Working faster with MIDI Editor Actions in REAPER (better keyboard shortcuts)

welcome back to another reaper blog tutorial today we're talking about midi editor shortcuts things to insert notes move them change octaves manipulate them in various ways these are my most used shortcuts and i'm sure that you'll get some ideas for improving your workflow this video is sponsored by skillshare skillshare is an online learning community for creators with thousands of inspiring classes on art productivity graphic design filmmaking and more explore new skills deepen existing passions and get lost in creativity this week i started two classes on filmmaking the first one is storytelling in film using cinematography to convey emotion this is all about framing composition lighting camera movements things like that things to make your films better i've also been watching simon cade's how to improve your films with color grading i love learning about filmmaking and even if i'm not using these specific tips and tricks in my own videos i know that at some point i will need these things and also it helps develop a critical eye so i can improve my shots uh when the time comes and these are just two out of thousands of classes available on pretty much every topic click the link in the description for a one month free trial of skillshare premium you get access to every single class and in a month you can take dozens of classes really level up your skills become inspired and create excellent work thank you to skillshare for sponsoring this video supporting the reaper blog and thank you guys for checking out the sponsor really helps and i'm sure that you'll enjoy skillshare and so let's start off in the midi editor and i've got this floating but i normally use it docked it's just a little easier for the video to do it floating so we're going to start off with inserting some notes so the obvious and probably the way that you're used to using is double-click to insert a note uh but that's two clicks for everything you want to do if you have your edit cursor placed somewhere i use the insert key to add in a note at that position and along with other keyboard shortcuts that i use i can insert notes from the keyboard and not use the mouse at all we'll talk about the note position functions a little bit later on but just inserting notes i've got that assigned to the insert key and so let's look at the action list for the midi editor insert key is on insert note at edit cursor that's not the default as far as i can tell but i do find that very helpful now the next one is insert note at the mouse cursor so this is even faster and i've got this on the a key which is on my left hand where my hand is almost always parked as i'm working so i can just point where i want a note and i press a and that puts in a note at my mouse cursor and this is a super easy quick way without having to stress your right hand it's just a very convenient thing midi notes insert with the velocity of the previous midi note so if i put it in midi note and set this to 53 and then press a to insert another note it will also be at midi velocity 53. what if you want different velocities as you insert them i actually use a variety of shortcuts for this one two three four for four different preset velocities i did an entire video on this topic so i'll link to that these are custom actions custom insert note under mouse 1 2 3 4 are my high low medium and max velocities and it looks like this i press 1 for my max velocity 127 2 for my high velocity which is at is that 100 velocity number 3 is at looks like 77 and number four is looking like about 32 velocity so i find this a very quick way to insert notes and set the velocities roughly where i need them without having to constantly switch between inserting a note and then dragging to change the velocity or do everything in two steps where i program all the notes in at 127 or just any random velocity and then go back and adjust every single one by dragging the velocity so inserting notes with specific velocities check out the video linked in the description for more on that and by the way every keyboard shortcut and every um custom action that i talk about will be in the blog post along with this video and that may be easier for you to follow along or reference at a later date now let's talk about moving notes by semitone so i've got this on command up and down or control on pc so command up moves that note up by a semitone and that works with multiple selected i can just tap that up or down and i forgot to mention that these actually follow the key snap function so here's an arpeggio and without key snap on just chromatic i can shift these up by semitones and let's bring them back down to where they were and put on key snap and we'll set this to a minor key now i'll shift those and they will stay in key and you can see that the note spacing follows the key rather than just retaining the original so there's a note between here a note between so instead of this being a whole step between it's only a half step when we get to this c sharp [Music] adding in that key snap function makes this work even better when you know the key of your song that action is edit move notes down one semitone or the other one move up one semitone how about an octaves so i just add in shift with that and then up or down i can move in octaves same pitch octave higher or lower and so this is a great way to build up chords really quickly to do inversions and things like that i find that really helpful so now let's talk about changing the position of notes in time so i'll select this note here and if i do command left that moves it left and if i do command right that moves it right and this is following the grid size so if i set my grid to 1 and i move it it's going to stay in the same position but it's going to going to jump ahead by one bar so that action was command left and i have that on move notes left by one grid unit next we're going to look at moving midi notes by smaller increments so that was by the grid size now by one pixel so i might even have to zoom in here so you can see that i'm going to do command shift left and that will just move that ever so slightly off the grid and so this is a great way to add subtle variation subtle timing differences to your performance without drag and drop snapping to grid so i could select several items nudge them over slightly later to match some other performance that's happening and then if i wanted to snap them i could grab them and drag them and it's very simple i have another one assigned to mouse wheel this is command option mouse wheel and this will shift it left and right by by pixels essentially the same and so let's look at those actions command shift left move notes left one pixel and also move notes right one pixel on command shift right and then using the mouse wheel which is uh command alt or option and mouse wheel move events left to right mouse wheel midi relative only that's even quicker than using the the shortcuts i find but both are useful at times next i have a custom action for moving the selected note