ReaProducer - Accessible Audio Production with Reaper

If you found this demo helpful and fancy buying Scott a coffee, donations sent to https://paypal.me/ScottChesworth will reach him. All feedback welcome, feel free to drop him a line on [email protected]. 
You can also support the ongong cost  of hosting this material by donating to https://paypal.me/AudioPizza
Hope it's useful!

If you found this demo helpful and fancy buying Scott a coffee, donations sent to https://paypal.me/ScottChesworth will reach him. All feedback welcome, feel free to drop him a line on [email protected]. 
You can also support the ongong cost  of hosting this material by donating to https://paypal.me/AudioPizza
Hope it's useful!

The second in the series from Scott which walks through creating and saving a new project in Reaper.

If you found this demo helpful and fancy buying Scott a coffee, donations sent to https://paypal.me/ScottChesworth will reach him. All feedback welcome, feel free to drop Scott a line on [email protected]. Hope it's useful!

This is the first in a series of episodes - Ten Typical Tasks with Scott.  The content was originally recorded for I See Music for their Accessible DAW Comparison webinar on 30th October 2020. Concept and transitions by Slau Halatyn. If you found these demos helpful and fancy buying Scott a coffee, donations sent to https://paypal.me/ScottChesworth will reach him. All feedback welcome, feel free to drop a line to [email protected]. Hope it's useful!

Links

In a recent OSARA update, support has been improved for context menus on Windows, and added to the Mac. Additional context menus are available for envelopes and automation points, reporting state has been improved and these are also available on the Mac. As there is no applications key on the standard Mac keyboard, bindings have been added to Control+1 for the first context menu, this is equivalent to pressing the app key on Windows. The second and third context menus that are available on Windows with Control+AppKey and Alt+AppKey are available with the Mac’s Control+2, and Control+3. If you are using a keyboard on your Mac that has an AppKey than this will work in the same way it would on Windows.

It is important to note that moving forward, OSARA requires Reaper 5.92 and above.

I also wanted to point out that since the latest updates to the OSARA key map, the ForwardSlash key has been left with no assignments bound and the plan is to try and keep it this way, so that users have the ability to add their own bindings without them being over written by future updates.

• AppKey or MacControl+1 OSARA: Show first context menu (depending on
• Control+AppKey or MacControl+2 OSARA: Show second context menu (depending on focus)
• Alt+AppKey or MacControl+3 OSARA: Show third context menu (depending on focus)focus)

This session steps through doing basic automation of track volume, pan and effect parameters in Reaper with OSARA.

Please note that there has been an update to the key map since this was recorded. You now arm an envelope with Alt (or Option on Mac) +L rather than the quoted Control+L.

There are a number of different ways of writing automation in Reaper and if you have a Control Surface, this will open up more.

This episode shows how to manually write in automation points, and we start with the Volume Envelope, no control surface necessary.

In case you’re not too sure what automation is, in the context of a DAW, it allows you to control a particular parameter such as the volume of a track, so that it is at different levels at different parts of the timeline. For example, if you have some music on one track, and a voice over on another track, you might wish to decrease the volume of the music whilst the voice is speaking and than raise it up again. To do this, you can write in some automation for the track volume envelope.

1. Select the track to automate.
2. Toggle the Volume envelope visible, with Control+Alt+V. 
3. Select the Vol Envelope with Alt+L. If you have multiple envelopes enable for a track, this will cycle through the visible envelopes. You add the Shift key to cycle through the envelopes in reverse.
4. Move to the point at which you wish to start adjusting the track volume and add a point with Shift+E – Insert point at current position. This will insert a point at the current edit cursor position and at the current envelope value. So in our case, since we’ve not yet adjusted the volume, the envelope value will be 0db. This is the point at which we want to start the fade of the music for our voice over. When the first point is inserted, Reaper will automatically insert another point at the very beginning of the track, so our point will actually be point two.
5. Given we are wanting to have the Vol fade down before the voice over starts, move forward to the point just before speech starts. As we are going to want to adjust the value of this point, use the command ?Edit envelope point at cursor" bound to Alt+Shift+E. If our cursor isn’t on an envelope point, this command will first add one and than bring up a dialog to adjust it. Put in the amount by which you wish to drop the Vol, for example, negative 15db, and press enter.

