Hey guys, in this video we’re going to cover how to record and edit audio in Reaper.
We’ve already covered setting up our project and tracks in a previous video, so for this
tutorial I’ll start with all my tracks added.
Everything I’ve done so far has been covered in those videos, so make sure to check them
out if you haven’t before continuing.
In the previous video, we looked at how we can set our input and arm a track for recording.
Make sure to do that before starting.
Then, when you’re ready, press the record button on the transport to record your clips.
Then press the stop button when you’re finished.
In this mode, Reaper will just record for the entire time period.
If you want to punch in and out instead, make a time selection by clicking and dragging
on the timeline.
Then go to the Options menu at the top and select ‘Record Mode: time selection auto
punch’.
Just be careful if you have looping enabled when doing this because it will create separate
takes.
After the recording is done, you can click and drag on the center of the ends of the
clip to trim it.
You may want to turn off snapping at the top for this.
If you hover over the edge closer to the top of the clip, you’ll see a curve with an
arrow.
Drag this to create a fade in or out.
You can right click on a fade to change the fade shape.
If you want to crossfade clips, drag them over top of each other.
Again, here we can drag the edges of the crossfade to adjust the length, and right click on it
to change the shape of the crossfade.
If we right click on a clip, we can copy, cut, paste and remove it, but these actions
can also be done with keyboard short cuts.
If we want to split a clip into two separate pieces, we can select the clip, move the cursor
to where we want the split, and press the S key on the keyboard, or right click and
select split.
Then we can move around the pieces separately, or remove one of them.
Another tool we can access by right clicking, or pressing the N key, is the nudge option.
This allows us to make very fine changes to the position and trimming of a track, down
to the milliseconds.
We wouldn’t be able to get this accuracy with a mouse, unless we zoomed in all the
way, and that’s not a very efficient way to work.
The other option is for Healing.
This allows us to combine two clips into one, as long as they are right up against each
other.
It won’t work if there’s a gap in the clips or an overlap.
Another thing we can do is group clips.
This works if the clips start at different times, with or without overlap, and if they’re
on separate tracks.
Grouped clips jump tracks, trim, and reposition together.
To group clips, hold down the control key, click on the clips to select them, right click,
go to Grouping and select Group Items.
You can select the clips, and uncheck that button to ungroup them again.
We can also select clips, right click, go to Item Settings, and Lock the Item.
That prevents the clip from being repositioned or trimmed in any way.
This is good to do with all your clips once they’re in the right place, edited, and
ready to be mixed.
This can be undone again by unchecking the box.
A lot of the settings we’ve seen so far can be accessed from the Media Item Properties
window if we need more detail, or want the properties for a clip to be seen all at once.
Select the clip, right click, and go to Item Properties to get this window.
From this window, you’re also able to choose if you want the clip to be looped, which you
may want to disable if you’re trimming different takes, but we’ll look at takes in a minute.
There’s also volume, panning, playback rate, and pitch adjustment that can be found for
the clip here.
Another few things we can look at are the options to reverse the clip at the bottom
under take medial source, and the button to invert the phase of a clip.
One major topic we’ll have to cover with Reaper is how to record audio with multiple
takes on the same track.
This can get fairly complicated, but we’ll try and keep it simple for this series.
If you record over something in Reaper, it won’t remove that audio track, it will create
a new take over top.
These are done in separate take lanes that show up on the track.
To toggle the take lane view on and off, press Ctrl L.
There are three modes we can set our takes to.
The first is New recording that overlaps with existing media.
This will split the existing take at the new take, creating separate files in the different
lanes.
This is the default for Reaper.
It can also be set to trim existing items behind new recordings, and create new media
items in separate lanes.
After we have our takes recorded, we have two options for editing them.
One option is to Explode the takes to separate tracks, and then edit them like normal audio
clips like we would do if they were recorded that way to begin with.
The button to do this is found under the Take menu when we right click on the clips.
The other option is to splice the takes together on the original track, to get one complete
clip that we would then mix normally.
This is the technique we’ll cover, since it can be a little difficult to work with
at first.
Another thing we can do is play all the takes at once.
The play all takes button is found under the Item Settings when we right click on the clip.
To start splicing the different takes together, we’ll need to split the clips wherever we
want them to change.
We can do this by moving our timeline cursor to this point and pressing the S key.
Then, we can click and drag the edges to change the exact point of the transition, or drag
them over each other to automatically create a crossfade.
When this happens, only one of the overlapping takes will be played at once, and the other
will be disabled.
To choose the active take, just click on it, and it will automatically disable the other
takes.
This highlights the clip, so it changes the color, but you can click away from it to somewhere
else on the timeline so we’ll get it back to normal.
The active track should be a bright color, and the inactive track will be darker.
You can select these individual clips, right click, and go to Item and Take colors to change
the color of the active clip.
To change the color of all the active clips at once, hold down the control key, select
all the clips, and press the button we just looked at.
Double click on the track options panel on the left to select all the clips.
Then right click on the clips, go to Take and press Lock to active take.
That way, accidentally clicking on a clip won’t change the active takes that you’ve
selected.
You can also press Ctrl L again at this point to remove the take lanes and show only the
active takes.
They won’t be deleted, but they will be hidden so they take up less screen space,
and now you can work with them as if they were just a single recording on your track.
Even after the takes are not displayed, you’ll still be able to adjust the transition position
or crossfades between them.
One other thing we can do with the different takes is create a comp.
A comp allows us to have multiple combination of takes, save them, and switch between them
quickly in the menu.
Once we’ve selected the takes and the splits we want to use, double click on the blank
grey area of the tracks setting to select all the clips.
Then right click on one of the clips, go to Comps and Save as new comp.
Then, with all the clips selected, we can go back to the comps by right clicking again
to switch between them.
One thing comps won’t do though is allow you to change the position of the crossfades
between takes.
That will remain the same between all of them.
Thanks for checking out this video on recording and editing audio in Reaper with multiple
takes.
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