Hey guys, in this video we’re going to continue with our Reaper tutorial series.
We’ll cover the basic layout of Reaper, which includes most of the tools we’ll need
to navigate through the program.
Before getting started with this video, make sure you’ve checked out the previous ones
in this series so you’re all caught up.
Let’s start by covering some of the controls we have in the top menu.
We won’t go through everything here, since you probably won’t need to use most of the
options, but we’ll get a general idea of what everything is.
First, in the File menu, we have our project controls for a new project, saving, opening,
and closing.
We can also find recent projects that we’ve worked with here.
The file menu has the options to export the project to an audio file, and we can export
individual MIDI tracks as well.
The edit menu has the buttons to undo and redo, select all, cut, copy, and paste.
The view menu allows us to choose what sections of the window are displayed.
You probably won’t need to use a lot of these, but the main one you will need is the
mixer..
If you’re recording and editing clips, you can hide this to maximize the view of the
tracks.
If you’re mixing, you’ll want to display it again.
There’s also the buttons to zoom, show all hidden windows, and make the program full
screen, which I have done or this tutorial series.
The Insert menu allows us to add tracks, audio files from somewhere else on our system, MIDI
clips, and markers to our project.
The item menu is used to make some specific edits to the individual clips on a track.
We’ll look at some of these features when we edit a clip later on, but we won’t go
through every single option.
The tracks menu allows us to make changes to our audio and MIDI tracks.
We can insert audio tracks and virtual instrument tracks here.
We can also freeze tracks to reduce CPU usage, which basically exports an individual track
as a file so that it’s not processing the plugins every time it plays.
Another option I want to mention is that we can change the color of the track, which changes
the background color on the left and color of the clips.
This is useful if we have a lot of tracks but want to keep them organized in groups.
So in a large project, I might color certain tracks together, like the drums, guitars,
and background vocals.
Then you can also add a track icon as well, but keep in mind that this will take up additional
horizontal space on your window, so you might not want to do that.
At the top of the options menu, the first thing we have is the recording mode.
In normal mode, it will just record wherever the cursor is.
We can also set it to auto punch in and out over the time selection, which can be set
by clicking and dragging on the timeline.
Finally, we can choose what happens when we write over a previously recorded track.
We’ll cover multi take recording in another video.
Below that, we can choose to automatically have crossfades added.
Then there’s the button to trim content behind media items when editing.
The next section is for take lanes, when recording multiple takes of the same part on a track.
We’ll go through this in our audio recording video.
The options below pretty much cover the buttons we have quick access to in the top left corner,
like snapping, locking, and ripple edit, and we’ll go over these in more detail later
in this video.
Next we have some metronome and soloing controls, and options to control the behaviour of the
tracks view when the cursor scrolls past the edge during playback.
At the bottom, we have themes, which changes the way Reaper looks.
The layout can be changed for things like the transport, mixer, and tracks.
I’ll keep these at their defaults so it’s easier for everyone to follow these tutorials,
but feel free to change them.
Last, we have the preferences menu that we covered in the last video, and this is what
allows us to adjust the settings for our audio interface, MIDI controller, and plugins.
The actions menu has a button to display the previous changes we’ve made in the project,
and the help menu has documentation, check for updates, and the licensing information
for unlocking the program.
Now that we’ve covered the menus, let’s go over the rest of the window.
Starting at the top left, we have buttons for New Project, Open Project, and Save Project.
The next button opens the project settings.
This is the window we talked about earlier that we want to pop up when we start a new
project.
We can use this to set the sample rate, tempo, and time signature.
If we switch to the Media section, we can also adjust the file type and quality for
the audio files that are recorded by Reaper.
After that, we have our undo and redo buttons.
The next button is for the Metronome.
If we click this button the metronome will turn on and off.
If we right click on it, we’ll get more options for the metronome.