You have now faded the volume of your music track. If you make no other changes, the volume will stay where you last set it until the end of the project. In the case of a voice over, you are probably going to want to raise the volume of the music track back up. So repeat these basic steps. Add another point at minus 15db, at the end of the vocals. This will hold the volume at this level until this point on the timeline, in other words you are setting the location at which you want the fade up to start. Move forward the length of the desired fade and add another point, editing it and setting the value back to 0db.

Within the dialog for an envelope point, there are a number of other values you can adjust. These include the position, and the shape of the envelope. The shape determines how the envelope will change between the selected point and the next point.

The principles above can be applied to any envelope you add to a track or item. To add a parameter of an effect, access the effect and click the Param button. This will bring up a menu, select the FX parameter list submenu and than Show track envelope, and find the parameter you want to add as an envelope.

If you have been adjusting a specific parameter of an effect and decide you want to add it as an envelope for the track, you can use the command “Show/hide track envelope for last touched FX parameter” which is mapped to Control+Alt+L.

Once you have envelopes added, use the OSARA commands, move to next or previous point below, to select and adjust or delete. Multiple points can also be selected. See the commands listed below.

The NumPad 8 and 2, can be used to adjust the value of a selected point and NumPad 4 or 6 along with the comma and period, can be used to adjust the position.

• Control+Alt+V Track: Toggle track volume envelope visible
• Control+Alt+P Track: Toggle track pan envelope visible
• Alt+L OSARA: Select next track/take envelope (depending on focus)
• Alt+Shift+L OSARA: Select previous track/take envelope (depending on focus)
• Alt+J OSARA: Move to previous envelope point
• Alt+K OSARA: Move to next envelope point
• Alt+Shift+J OSARA: Move to previous envelope point (leaving other points selected)
• Alt+Shift+K OSARA: Move to next envelope point (leaving other points selected)
• Shift+E Envelope: Insert new point at current position
• Alt+Shift+E Envelope: Edit envelope point value at cursor
• , or NumPad4 Item edit: Move items/envelope points left
• . or NumPad6 Item edit: Move items/envelope points right
• NumPad8 Item edit: Move items/envelope points up one track/a bit
• NumPad2 Item edit: Move items/envelope points down one track/a bit

During a recent update to OSARA, the key map has been updated, and upgraded. There are a number of new key assignments , and rearrangements to existing keystrokes. These are outlined below.

Once you install the new key map, turn on shortcut help with F12 and explore the U, G, dash and equals, keys with the various modifiers and you will find the majority of the changes, however there are some others. Read on for a full list.

• Control+Alt+F6 Options: Solo in front
  This action toggles between standard solo and in-front solo. When in-front solo is enabled, soloing a track will turn all other tracks down by a configurable amount. by default this is 18dB, and adjustable in preferences > Mute/Solo.

• Alt+\ SWS/BR: Options – Cycle through record modes
  This action will toggle the record mode between Normal Record, time selection auto-punch, and selected item auto-punch

• Control+Shift+U SWS/BR: Analyze loudness…
• Shift+U SWS/BR: Normalize loudness of selected items/tracks…

These actions allow analysis and normalisation of either items or tracks to a LUFS standard.

• Alt+Control+L FX: Show/hide track envelope for last touched FX parameter
• Control+Alt+Shift+PageUp SWS/S&M: Move selected FX up in chain for selected tracks
• Control+Alt+Shift+PageDown SWS/S&M: Move selected FX down in chain for selected tracks
• Control+Shift+B Monitoring FX: Toggle bypass
• Alt+Shift+B SWS/S&M: Toggle all take FX bypass for selected items

Two actions that many have called for adding to the key map are those for moving effects up and down in a chain. The action to toggle last touched effect parameter is another that many have chosen to add to their key map, and these are all now in the map by default. Monitoring effects can be added via the View Menu, and affect what you hear through the master out, without affecting the render of a project, use the above action to toggle bypass on this. The action to toggle bypass on all selected items has also been added.

