that is available, let alone how you should use them. This becomes even more of a challenge when you realize that to get the best out these tools, you really need to also understand how they work in combination.

This is true of no program more than it is of REAPER. After 10 years of working mostly with one other major DAW program (and a very good one, let me add), I came across REAPER. I found it leaner, more powerful, more stable, and more suited to my own needs than anything I had used before. It seemed to me designed from the bottom up to take full advantage of the opportunities offered by digital technology, rather than trying to impose on that technology an outdated model based on the limitations of working with tape decks and analog desks. What I especially loved was how I could tailor the program to work exactly in the way I wanted to work. Within two months, it had taken over the role of my “go to” program of choice. Since then, it has grown bigger and even better.

For me, working with REAPER has been like walking through a magnificent rainforest. At every step and turn, you are amazed at what you see, but you still have the feeling that if only you could look down on the whole thing from above, you’d be a lot wiser and you’d get a lot more out of the experience from seeing the big picture. That’s been my goal in writing this book—to help you to rise above the day-to-day challenges that so often mean that you can’t see the forest for the trees and show you how you can really make REAPER fly for you.

Whom This Book Is For

REAPER Power! is designed to help almost anyone who uses REAPER. Having said that, let me qualify that statement in three ways.

• It’s probably not the best place to start if you are a complete novice to digital recording. If that’s you, I’d recommend that you work through my Home Recording for Beginners book first. That will give you the foundation you need to really come to grips with REAPER.

• If you’ve taken your first steps in REAPER and feel reasonably confident handling most of the basic tasks (such as creating a project file, inserting a couple of tracks, and recording an instrument or two), but you find that from time to time you’re asking questions such as, “Am I doing this right?” or “What should I be doing next?”, then this is definitely the book for you. You’ll see why after you’ve read the section that follows this one.

• If you’re an experienced user of another product (perhaps Cubase, SONAR, or Pro Tools) and are making the jump to REAPER, then this book should give you the help you need. It will fast-track you into REAPER’s design philosophy and ways of working, which (as you will find out) are significantly different from those of most other DAWs.

What You’ll Find in This Book

REAPER incorporates all sorts of tools that are there for you to use to make your recording and post-production experiences as pain free, productive, fast, and enjoyable as possible. You just have to understand what they are, how they work, and how you can use them. Above all, you need to understand how they can be made to work together to help you really bring out the best in your musical creations.

For this reason, I’ve put a strong emphasis on these tools all the way through, from the first to the last chapter. I’ll also lift the lid on all those pages of Preferences settings and show you when, why, and how these matter, as well as when they don’t! On the CD that accompanies this book, you’ll find numerous examples and sample items of everything from track templates to keyboard shortcuts and custom actions, FX chains, and more, all appropriate to one or more stages in the lifecycle of your projects. To help you learn, you’ll also find more than 100 sample project files that demonstrate the use of these techniques in action.

No matter how experienced you are, I’d recommend that you work through this book from start to finish. Don’t skip over any chapters. No matter how well you think you know the topic already, if you find as much as even one little gem in that chapter, then reading it will have been more than worth the effort.

How This Book Is Organized

REAPER Power! is divided into 16 chapters. Between them, they will take you all the way from setting up REAPER to distributing your completed recordings. Notice that you won’t find any chapters specifically dealing with productivity and other core topics, such as preferences and settings, screen sets and views, custom actions and keyboard shortcuts, track and project templates, and so on. That’s because these topics make no real sense when considered on their own. Instead, they are visited and revisited throughout the book in each chapter, always presented, examined, and explained in a manner relevant and important to the particular context and subject matter of that chapter. That’s why, incidentally, you shouldn’t feel intimidated if at this stage you have no idea what these productivity tools are!

• Chapter 1, “The REAPER Environment.” This chapter introduces you to the REAPER environment. You’ll explore its unique design philosophy and be introduced to the main productivity, workflow, and customization tools that you’ll be using throughout the book.