We can use this window to turn the metronome on during recording or playback, add a count
in, change the volume, change the frequency, and set the beat pattern so that we can accent
the first beat of every measure.
Now let’s cover a few more options.
The next option we have is autocrossfade.
This creates a crossfade that blends two overlapping clips when dragged over each other.
Otherwise, they will play with no fade.
The next option is for group edit.
If we select multiple clips on our tracks and group them together, this allows us to
edit them as a group when only one track is selected.
Otherwise, the edit is only made to one track at a time.
An example of this is trimming a track.
When we trim or slide around grouped tracks, the edits will be made to both of them at
once.
The next tool is for ripple edit.
Ripple editing allows us to add, delete, and reposition sections of the track, and Reaper
will automatically adjust the position of the clips after it on the timeline.
With this disabled, if we delete or add a section of a track, none of the other clips
on that track are affected.
If we have it set to per track, then it will reposition all the clips on that track accordingly.
If it’s set to all tracks, then it will reposition all the clips on that track, and
in the entire project.
The next tool is Move Envelope Points With Media.
You can think of envelope points as the markers for all the automation, and we’ll cover
automation in another video later on.
This just allows them to be repositioned with our track if we move it around.
After that we can turn the Gridlines on or off.
I usually keep this on, because I think it looks better and it’s easier to use.
Next is snapping, which allows our clip edits, like repositioning and trimming to snap to
the gridlines.
If we right click on this button, or use the gridline button, it will open a window with
more options.
Here we can choose the gridline and snapping resolution for our timeline.
This is also where we go if we want to add swing to our project.
The last button we have is the lock button.
If we enable this, it will prevent certain controls from being accessible so that we
can’t accidentally make changes.
An example would be locking down all the clip positions and tracks after recording and editing,
then only being able to adjust the mixing and plugin controls during mixing.
If we right click on this button, we’ll see a bunch of checkboxes for the controls
that can be locked.
Below these buttons, we have the tracks listing.
Each track has various controls for signal routing, recording, levels, and automation,
but these will be individually be covered in more detail.
To the right, we have the tracks and clips, with the timeline at the top.
One thing I like about Reaper is that the timeline is displayed in both beats and bars,
and minutes and seconds, whereas a lot of other programs will only have one at a time.
In this section of the window, we can do a lot of clip editing, and we’ll cover that
in the next tutorial.
We can also make a time selection, by clicking and dragging our mouse over a section of the
timeline.
We’ll need this if we want to punch in and out, set a loop, or export only a certain
section of the project.
Keep in mind that the time selection will work with snapping if the button in the top
left is enabled.
On the bottom and right edge of the track view, we have the zoom buttons for vertical
and horizontal zooming, and the scroll bar to change the window view.
Down below, we have the transport controls.
On the left, the first button is to Go to the start of the project.
Then the next one is to go to the end of the project.
These buttons make it easy to navigate the project very quickly.
The next buttons are to stop playback, play the project from the cursor position, and
pause playback.
The record button is to the right.
This allows us to record on all tracks that are armed for recording, and it starts at
the cursor, or the punch in point if that’s enabled.
Next is the loop button.
Looping will either loop just the time selection, if there is a time selection chosen, or the
entire project.
Next up is the global automation controls.
We’ll do an entire video later on, and how to use automation in Reaper, and we’ll cover
all these different modes at that time.
In the middle we have our current location in the project, which is in beats and bars,
and minutes and seconds.
We also have the project status, which tells us if the project is stopped, playing, paused,
or recording.
To the right, there’s the project tempo and time signature, and a slider we can use
to change the speed of the project.
Last on the far right, we have our time selection markers.
This tells us what point the selection starts, ends and how long it is.
The time selection information is displayed only in beats and bars, not minutes and seconds.
At the bottom of the window, we have our mixer controls, which will be covered in another
video, and the docker, which shows us the windows that are opened at the bottom.
Thanks for checking out this video on the layout of Reaper.
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