First MIDI Song in REAPER - (Part 1/8)

hi I'm Ken enjoyer welcome to another one of my tutorials in this video series we're gonna learn how to create a first song or a first MIDI song in Reaper so in this series of videos we're gonna create a song without MIDI keyboard we're not gonna be recording any live instruments in this series we'll get to that at a later time now the way of approaching this series is that you don't have to know anything about using Reaper you could have just downloaded it from the website and opened it for the first time so together we'll create your first song and don't get too caught up if you don't like this song we're gonna create I created this one very specifically to show you all the different things we can do in Reaper obviously your next song could be something you prefer but if you follow along as I do this you won't how to create just about anything you want but before we get started there's a few things I should show you first I'm not gonna assume you know anything about how Reaper works so we'll be teaching you everything along the way as it comes up but if you do want to dig deeper on any particular subject go to the reaper website and you'll find tons of videos on any particular subject all labeled and categorized so you can find what you're looking for so after you download reaper and you open it up it should look like this except down over here this is my mini keyboard you're not gonna have that I just have this on screen so when I play it you can see that I'm playing the keyboard and we're notes I'm actually hitting but everything up here should look the same on your copy of Reaper now we should make sure a few things work forgot our preferences under options right down here preferences we should go over here on the audio device and make sure your audio device is chosen right over here this is the audio device that's wired to your computer which is wired to your speakers so you can hear the output of everything we're doing and should also check many devices your MIDI device or USB keyboard should show up over here if the drivers were installed correctly and make sure it's chosen and enabled if it's not just right-click it and enable the input this way you mini keyboard or USB keyboard who worketh Reaper there's a few other things you might want to change to match the way I'm using Reaper if I go over here and double-click to create new tracks let's create a few the way these tracks look is based on a way out I have mine set up under options layouts track panel and set to large if you want to match mine just set yours the same way and also if we go to the mixer on the view go to mixer which looks like this I have the layout set up for a mixer under options layouts mix a panel to session mixer again if you want your screen to look the same make sure you choose this first so the mixer channels will look like this also to make this easier I'm gonna put the mixer on the left side of the track control panel so I'm going to right click over here doc mixer and docker if this is already selected you can just leave it and grab this tab right here and put it to the left side so your turns gray and then close this so we only see one channel right here so if I choose this channel I see this one or if I choose this one the mix of switches we could see that better if I move my fader from this one to this one and back and forth this will make it easier to adjust the level on each track as we select it so we create new tracks over here because just the volume over here we could do it over here as well but it's a bit easier to see over here so it suggests setting this up the same on your end but for now let's hide the mixer let's delete these tracks because it's very easy to create new tracks but double clicking gonna show you a different way that works better for me now before we get started I want you to install some third-party plugins because reper does come with a few there's a drum machine and a pretty good synth but for this song we need a bit more I want a piano and a more varied synthesized a plug-in so we download these separately and install them on our computer so if we go to the Internet and we're going to search piano one the mo chooses website sound magic piano 1 which takes us here then we could download the install we need for Windows or for Mac and that's going to give us a free piano plug-in to use for our song then we're also going to search tal plugins they'll go to this website choose products and we're gonna download right down over here on the free products tal noise maker and again will install it free the PC or Mac and when both of those who are installed we're gonna quit reaper and then open it back up again so that it'll see a newly installed plugins so now we can create a track with a piano on it so again instead of adding tracks over here by double-clicking them we'll go to the track menu and choose insert virtual instrument on new track and that's gonna save us a few steps because gonna create a new track with an instrument or D on it so we'll go here under instruments and look for those plugins we're gonna choose piano one which is the piano we just downloaded again if you don't see this make sure you quit reaper after you install it and then reopen it this way we Persis it so double click this one and that's gonna create a track right over here with the piano or d on it the tracks already into record right here monitoring is turned on so we should hear the piano if we play a midi keyboard and we do so now we're ready to record our first part what's first go down over here to a tempo and change it to 85 well double click this type 85 and that change the tempo in this project to 85 beats per minute so if we go over here to a metronome and turn it on hit play we hear a metronome and it's playing at 85 beats per minute so ready to start recording our piano so the first part I want to put down is a melody piano and it's gonna sound something like this and then it repeats so we can close the