to my edit cursor so i've got this note here at bar 3 b2 i want to snap that over to bar 2 beat 4 where my edit cursor is and i press the y key and that snaps it over and it moves my edit cursor to the next note so that's really simple for moving selected notes to another location without using copy and paste but technically that is what it's doing inside of the custom action i'll show you this custom action real quick edit cut edit paste as one action and that's going to be moving the selected note to the edit cursor and there is no default function for that there's move left edge of note to add a cursor or move right edge of note to edit cursor but that changes the length which is also useful but not something i tend to use too often in my work going back to editing velocities i think i showed this in fresh start part 4 but this is holding the command key and dragging the mouse wheel and this will change the velocity and if i have other um envelopes in here like let's put in the the volume envelope and i put in some points here if i select a couple points and then command mouse wheel over them that will scale those down so that works by having a note selected a midi cc selected or the velocity selected and that will do to all and just linearly scale them up or down using the mouse wheel so that action here is adjust value for events mouse wheel midi controller only i have that on command mouse wheel now let's come back to something i mentioned earlier which is moving the edit cursor so i've got this set up really simply up down left right moves the edit cursor by the grid size and so you can see the pitch in the green color going up and down and my edit cursor position in the flashing green at a cursor position is moving left and right so those actions are navigate move edit cursor left by grid move at a cursor right by grid decrease pitch cursor one semitone and increase pitch cursor one semitone so as i showed earlier i could put in a note at the edit cursor very simply by using the insert key go up to and i could skip a note go down and this can all be done without using the mouse not always the fastest way but sometimes it is very fast to work this way depends on what you're doing and this goes along kind of with uh step inputting as well being able to move the edit cursor up down left right along with step editing is very helpful so along with moving the edit cursor by the grid size it's helpful to also be able to edit the grid size without moving the mouse so what i use for that is option right and option left on the actions grid multiply grid size by half and grid multiply grid size by two so if i press option right it's going to multiply my grid size by half i'm at quarter notes now so multiplying by half makes it an eighth note grid and then any notes i move will move by that grid size and i can also make my grid resolution less fine by going option left and i can set that to half notes one measure two measures four measures eight measures 16 measures you can see that changing in the grid function in the bottom left as well as in my toolbar where i have my most common grid sizes there so like so i could of course use my mouse and use either of those functions or i can use the keyboard shortcut and those things are just kind of a visual reference and it can kind of keep my eyes focused on where i'm inserting notes where i'm editing things and the last section of this will be copy cut paste duplicate functions things you'll use a lot but there's some variations that i like to use and some things just make it a little bit quicker than the defaults so let's start off with cut and so i have this assigned to the x key so instead of command x or control x on pc i just press x and if i want to paste somewhere i just move my edit cursor and then press v that's going to paste those in the same pitch position so i can put my pitch cursor here and paste it's still going to paste into the same pitch position because that's the way that pasting in the midi editor works i also have the action to cut within the time selection so if i make a time selection like this a time and note selection and then cut with command shift x that's going to be within the time selection but that will work on a individual note if that's all i selected as well and paste that it's kind of subtly different but i guess you can have a notes selected and also let's say i also select this note but then i want this one in the time selection if i cut this it's only going to be within the time selection it's kind of an edge case sort of thing but nevertheless that's what i have there for copy i've just got dot on c instead of command c so i can make a selection like this press c go over to bar six press v and those notes go in there i also have the smart copy which just is on command shift c and so this is going to be the same using the time selection kind of variation of this if i press command shift c that will copy it i can move over paste it and only the selected notes within my time selection were moved those within time selection actions the smart cut and smart copy functions i was showing these with short notes but they make more of a difference when you have long notes or combinations of long and short notes you can select an area that has a long note long sustaining note longer than your time selection copy just that area of it and then paste that somewhere else and it'll just have that shorter section of that next i have a custom action for midi duplicate so this looks like this i'm going to select some items here i'm going to press command d that duplicates it immediately after so this is a custom midi duplicate copy move add a cursor to the end of selected events in active midi media item and paste it just paste it after the selected note essentially this is different than the built-in duplicate which i don't really like this one duplicate events so if i so if i have this item this note selected here it's at bar 5.4 if i run this it's going to repeat that midi note at bar 6.4 and that's not what i wanted to do i wanted to just repeat like that duplicating within time selection this is great for when you have a certain amount of silence that you want to put put in there as well so i'll do command shift d and that will repeat those notes including that gap in there over to the next bar so that's it for my most used custom actions and just built-in actions for editing midi in reaper's midi editor thank you so much for watching hope this has been helpful please subscribe to the channel if you haven't already follow me on facebook and twitter support the reaper blog through patreon and visit reaperblog.net for a lot more tutorials [Music] [Applause] [Applause] you

Channel: The REAPER Blog

Views: 6,697

Keywords: the reaper blog, reaperblog, reaper blog, reaper tutorial, jon tidey, cockos reaper, reaperdaw, reaper daw, reaper daw tutorial, midi editing, reaper midi editor, reaper tips, reaper shortcuts, reaper midi editor shortcuts, reaper actions

Id: eDGKG5uFtEU

Length: 17min 12sec (1032 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 04 2021