This is REAPER 6 - MIDI - The Basics (5/15)

in this video I'm going to show you midi or the many basics in Reaper [Music] now before we get started we should set up our midi in the preferences so let's go up here to the options menu and to save time in the future instead of choosing preferences from down here let's use a keyboard shortcut which on PC is control comma and a Mac it's command comma hit that keyboard shortcut to open up our preferences and as I showed you with the audio on the device we can set up the audio device right here to a computer audio interface or our speakers are plugged into we want to do the same thing for our midi devices right over here Viva USB midi keyboard it should show up over here and then we'd select it and double click it here's the name of that keyboard then we should enable it from here and if we're using continuous controller information like with sliders or knobs we should turn on this as well I'm also going to rename my keyboard on the Alias name as USB midi keyboard hit okay and now it shows up here and if we create a new track we can put it into record and instead of using our audio inputs right here as mono or stereo we can choose MIDI and here's our USB midi keyboard and we'll set it up to be all channels I should also mention if you don't have a USB midi keyboard you could use the virtual midi keyboard right here then we go to view and go down here to Virtual midi keyboard and we use a computer keyboard to trigger MIDI using the keys right down here Z x c and so on but we're going to use a USB midi keyboard in this video and just to show you what I'm playing we're going to add it to our screen right down here but just know this keyboard isn't a part of Reaper it's just going to show you what notes I'm playing so now let's set this back up to our USB midi keyboard and if we play the keyboard we should see level over here on the meters and we do it's now to create sound we need to add a plug-in to this track a virtual instrument plugin so go to the effects hit the button and then we'll choose instruments right here now Reaper comes with a few instruments let's start off with this one right here reassenth let's double click it and that adds it to this track so now if we play a midi keyboard we hear that synth but it's a pretty basic synth so in this video we're going to use a different virtual instrument so let's tweet this one and instead double click over here we're going to choose re-sample Matic 5000. which is a sample playback plugin that comes with Reaper let's double click it now Reaper doesn't come with any samples so I added a few to the reaper stash so let's go to the internet and what search Reaper stash and we'll go to this website and we'll search Kenny MIDI and here's a file I uploaded with some sounds we can use so let's download it right from here and it should look like this with four sounds we could choose from a plug synth a kick a snare and a hi-hat so let's go back to Reaper so now we could drag those sounds into this plugin let's go back to those sounds on our hard drive let's drag in the puck synth and drop it and if we play our keyboard [Music] we hear the sound but as you'll notice if we go up and down the keyboard it doesn't change the pitch so we need to change the mode right over here change this to semitones shifted and that's going to play different notes when we hit different keys [Music] what's name on track synth let's give it a color and just like we did with the preferences let's assign a keyboard shortcut to adding colors to our tracks to make it quicker so go up here to the actions menu show action list and what search custom track color and right down over here there's an action to change the color with the keyboard shortcut we'll add one I'm going to use C and if we hit the c key after selecting our tracks we can add colors that easily I'm going to choose a color like this now we have a synth track but before we record this part I want to add another effect to make the track more interesting so under effects right after a virtual instrument plugin puts out a delay double click right here choose the reaper plugins and go up here to read delay which the delay plugin that comes with Reaper we'll bring the wet sound or the effect sound down a bit change the delay time to two eighth notes which is a quarter note and bring the feedback up a bit as well which is adding repeats to the delay so now it sounds like this oh the delay just adds some rhythm let's make it more interesting by creating two delays that pan so pan this one to the left add a new tap and pan that one to the right and bring the length up about 15 milliseconds more quick a slight Delay from the left and right speakers like this foreign [Music] let's turn on the quick track right here what's a quarter part [Music] and just like that we have our first midi part and to edit it because it's a bit sloppy we can just double click it to open up the midi editor which looks like this here's the notes that we played is the Mini keyboard showing us what pitches we played and down over here we could see a velocity or how hard we hit the keys in the senator we can move our notes around [Music] just by dragging them we can make them longer or shorter we can create new ones just by drawing [Music] by double clicking them foreign ize this performance so it's perfectly in time we'll go up here to the cue button and that opens up this dialog where it's going to quantize based on our grid our grid is set to eighth notes let's change it to sixteenths all notes instead of selected notes and just the position we're not going to quantize the ending or the length so to hear that quantized [Music] it sounds much better so we can close the midi editor and let's trim the front to be exactly at bar two in the end to be exactly at bar six and what's Loop this part by selecting from part two to Bar Six and turning on looping over here [Music] so it's had some drums to our part let's double click over here create a new track we'll name it drums take this track out of record and put this track into record set it up as midi USB midi keyboard give it a color let's add a plugin to this track hit the effects button go to instruments and choose re-samplematic 5000 let's drag in the other samples we'll start with the kick and if we play a midi keyboard we hear the kick sample now to add multiple drums to this track we'll choose one key to trigger this sound because right now it's going to be triggered by any of them or we could choose just one for this so it's hit C2 on our keyboard then we'll double click right over here and it chooses what note it's going to be triggered by so now if we hit C2 we hear the kick but if we hit any other key we won't so now we can assign those keys to the drum sounds so it's copy this affects instance and paste it let's say it in the snare to this one drag it and drop it on this one hit D2 on the USB keyboard double click over here now it's assigned to D2 so if we hit D2 We should hear the snare same thing for the hi-hat select it copy and paste to duplicate it let's drag in the hi-hat and drop it hit F sharp two on a midi keyboard double click over here to assign it and then we have three drum sounds on this track so let's record a drum part now for drums I want to do this a bit differently because I like to record on multiple passes so instead of recording the normal way we're going to change the mode over here normally we'd record the input whether it be audio or MIDI but with midi we have a few other options over here we'll choose record midi overdub so now we can record multiple Parts on top of each other without erasing the previous part makes it a lot easier for programming drums especially in Loop mode and I also want to quantize on the way in to save us some time so we're going to right click over here and choose track record settings input quantize that opens up this dialog we can quantize on the way in we'll change this to 16th notes because that's what I'm going to play on our drum part and now we can record a drone performance as a loop in this section let's turn on the metronome let's right click it so we can see the settings for the metronome I'm going to change the counting to be one bar and turn it on during recording which will give us a measure of counting before we record foreign we're going to record this in multiple passes so I'm going to record the kick and then hear it back then record the snare hear that back and then the hi-hat in order to quantizes on the way it so on playback it's going to be perfectly in time so let's give it a shot foreign [Music] now one of the useful things about recording with midi overdub is we could still add or change our part so with the hi-hat I just played eighth notes but let's add some 16th notes in the spaces and we could do that with midi overdub mode which we turned on right over here let's go back into record and overdub those notes [Music] foreign so just like that we recorded our midi performance and we added different parts on different passes as you went through so that's pretty much it the basics of midi in Reaper I hope you learned something hope you could use it and I'll see you in the next video thanks thank you foreign boys let's go [Music]

Channel: REAPER Mania

Views: 27,182

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Id: 8YhjKaugHGU

Length: 16min 49sec (1009 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 30 2022