Reaper Tutorial: Top Toolbar Ideas And Icons

what's up everyone welcome to the video today i'm going to be talking about my top toolbar up here and all the great features that are in there that i highly suggest that you guys add to your toolbar maybe you'll find some items in here that are useful to you so if you want to make a toolbar just go to any of your toolbars right click on it open a toolbar and open one that you haven't used yet you should have extra toolbars that are ready to go at the click of a button so for me i hit a button and i have my vst instruments that load up i have my favorites i also have another one for my uhe or yuhi uh synths and then i have another one that pops up for my plugins when i'm doing mixing and mastering this is all the melda stuff and it also has all of the slate stuff that i have over here you can also set the placement of it by doing the position this one's at the top of the main window that's where i like it if you want to move it somewhere else you can always do that but for me up at the top of the main window works now first and foremost you're going to want to have the sws extensions installed as well as rescripts installed to do that just go to the websites linked in the description these will allow you to use reaper in a lot more advanced ways than you normally would so if you ever want to know what your icons are and you forgot let's say we renamed this for example over here i have one that just says pitch and mute and i forgot what they're named i just gonna right click it go to customize toolbar go to the item right click it and go to change action it's gonna bring up the action list for you and then you can see what it's actually called in the action list so first button up here is going to be the sws extension toggle selected tracks height and what this allows me to do is just by click of the button it's going to just change that one track's height i hit it again it brings it back to my specified height that's done also in extensions under command parameters that's where it's getting this height from so track height a is 80 and track height b is 340. and if you want to change these you can easily change these so if i hit that button it changes it the next one is the sws extension minimize selected tracks that's going to be my shortcut for q and what that means is it's just going to minimize that track when you select off of it so if i cue on those now they're small i was used to another piece of software that had three buttons right here that would minimize maximize and then make a middle size version of it since i don't have that i use these buttons all the time next up is going to be the script default 6.03 adjuster and that way you can just pull up the theme adjuster quickly next up is going to be the theme development show theme tweak configuration window and this will allow you to tweak the theme and the colors and the theme tweaker is extremely important for me because i like to have things a certain hue and certain colors really stand out to my eye so this is the way i like it to look i know this might not be something you guys like you might want something really dark or you might want something really light on the eyes but you can make all those changes in here as well as change the midi item so if i wanted to change how the midi item appears you can make a lot of the changes in here as well so again if you want to find any of this stuff have your action list open and you're just going to be searching the name of these items now this one is going to be insert empty space so there it is moving later items and this is a cool feature so if i right drag on anything it's going to do something with my mouse modifiers i'll go into my preferences here and i'll go under mouse modifiers and you'll see the default action is marquee select items in time but i also have changed this so if i double click here it also sets the time selection that allows me to just drag sets the time selection then if i go up here and i hit time selection insert empty space at time selection it will move everything over and give me that empty spot if i want to delete that then i have time selection remove contents of time selection moving later items so i'll move it back so if i select an area here hit this it moves everything over and this can save you a ton of time especially if you're messing with a i don't know if this verse and bridge are going to go right here i might want to change that it just allows you to give yourself some more space or take it away next up is going to be uh item grouping group items put a control and select this one this one and this one and then i go to item grouping now those three items are grouped if i want to ungroup them then use item grouping remove items from group this one is going to be show all takes and lanes all right so if we had three takes right here and it's defaulted to on so if i wanted to just show this take i can hit that and it's only going to show that one if i want to bring all the takes back i hit it again and now it shows all of the takes next one is take explode takes of items across tracks so if i have these three takes that i did recorded them and then i want them to all be on separate tracks i just select them hit the button and it's created three tracks uh the next one is going to be take implode items or crosstracks into takes next up is going to be take delete active takes from items prompt to confirm so if i didn't like this take and i wanted to delete it i just hit this button because normally if i hit the delete button on my keyboard it deletes all of the takes but if i select this one and hit this delete it's only going to delete that one take next up is going to be the uh sws extension reposition selected items so let's say that i was doing some vocal chopping and i you know sliced up these areas if i wanted to space them out i could go into here and i could add