• Control+H Item: Heal splits in items
• Shift+V Take: Paste as takes in items
• Control+Alt+Shift+, SWS: Move selected item(s) left edge to edit cursor
• Control+Alt+Shift+. SWS: Move selected item(s) right edge to edit cursor
• Windows+Shift+, Custom: trim left edge of items respecting ripple
• Windows+Shift+. Custom: trim right edge of items respecting ripple
• Windows+Control+X Item: Cut selected area of items
• Windows+Control+C Item: Copy selected area of items
• Windows+Control+Delete Item: Remove selected area of items
• Windows+Control+T Item: Trim items to selected area

There’s some extremely useful keystrokes in the above list, such as healing items and the ability to paste an item as a new take within another item.

The Two custom item trim actions are extremely useful. You can use the actions by firstly selecting an item and than moving the edit cursor to where you’d like to trim the item edge. If you place the edit cursor within the bounds of the item you selected, the current ripple mode will be respected when the action is run. However if you are outside the bounds of the selected item, the ripple mode will be ignored. Let me give two examples.

Let’s say we have an item on a track and cut the end of it off by splitting and deleting a section. Later we decide that we want to grow some of this item back. We could select the item and use the action – Grow right edge of items, to grow back the section. However a quicker way would be to select the item, move the edit cursor past the item to the point where we want to have our item grow to, than use the action – trim right edge of items respecting ripple. This will grow the right edge of the item out to the point of the cursor. This is also useful when you want to loop an item, given the properties of the item are set accordingly, select the item, and move forward as far as required through the project and grow to that location with trim right edge of items respecting ripple. Remember, that when you use this action outside the bounds of the selected item, it does not respect ripple.

Another way you might use these actions is to select an item than move into the middle of the item and either trim the beginning or end of the item. For example, if you want to remove the beginning of an item, you could split the item, and than select the first section, than delete. This can also be done with the newly added custom actions. So, rather than splitting and deleting, you can just move to the point you’d have split, and use – trim left edge of items respecting ripple, this will indeed trim the item to the selected point and respect ripple.

In the same way that if you had split and deleted, trim would have been respected, using this new action from inside the bounds of an item, ripple will be respected. Also, when used outside the bounds of an item, ripple is not respected, just like when you grow the edge of an item. All a bit confusing at first, but play with these and you’re bound to find some use cases.

The actions to do with “Area of items” that have been bound to Windows+Control, or Control+Command on the Mac, act in a similar way to, Smart Copy, Smart Cut, etc, however these do work more reliably with Midi.

• Control+F Item: Show FX chain for item take
• Shift+E Envelope: Insert new point at current position
• Control+Shift+I Envelope: Insert automation item

The existing bindings located on the number pad are still available.
* – View: Zoom out horizontal
* = View: Zoom in horizontal

• Control+U Item: Glue items
• Control+Alt+U Item: Move items to subproject (non-destructive glue)
• Alt+U Track: Move tracks to subproject

• Control+G Item grouping: Group items
• Control+Shift+G Item grouping: Remove items from group
• Shift+G Item grouping: Select all items in groups
• Alt+G Track: Set track grouping parameters
• Control+Alt+G Options: Toggle item grouping override

• Control+Home Transport: Go to start of project
• Control+End Transport: Go to end of project
• Home Go to start of time selection
• End Go to end of time selection
• Alt+Shift+Home Go to start of loop
• Alt+Shift+End Go to end of loop
• Alt+Shift+Left View: Move cursor left to grid division
• Alt+Shift+Right View: Move cursor right to grid division

These assignments are currently duplicated on their prior positions, however the old bindings may be reallocated in the future.
* Alt+Shift+- SWS: Recall previous snapshot
* Alt+Shift+= SWS: Recall next snapshot
* Alt+Shift+Backspace SWS: Recall current snapshot
* Alt+Shift+` SWS: Open snapshots window

