Recording in REAPER on a Mac

hi there this is steven gonzalez with steven gonzalez voiceovers how are you doing today well we finally made it we are ready to record however there's a little setup that needs to be taking place and so tracks in recording that's what's next on reaper for voice talent in this video we're going to be setting up tracks within reaper and then finally recording in reaper and so with that without further ado let's get started okay we are in reaper we want to record but we can't yet because it's not set up to record just yet we have to insert a track and so to insert a track there's one of a few ways we can do this we can either go track and insert track or we can do command t or the easy way is simply to double click within the tcp and there we are you'll note that there's a little bit of a difference between this track and the track that was in the major parts video and that it's not labeled it is extremely important that you label your tracks if you learn nothing else within this fundamental sequence of videos you must understand that you have to leave all these tracks the reason why is just as an insurance policy there are numerous ways that you can recover from a fault if your tracks are labeled and so we'll do that we'll double click in the dark space here and then we'll label it and if you're a podcaster for example you can say podcast host or you can say podcast guest or if you are let's say oh i don't know audiobook narrator you can say chapter and 11 give it the chatter name whatever it happens to be will be very um original and say rename me here okay you're going to see this come back into play the label for the track is actually going to be applied to the media items in such a way that you'll see in just a second now let's revisit a friend of ours that we met when we were talking about the major parts of reaper that was rather unique and that is the monitor echo when i click on this record arm we're going to be experiencing monitor echo like there's no tomorrow so let's figure out how to tend to this right now so in three two one okay now we're in record mode now there are a few ways we can do this we can click on this little speaker here once and you see that it hasn't gone away because it's in auto mode now if we click again sanity ensues why in the world would reaper want to do this well again remember reaper is meant as a music production software package what this is meant to do is for an instrumentalist to be able to hear themselves playing their keyboard or their guitar without having an amp and so there wouldn't be an echo but with our voice and doing what's called direct monitoring there's that echo now how do we tend to this so that it is permanently off well we can go into options and preferences and then under project we go under track and send defaults under record config under our input we're going to uncheck monitor input i know that's a lot but believe me and we hit apply and we hit okay and now that monitor echo will not bother us again while we're here let's talk about gain staging for a second what exactly is game staging it is probably going to be one of the most important things that you do as a voice talent in setting up your projects each project or each client has their own requirements whether it's peaks at negative 3 but the rms values between negative 18 and negative 23 or they only specify peaks only at negative six or whatever it happens to be now there are two schools of thought as far as recording in projects that i've seen the first one says as long as you don't go above negative three then you're good another one which is sort of gaining strength more than that negative three peak is saying that your peaks should be set between negative 12 and negative six and that if you go over negative six just a little bit every once in a while that's okay but the majority of your peaks should be at between negative 12 and negative six and now what does that mean well let me stretch this track out a little bit so we can see a little better here you see the vu meter here right and you see negative 6 is here negative 12 is here here's that peaks indicator right there right and every once while it'll shift over as long as my voice is going between negative 12 and negative 6 and i'm fine if it goes above negative 6 every once in a while then that's cool and if i click on this peaks indicator then i can continue with the monitoring and as you can see i'm between negative six and negative twelve db and that's fine okay so how do we get there what you would do is you would take your interface and turn the gain all the way down so that the peak indicator is not even moving you don't even see it and then you would start talking and you would move the gain up and up and up and up and up and eventually the vu meter will appear way down here it'll peak way down here and you continue turning your gain up more and more until it finally hits between negative 6 and negative 12 and that's all there is to it if you're going to be doing something very loudly then you really want to kind of control it by either well not backing up the mic but you're going to have to turn the gain down so that the peaks will again reach between negative 12 and negative six of course there's always voice control but that's a different story altogether now that we have talked about gain staging let's talk about recording and that's exactly what we're going to do we select the uh the track here and we make sure that it's record armed and now all we do is we hit the record button and we do this or command r in three two one and now we are recording or for our very first time and isn't it wonderful okay i'm going to stop now when i stop for the very first time i'm greeted with this window this is a nag window but it proves something here first of all let's take this on stop off that will make it to where this doesn't ever appear for us again unless we turn it back on but the file recorded this actually was a wav file recorded just now track the track label the date and time that it was recorded and then the format whether it's wave or aiff or whatever it happens to be if we had not labeled our track then it would have been track one dash date and time at a glance we would not have known what in the world this would have been and we would have had listened to it and imagine having to listen to hundreds if not thousands of wav files or aiff files to reorganize yourself in the case of a disk fault this is one of the key reasons why i'm saying please label your tracks before you record because it actually is incorporated in that media file to get rid of this window we simply x out of it we will never see it again that my friends is recording in the next video we're going to be talking about saving and rendering projects within reaper the link to the mac centric playlist is in the description below and don't forget to like subscribe hit that notification bell and don't forget to put a comment in that comment section below if you have a comment a question this is stephen gonzalez with stephen gonzalez voiceovers wishing you all all the best and i'll see y'all in the next video

Channel: REAPER for Voice Talent

Views: 1,166

Keywords: reaper daw, reaper tutorial, how to, digital audio workstation, download daw, best daw software, cockos reaper, Steven Gonzales Voiceovers, SGVO, RFVT, Reaper for Voice Talent, audio engineering, recording for beginners, how to use reaper, reaper (software), audio recording, audio production, reaper software tutorial, reaper software

Id: LZEn2FqrJ4o

Length: 8min 38sec (518 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 22 2020