Hey guys, in this video we’re going to cover how to work with MIDI in Reaper.
We’ll start by recording MIDI with a MIDI instrument.
Then we’ll go over how to use some of the tools to fix those recordings, such as quantization.
Lastly, we’ll cover the piano roll and how to manual write out MIDI.
Before checking out this video, make sure you’ve watched the previous ones in this
series so you’re all caught up.
Before we get started, it’s worth noting that there’s a little bit of a problem with
the audio recordings for this tutorial and the next one.
You may hear a little bit of clicking and popping and a little bit of latency in the
audio.
This is because to capture the audio recordings with the screen capture for Reaper, you have
to set the audio to DirectSound instead of ASIO.
This doesn’t work properly with MIDI and it creates these sounds, and you won’t get
them when you’re recording with ASIO on your own system.
To get started with MIDI, we’ll add a new MIDI track.
Right click on the blank track area and select Insert Virtual Instrument on New Track.
I’ll add MT-PowerDrumKit, which is a free MIDI drum VST instrument that we talked about
in some other videos.
When you add the virtual instrument, you’ll be asked if you want to add the associated
stereo outputs.
We’ll choose Yes for this, that way we can edit different parts of the drum kit individually.
Within the plugin, we can route different parts of the kit to different tracks.
I’m not going to cover that in this video since it’s specific to the plugin, but you
can learn about that in the MTPowerDrumKit tutorial for Reaper that’s already posted
on our channel.
Now let’s create a MIDI clip so we can edit the MIDI with the piano roll.
We’ll click and drag to create a time selection on our track.
Then click and select our virtual instrument.
Go to insert at the top and select New MIDI item.
Now click on that MIDI item to bring up the piano roll.
The first thing we should do to organize ourselves is create labels for the MIDI notes, especially
since we’re working with drums.
This wouldn’t be necessary if we’re using the keyboard instead though.
This will allow us to quickly see what each MIDI note value is mapped to on the kit, instead
of just the numbers we have now.
To do this, go to the file menu and select Note/CC names, and load Note/CC names from
file.
We’ll navigate to a file on our computer where these are stored.
These mappings can be found online from MTPowerDrumKit, so we don’t need to go through the tedious
process of making it on our own for Reaper.
As you can see, having the map is really useful, since the mapping is all over the place.
These can also vary by plugin or the MIDI instrument you’re using.
If you want to you can do this manually from the file menu but it is very tedious to do.
With the piano roll configured, we can start drawing MIDI notes.
To draw a note, click and drag at different points on the piano roll.
The up and down position changes the note you’re adding, and the left and right is
the timing.
After a note is added you can click and drag it left or right to change the timing, or
up or down to change the note value.
You can also drag the ends to change the length.
To delete a note, click on it and press the delete key on the keyboard, or right click
the note and select delete.
When adding notes, the position and length of the note can be determined by snapping
to the grid.
Snapping is enabled by default, but can be turned on and off by clicking the magnet button
in the top menu.
To the left of that, we can choose to view the grid lines.
I like to keep these on while editing.
The snapping and grid resolution is determined at the bottom.
We can switch the resolution with the drop down menu.
I’ll usually keep it at 8th notes of 16th notes.
It’s easier to map MIDI with the note resolution as large as possible, but you can always switch
it if needed.
There’s also options for changes to the resolution such as triplets or swing to the
left, and the swing opens a slider to change the strength from -100% to 100%.
To the right, we have the default note length when we click, instead of clicking and dragging.
I’ll usually just keep this as grid so it will sync with the grid resolution.
Having the default note length set incorrectly isn’t too big of a deal since you can click
and drag anyways.
At the bottom, we can change the velocity of each of the notes.
First we select a note on the grid, and then drag the velocity bar up or down.
It’s useful to develop the habit of selecting the note on the grid first.
This allows you to change the velocity of only one note of the overlapping notes at
a time.
So if the drums hit a hi hat and kick at the same time, we can adjust the velocity separately.
Another way we can work with MIDI is to record with a MIDI controller.
We start again by creating a virtual instrument or MIDI track.
Then set the input to our MIDI controller.
You can specify a channel to record from if you want to, otherwise all channels mode works
fine.
Now that it’s setup, just arm the track to record and record it just like we would
with an audio track.
After that’s done, we can open up the piano roll view by clicking on the clip.
With the piano roll, we can make manual edits like we saw before, so if we hit the wrong
note, off time, or with the wrong velocity, all of these can be edited without having
to record a new take.
Let’s go over some of the other things we can do from here.
First is transposing the MIDI recording, which means we bring the pitch up or down for all
the notes.
To do this, press Ctrl + A to select all the notes.
Now hover over a note and click and drag to change the pitch.
Just be careful not to also change the timing as you do this.
Don’t do this when the up/down arrow shows on the edge or you’ll be changing the velocity.
Click on the middle of the notes.
The other thing we can do is apply quantization.
When we record with a MIDI controller, our timing is unlikely to be perfect.
Quantization allows us to snap the timing of the notes to the grid to automatically
create perfect timing.
To quantize the notes, press the Q button to bring up the quantization options.
We’ll leave the settings as Use Grid, that way if uses the resolution that our piano
roll is set to.
Change this to the largest time setting possible for your clip, otherwise it is more likely
that your notes will snap to the wrong position.
If you’re playing all 8th notes, set it to 8th notes.
If you set it to 16th notes, you can have a note snapping in between where it should
be instead.
Then we’ll chose to quantize all notes by position.
For a percussion track, we don’t need to worry much about the note end since the plugins
just respond to the note instantaneously.
For a keyboard or synth, we’ll also want to quantize note length or end position so
they end at the right time.
I’ll keep the strength at 100% and then press ok to apply it.
After you’ve applied it, listen back to your clips to make sure it hasn’t snapped
the wrong way.
If it has, just manually click and drag the MIDI event to the proper position.
Another thing we can do is route MIDI clips on virtual instrument tracks to audio tracks.
This doesn’t play anything on the audio track, but it can allow us to control plugins
on that track.
One example is with autotune.
There’s a free plugin called GSnap autotune that works with Reaper, and it can be programmed
to work with MIDI input to snap the voice to those notes, as we covered in a previous
video on this channel.
To get this working, open the signal routing on the track we’ll apply the autotune plugin.
Then Add a new receive as the MIDI track.
After thats we can set our plugin to follow these MIDI events, but that depends on the
plugin.
Thanks for checking out this video on recording and editing MIDI in Reaper.
If this video helped you out, don’t forget to give it a like, subscribe to the channel,
and press the bell icon to get notifications whenever a new video is released.
You can also check the video description for products featured in this video and links
to social media accounts so you can stay up to date on all our new content.