plug-in we don't need it open for now and we're going to record and record this part now I'm gonna give it two bars of intro I'm gonna start playing on bar three now we can go into a chord by going to the transport button right down here and hitting it or use the keystroke control are on the PC or command R on the Mac which I find quicker let's record this part and because the metronome is already turned on we could play that click track [Music] it was a bit sloppy so if we double-click it we can edit the part right down here we can see our notes and you could use your mouse wheel or trackpad to zoom in this way or make it bigger by holding out a modifier we can make that a bit smaller though so here's the part once again it's pretty sloppy we don't need this piece right here because it's gonna loop so it's select it and delete it and let's quantize this so the performance is a lot better we'll go up here to quantize but before we do that let's change our grid right down here to be sixteenth notes because I'm pretty sure I'm playing sixteenth notes in the performance so to change it right here change the grid let's now forgot to quantize it with this button it's going to quantize to those sixteenth notes because it's set up to use our grid right here it's going to do all notes until do position known end so it's going to quantize the beginning of the notes and the end of them before it looked like this and after it looks like this let's hit okay what's here [Music] this last note could be a bit longer so going to grab the right side of it and trim it out like this notice it snaps to a grid because I have snapping right here turned on if this was off it would move freely but I want to snap and be perfect so leave this on and trim it out to the right so now it's closed the MIDI editor right here and let's trim our MIDI item right here this container is called a MIDI item so I'll go to the left side of it my cursor changes to a trim tool and I'll move this over right to bar three notice it's not snapping so turn on snapping here so it snaps right on bar three and we'll do the same thing on the right side so it snaps at bar five it's not the perfect length perfect so now I'm going to right-click on the item maybe down here to glue items that's gonna create a whole new item that's exactly two bars long from bar three to bar five so now if I trim this out it's gonna loop so that's gonna play the same thing twice and we can see that it's looped because the little notch right here showing this is a little point this is the first piece that loops right here so it's true it out a whole bunch that should be enough and now it's gonna loop every two bars and if we change anything on the first two bars it's gonna change the loop going forward perfect now it's record another part this time I'm going to record piano chords so it's select this track right-click it and duplicate it that's gonna duplicate the track with a piano on both with the same performance which we don't really want so let's double click this track which gonna select this item and then delete it we'll take the first track out of record never can record chords on this track we're going to go along with a piano melody in fact let's name this one piano melody and piano chords now the chords are gonna play like this an E minor chord which has an ending the bass a octave and then a C which is the upper third and then an e which is the upper fifth so play it all together it sounds like that they're gonna work down the keyboard to a G chord then an F chord and back to the G chord very simple and it's all gonna be whole notes so I'll start from bar to give me one bar accounting and I'll report it on this track [Music] that should be good enough now a double-click this item and it looks like this let's quantize this so each one of them is perfect well change the grid to be whole notes right here so it's going to quantize the whole notes that's all I played hit the quantize button and once again it quantizes to the grid all notes position know named so quantize at the beginning and the end before and after hit ok close the editor let's trim it right 2 bar 3 to bar seven we'll glue it to create a new item and we'll trim it out or loop it from the right side we're to about there so it's here this back [Music] perfect it's on the sound like a song now let's duplicate this part the chords let's change the sound for the duplicate so right click it duplicate tracks let's make this smaller but hitting the page down button page up makes them bigger and page down makes them smaller so in the second track here the duplicate let's change the sound so instead of being a piano let's remove it let's choose the other sound that we downloaded if we scroll down here in instruments will see the Tal noise make a plug-in but choose that one change the preset to be a pad if we scroll down to the pads there's a good one right down here coal Bionic pad we'll choose that now we could blend this sound in with the piano chords let's turn off the metronome let's hear it well before we do that let's go back to the mixer right here like I showed you before we can control the volume of each of them just by selecting them so let's start to pad a lot lower [Music] that feels pretty good the pain is much more subtle than the piano let's turn off the melody and just hear the chords together [Music] you feels pretty good so if we move on we should save this let's go to the file menu right here save as make sure we select these two checkpoints right here create a subdirectory for the project and copy all media items into that project this will keep all our files together so we'll give it a name like new song save it now this whole track is now saved so the next video we're gonna start programming some drums so let's move on to that video [Music] you

Channel: REAPER Mania

Views: 185,012

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Id: Aw4pekLPVys

Length: 18min 13sec (1093 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 16 2017