• Control+Alt+- SWS/FNG: Time compress selected items (fine)
• Control+Alt+= SWS/FNG: Time stretch selected items (fine)
• Shift+- Transport: Decrease playrate by ~0.6% (10 cents)
• Shift+= Transport: Increase playrate by ~0.6% (10 cents)
• Control+Shift+- Transport: Decrease playrate by ~6% (one semitone)
• Control+Shift+= Transport: Increase playrate by ~6% (one semitone)

• Alt+Shift+, Item edit: Move items/envelope points left by grid size
• Alt+Shift+. Item edit: Move items/envelope points right by grid size
• Windows+Control+L Item: Copy loop of selected area of audio items

In this session I take a look at measuring and normalising to a LUFS value in Reaper.
The first part of the episode covers what LUFS actually represents and how it is calculated. I start with discussing what Peak and RMS represent and how they are measured and the issues with normalising to each of these values when applied to Loudness.

In short LUFS is calculated by taking the RMS, through a EQ filter that approximates the bias of human hearing and gates out any quiet content, or non foreground content, from the calculation. It is an attempt to put a reproducible value or measure on Loudness, which is inherently subjective. At this time it is the best way of doing this.

I look at two dialogs available in Reaper thanks to the SWS Extension. The first is a tool to normalise either Items or Tracks to an LUFS value. This dialog is not currently bound in the OSARA key map and I have bound it to Shift+U. Normalize loudness of selected items/tracks.
The LUFS analysis dialog available in the Extensions menu or with an action I have bound to Command+Shift+U is also covered. I discuss the various data it provides including the Integrated, Range, True Peak, Short-term, and Momentary values.

I look at some White and Pink noise examples as well as some more real world values when analysing a track from a podcast. The potential issues of simply normalising a file without considering the overall dynamic range of the file is discussed. One limitation of using the analysis tool on a track is that it does not take into account any dynamic compression or effects placed on the track. However if you place the effects on an item and than measure the track, the impact of the effects will be calculated in the values.

• Command+Shift+K SWS: Analyze and display item peak and RMS
• Command+K Custom: Move to item peak and report the position
• Shift+U SWS/BR: Normalize loudness of selected items/tracks…
• Command+Shift+U SWS/BR: Analyze loudness…

The Nudge/set items dialog is another extremely useful feature within Reaper. You can open it with N.
As the name suggests, it allows you to either nudge the position of an item or set it to a specific location. Nudging the position is extremely useful however you can do far more than this. For example, you can nudge the right trim set the position of an item, or duplicate an item a specific number of times placing each item on a beat, or every second.
There are a number of combo boxes within the dialog. Firstly, you can choose to either Nudge or Set. Nudging moves the selected parameter relative to it’s current location, and set will move the parameter to a specific location.
The second combo box lets you choose what you are moving. Choices include, position, left or right trim, end position, left edge, duplicate, or media contents.
The item position is the most straight forward, and is exactly as it sounds, the position of the item on the track in it’s current state.
If you choose the left or right trim, you are saying you want to change where the left or right edge of the item starts. It is the same as growing or shrinking the edge of an item. So, nudging the right trim right by one second makes the item one second longer.
Another option is setting the position of the end point or right edge of the item. So if you need an item to finish at a precise location in your project, than this is an easy way to achieve it.
Rather than moving the item you can move the position of the edit cursor, either nudging by a certain amount or setting it to a specific position.
The dialog also allows for very precise positioning of your chosen boundary/item edge. A combo box gives access to seconds, milliseconds, measures and beats, along with samples and frames. There is also a button that will return the current position of the edit cursor to the text field.
For more details check out the podcast and explore the dialog in Reaper.

Thanks go to Justin MacLeod, @SkyCladSound for this Session.

The SWS ReaConsole

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.

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.

• 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

Official ReaConsole Documentation Derek Lane CAVI Audio Giveaway

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:

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.

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.

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-

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.

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.