• Chapter 2, “REAPER Project Foundation Power.” In this chapter, you’ll be shown how to lay down the foundations for successfully and enjoyably using REAPER for every stage of your recording projects. These include key preferences and settings, views, layouts and screen sets, templates, and more.

• Chapter 3, “REAPER Audio Recording Power.” This is where you’ll start rolling up your sleeves, getting down to work, and learning that there are a lot more tricks and clever stuff involved in recording audio in REAPER than you’d realized, including auto-punch, overdub, multiple takes, and much more!

• Chapter 4, “REAPER MIDI Recording Power.” Here you’ll get your first introduction to MIDI and again learn how to get beneath the surface of REAPER to use the many options and opportunities available to you when recording your MIDI tracks.

• Chapter 5, “REAPER Navigation and Selection Power.” No matter what you intend to use REAPER for, you’ll need to navigate through your projects and work with time and item selections. Finding ways of doing this that are best for you is going to save you literally hours of wasted time and frustration and give you more time to focus on your music.

• Chapter 6, “REAPER Project Construction Power.” This is where we get into creating and working with loops and so on, especially for tempo-based construction. You’ll learn about time signatures, play rate changes, markers, regions, and much more.

• Chapter 7, “REAPER Editing Power.” In this chapter, you’ll learn all about how to edit your media items and especially audio items. I’ll take you through the numerous item properties and explain their purpose. You’ll be introduced to a huge number of techniques, including splitting, muting, deleting, healing, gluing, grouping, fading, trimming, and lots more. You’ll also learn how to get the very best out of those tracks that have multiple takes. Don’t worry; we’ll deal with them one at a time!

• Chapter 8, “REAPER MIDI Editing Power.” If after reading this chapter you still think that REAPER’s MIDI editing features are somewhat lightweight, then I’ll probably eat my hat. Most of what you want is there, often (as with many things REAPER!) tantalizingly just below the surface.

• Chapter 9, “REAPER Audio and MIDI Routing Power.” If there is one single feature that lifts REAPER way above the pack, it is the program’s almost unbelievable routing and channel-splitting capabilities. This chapter shows you why this is so and how you can use it.

• Chapter 10, “REAPER Mixing Power.” Time again to roll up your sleeves and get down to some more nitty gritty. I’ll do more than merely show you what mixing tools are at your disposal and how to use them. We’ll also explore various approaches to mixing and again uncover hidden capabilities of REAPER that you probably never even suspected were there.

• Chapter 11, “REAPER Audio FX Plug-In Power.” This chapter is the longest of the entire book. I’ve literally lost count of the number of audio FX plug-ins that are supplied with REAPER. Here you’ll be shown how to use many of these, including the Cockos VST plug-ins and many of the JS plug-ins, to your best advantage. You’ll learn how to organize and manage your plug-ins before going on to discover how REAPER multiplies FX power by allowing you to combine its native FX with channel splitting and parallel processing.

• Chapter 12, “REAPER MIDI FX Plug-In Power.” REAPER’s native MIDI plug-ins often seem to be the forgotten and neglected cousins of their audio equivalents. After reading this chapter, you’ll see why you’ll be making a big mistake if you let this happen!

• Chapter 13, “REAPER Automation Power.” This chapter shows you how to use automation envelopes and parameter modulation for precision mixing. If you think you know everything you need to know about automation in REAPER, you just might get a surprise after you read this!

• Chapter 14, “REAPER Project Completion Power.” This is where you’ll learn the ins and outs of how to bring your projects to a conclusion. You’ll learn how to polish your mix using the track master and how to render your work for distribution.

• Chapter 15, “REAPER Software Integration Power.” If even after completing the first 14 chapters, you still feel that REAPER alone can’t meet all your needs, then don’t worry. This chapter shows how you can fully integrate REAPER with other programs, including stand-alone synthesizers and other DAWs.

• Chapter 16, “REAPER Extra Power.” Finally, we’ll wind down with a look at two or three general aspects of REAPER that will leave you feeling just a little bit more like you really are in charge of this program, and not the other way around!