from the item end i could add point you know eight seconds now it's going to space them out next up is my side chain routing so this button really is just a reminder for me of how i can do the side chaining it's control plus number delete so i just select whatever tracks i want i can select multiple at a time and then i just hover over the drum buss or whatever the actual track is where i want the side chaining coming from and i just do control number delete and now it's going to open up on each of these tracks it's going to have the side chain and it's going to be going to that track so just a quick and easy way to do side chaining step is going to be custom insert new track from template so if you ever want to do a custom action it's just basically combining multiple actions so if i go into my action list and i look up this one which is insert new track right here from template and i go to edit action it will show you what actions are being used track select all tracks select last of selected tracks that way it adds the track at the bottom of the list and then it will load track template i could always delete this and create a new action so for example i'll remove this and let's call this from template a save it now it will load from whatever track is selected right beneath it in fact i kind of liked that better than adding it down to the bottom of the list before i was doing at the bottom now i'd like to do it wherever i have it selected so now i hit that and it inserts that track right there now that track template where that track template is coming from is going to be wherever you save your track templates and it goes off of the numbers i know this might sound a little confusing but if i go in here and i go to insert track from template this one right here says 01 in the title so that's where it's going to pull from so again if i go back in here and go to edit action it's going to load track template 01 so it needs to have 01 in the track template name and that's where it shows up here right here it says 01 negative 16 db gain stage track the next up is going to be the show peaks all right so if i bring in an item here that has spectral peaks you'll see that it shows up when i select spectral peaks if i just go to normal peaks it's going to be the color that i've selected in my media item and then over here i can do a spectrogram i can also do spectrogram plus peaks so let's just leave it on spectral and then you can see kind of where it changes in the frequency range next step is item properties normalize item so if i have this little selection here and i want it to be louder i can go to this button it's going to bring it up the closest it can before clipping let's say i wanted to do it for this item here select it and it brings that volume up all right so now let's say i wanted to get all these to be normalized to a certain one so let's say i only wanted this one this one i can do control and click and i can select these items now i'll go into sws normalize loudness of selected items hit that now i can pick what volume i want it to be playing back at it's going to show up in luf's or lu's and let's do that at negative 40 and now it's going to take those and it's going to bring all those uniformly down at the same volume next up is going to be sws fill gaps between selected items so if there was a gap here and i select these two items and i go to fill gaps i can select how much space i want stretch if needed preserve if there's a transient and all these different options in here let's do 15 second milliseconds so now if i hit it it will bring them together next up is item dynamic split items um i'm not going to really go into dynamic split there's a great tutorial about dynamic split by kenny joya i'll leave that link in the description as well highly encourage you guys checking that out next up is going to be us put selected envelope in media lane so let's say i have a volume envelope on this track i'll hit v for volume that's the way it pops up with my shortcuts i think that's how it is stock and reaper but anyway so if i wanted to put this on the actual media item i just select that button and it's going to show up here if i wanted to then take it back off or let's say i had multiple ones on here and i wanted the one that i've selected you just click it and hit this one sws put selected envelope in envelope lane and it moves it to its own lane uh then i have show all envelopes for all tracks and then hide all envelopes for tracks next up is going to be i have pitch on here so if i select this item and i select that or hit p on the shortcut it's going to show up here and i can change the pitch of just this one item go to the item right click it go to change action and it will show you in the action list what it is so this is take toggle take pitch envelope next up is going to be m which is for mute and then the next three here are all the same it's going to be track toggle track mute toggle track pan and then track toggle track volume envelope visible so that's going to be these three right here then i have a custom action so we'll go in here go to change action and this is hide lower section so normally down here i have my media explorer and my mixer so if i hit this it's going to hide both of them because normally you would have to go in here and then select media explorer or hit control h and then go to the mixer control ms but instead of having to hit two buttons i just have this one that combines the both of those and again to do a custom action just go up here you'll see that this is under hide lower section and we'll edit the action to take a look at it and it's just view toggle mixer visible and media explorer show hide media explorer next up is going to be the script amalgama grid settings button so if you wanted to really fine-tune your grid you could do dotted notes or triplets and all that and you can select in here now i already use