The SWS ReaConsole
Basic Usage
Use Option+C on Mac, or Alt+C on Windows to open the console. Type the command and press Enter to commit the command, leaving the console open for another command. You can also press Command+Enter to commit and close the window, which is Control+Return on Windows. Escape will close the console without performing the command.
A ReaConsole command can have up to three parts.
Firstly, the command, which is a letter that denotes what is to be done. eg M for mute or V to set the volume. ,
Than,, an optional text string to specify which tracks are to be adjusted. This can be the track numbers, and/or the track names where * is a wild card. Eg. 2,4–6, which would specify tracks 2, 4, 5, and 6. Or, voc* which would specify any tracks that started with the letters “Voc”.
The final part is the parameter value where relevant. Eg, dB of volume change or in the case of mute, not relevant.
If no tracks are specified in the command, the function will be performed on the currently selected tracks.
Additional Syntax
You can just use a space to separate the track selection from the parameter value, however if you need to be more specific, you can use a semicolon when necessary. One example is where you are renaming a track, you may have multiple words in the text to select the track and than need to use a semicolon to designate where the new track name is to start.
For the toggle commands, using lower case will toggle the current state, prefix with a dash will force to off, prefix with a plus to force on for the selected/specified tracks, leaving the other tracks at their current state. An upper case command letter will force on for only the selected/specified tracks and off for all other tracks.
If you place an exclamation mark, after the command, the action will be performed on the unselected tracks, as though you have inverted the selection.
If you follow the track specifier with a slash, than the command will also be performed on any child tracks, that is tracks within the folder specified.
List of ReaConsole Commands
- v Trim volume
- V Set volume
- p Trim pan
- P Set pan
- s Select
- o Solo
- a Arm
- m Mute
- h Phase
- f Enable Effect (Bypass)
- n* Name Selected Tracks to *
- b* Name Selected Track with prefix *
- z* Name Selected Track with suffix *
- c Change colour on Selected Tracks
- i Set input on Selected Tracks
- l Set # channels on Selected Tracks
- x Add effect to selected tracks
- ! Add action marker at edit cursor
- / Send local OSC message
Links
Official ReaConsole Documentation Derek Lane CAVI Audio Giveaway
additional Details and Examples
ReaConsole is a very quick way to adjust volume, panning, adding/renaming a track, the status of such things as the mute and solo state, and the input (if any) the track is to record from.
Adjustable track values and the command needed to change them are as follows:
track volume:
type v, followed by a number that the volume should increase in DB. Add a - to subtract the value. Example: v10 increases the track volume by 10DB. v–10 decreases it by 10 DB Using an uppercase v sets the number entered to an absolute value. So, lower case v will adjust the volume relative to the current value, but upper case V doesn’t care about what was, it just sets the track to the volume you specify.
Track Pan:
type p and a percentage to adjust the relative track pan from –100% (hard left) to 100% (Hard right) A value of 0 = centre. Just as with volume upper case P makes the pan value you enter absolute; Again, it doesn’t care about what was, it just sets the value to what you want it to be.
set track input:
i followed by the number of the input example: i2 sets the track input to the second input on your audio interface. Upper case letters are ignored, so check your capsloc.
To select a stereo pair of channels, use the s after the channel number. For example: i1s This creates a stereo track containing the first 2 inputs of your interface. Again, check capslock. To cascade inputs, that is, to set track 1 to input 1, track 2 to input 2, etc. create and select the necessary amount of tracks, enter the reaconsole, type i followed by the first track you wish to use, followed by - (dash). So, lets say you created 10 tracks, you could select them with the reaconsole, said command written about in a bit, or use the reaper/osara interface to make the selection. Cascading inputs would look like this: i1- what if you wanted tracks 1–10 to start from input 3, and go to input 13? i3-
Selecting of 1 or more tracks:
Bring up reaconsole, and type an s followed by a single track, or a range of tracks to be armed such as: a 1–10 Using 1–10 establishes the selection in this case. To establish the selection of multiple tracks in various parts of the project, use a comma to ceparate the track names/numbers if they’re not contiguous and a - if they are. Example: s5,10,15 selects tracks 5 10 and 15. s5,10–15 selects track 5 as well as tracks 10 through 15.
You can also use wild card characters at any point to establish your selection or a part of your selection. Example if you have 2 tracks called “Piano left channel,” and “Piano Right Channel” You could type: spiano* to select those tracks. If the tracks are named something like “08, Piano left,” and “09 piano right,” the string above wouldn’t work because numbers exist before the word “Piano.” This, however, would work: sPiano If no other tracks contained the letter p, you could even condense the command to something as small as: sp
These selection commands will not work with upper case letters, so if nothing seems to work when you perform an action on your selection, check your capslock.
Remember that volume and pan commands are effected by the case of v and p.
Here are several ways which could be used to pan our piano tracks, going with the example that the track names start with 08 and 09: s08* P100 s09* P100 This would work but not be the most efficient way of panning because track 8, all one would have to do is simply say p8 –100 p9 100.
Entering a command such as sp P–100 Would pan both tracks left, as any track containing the letter P would find itself hard left.
Adding Effects
To add effects to a track or selected tracks, type x, followed by the first part of a plugin which you’d like to add, then press either enter or Control+Enter as required. Examples: xreag Adds the reagate to the selected track, or tracks. x2–12 reag Adds the reagate effect on tracks 2–12, which is much faster than manually adding a gate on each track. unfortunately, this command acts like the “I’m feeling lucky,” button on google; that is, it adds the first result it finds in a search. It also has the problem of not trying to find your typed string of text anywhere with in the name of your available plugins. So, xreav would give you reaverb added to your selected tracks, but xverb would not.