these right here if you notice i'll have the whole note half note quarter note eighth note 16th and all and all that so if i go into change action take a look at these these are all pulling from the same region of grid set to one to a half to a fourth to eighth 16th 32 64. now i also have j and k selecting in between these two so j makes the grid smaller into the uh up to 64th notes and then k brings it back all the way up to whole notes it's just a shortcut but it also allows me to see where it is so if i'm hitting j and k down here i will see where my grid is up here that's why it's a nice visual reminder to have up here in your grid next up is item quantize items position to grid so if i take this item here just drag it slightly off the grid take this one and this one drag them slightly off the grid if i select all three of them let's say i wanted them to be quantized to 16th notes i just select 16 16th notes and now they will be quantized to that portion of the grid next up is going to be split if i right click this now i can split everything wherever my mouse cursor goes if my grid was really small and i've got it armed i can just go in and select anywhere i'd like and it's going to split just by using the mouse so the action for this is just item split items at edit or play cursor which is the same thing that you always use for s but if you right click it now it's armed next up is going to be glue items so that's item glue items so let's say all these items here i wanted to glue back together i just glue them and now they're all together as one item so let's say this item i wanted to have this weird fade going into it so i'll select a fade here and then over here let's say i want a really long fade out like that now if i select these and i go to item blue items including leading fade in and trailing fade out it will keep those fades in the glued up item so now it has that fade out and the fade in as well next up is going to be track set to custom color and that will be the entire track so i'll select that one and let's say i wanted it to be red is going to change the entire track now i can also do the takes let's say i recorded a vocal here and this part right here i split and i'm going to want this to be a different color because this part is a little sharp and i want to go in and make changes to it but i'm just trying to quickly showcase where it is i can just hit this button and it will change it to a random color that's going to be take set active take to one random color a lot of times i just like to click through here really quickly there's a nice color a yellow and i'm done i can also use this button take set i active take to custom color and then i can select the color that i want more fine-tuned next up is going to be the script me to beat set item length to 0.5 so it's just going to make this item go faster so if you listen to it normally this is what it sounds like [Music] now if i hit the button and also goes the opposite direction which is set items length to two now it's going to slow it down [Music] so that might be very useful if you're doing kind of vocal chops or stuff with pianos and reverb and you want to reverse items and add these huge swelling effects next step is going to be add stretch marker at cursor select there select that and that's item add stretch marker at cursor now if i wanted to snap stretch markers to the grid i can select the grid over here of course and let's say that this was a little bit off so i'll move this over now if i select these and i hit snap stretch markers to grid it will snap it to whatever grid i've selected here make it a 64th and then let's hit it again and it will snap it to 64th note and last step is going to be the variator so let's say i want a little variation in all of this i can select all these pieces go to the variator i can select where i want the volume to be variated i can do the pan the pitch the tape stretch rate position content length fades fade shape file i'm not going to mess with the content and file because that will actually change the file and it's being selected from the folder that it's in uh so i don't want to hit those but let's say i just want to affect the rest of these i can also change how much or how little it's going to affect the volume pan by selecting these knobs over here now if i mutate it mutate it again it's going to mess with all of these settings and how much you want them to be changed so it's a really cool script i highly recommend downloading it it is completely free of course and that is my top toolbar so in the next video i'll show you guys how you can customize your actual toolbar your main toolbar here and then i will show you how you can change the transport down here to make it fully custom as well and in another video i'll show you guys how you can customize your midi item toolbar so if the video is out just click up here now i hope this video helped you and deciding what you want to add into your toolbar it is precious real estate so just remember that just use stuff that you use all the time sometimes i find it's easier to just click an item and then click and not have to remember all your shortcuts shortcuts should be for things that you use constantly your toolbar should be things that you use from time to time and you don't want to have to remember a shortcut for so again i hope this video helped you out if it did put a like down below subscribe to the channel and we'll see on the next one you

Channel: Reaper Tutorials

Views: 2,747

Keywords: Reaper, Reaper DAW, Reaper Blog, Reaper Tutorial, Toolbars, Reaper Toolbar, Hop Pole Studios, Spectre Sound, Reaper How To, How To, Tutorial, DAW, Production, Music Production, Reaper Icons, Toolbar Icons, Toolbar Idea, Toolbar Ideas, What to add, Shortcuts, Hotkeys, Shortkeys, Keyboard Shortcuts

Id: xpRWAX39IX8

Length: 17min 34sec (1054 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 11 2021