Spot on.
1 BigUp
Bought my laptop to work, only got Reaper downloaded atm.
Gonna start with jus trying to make a drum beat to start with and go from there.
Anyone recommend any decent plugin/vsts for programming drums?
I would just start making beats without a plugin - select a 2 bar region, put a kick, snare, and hat on their own tracks, and have at it. Later on you can fuck with some stuff after you have a feel for where things should go.
Haven’t used this but heard ok stuff about it
https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/1-Instruments/5-Sampler/795-Beat-Twist
2 Likes
50 mins into this tutorial to get started.
No mention of how to make a beat yet so gonna find some drum beat tutorials
1 BigUp
Nice one!
Jus realised that you don’t have any sample packs with Reaper do you? As in no kicks, snares etc? Need to download some
1 BigUp
Yeah, no sounds loaded. BPB got the hookup:
Tons here too:
And this just landed here today
1 BigUp
Fukin hell jus took me an hour to lay a basic beat with kick, snare and hi hat lol
Jus downloded that 808 pack on BPB
1 BigUp
this is the only plugin that managed to crash reaper for me lol, but it’s a good one if all you wanna do is lay down a simple beat, they have 909 too
just experiment and get used to your drums looking like a fucking mess, lol.
1 BigUp
Is that your screen shot?
What about pads, are they in reaper anywhere or do you need to download them?
yea.
as for the pads no.
reaper doesn’t come with any samples and tbh instruments per se, there’s a couple of basic synths included, but that’s it, it’s the kind of software where you interpret the 3rd party stuff you like into your workflow and shape it to your liking.
I mostly use free plugins, so most of my pads are really basic stuff out of Synth1 and Tyrell N6, just detune two saw/square/triangle oscillators, lowpass/bandpass it and play a chord and you have instant amosphere.
psps, just sample weird shit, timestretch it, put it in a sampler and try to play a melody with it or sth, it sounds good
1 BigUp
Yeah man i plan to cut my own samples with the shit load of music i have.
Programming hi hats to go well with a beat is gonna be hard i’m guessing.
Could never get hihats sounding good when i dabbled in Reason briefly years ago
Hats have their own tricks and whatnot. Delays can do cool things to hat patterns as well.
Re: Synth - this is one of the best for n00bs imo:
1 BigUp
I can hook you up I got phat sample folders. Saves you searching and me finding links.
Also rinse this thread
This what mine looks like. I only use midi for melodies, and all my drums are samples laid out in the track window.
A few useful but not obvious tips.
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Right click this button in the top left, it opens a new window where you can adjust the grid lines to divide your bars into quarters, eigths, 16ths etc
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Alt-S on Mac turns off snap to grid so you can move samples freely.
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Click on a sample and press N and it’ll open the nudge window so you can finetune placement.
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Tempo, time sig and playback rate are at the bottom of your track window but above the channel volume sliders
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Right click the volume knob on the track to open this window. Set width to 0% to make that track mono
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Cmd-Alt-X opens your Media Explorer so you can search for and preview your samples from inside Reaper before adding them to your track.
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Double click a sample to open it’s properties window. Here you can fine tune the fade in/out curves to tame transients, create fades, adjust attck, remove pops etc
Some good start points…
Synths/
Cheeze Machine 2
Podolski
Tal Noizemaker
Synth-1
I have ZERO idea on using synths, still can’t wrap my head round how they work - too many buttons and knobs, but play around for a while and you’ll make some sounds no sweat.
Delay/
Tritik Delay (well worth 45 quid)
Valhalla Freq Echo (free)
Reverb/
Oril River (free)
Raum (not sure if free, my copy has some controls greyed out but I got it thru NI so I dunno)
Distortion/
Bezerk Distortion
Krush (I use this on all my subs - crank the drive to halfway, the freq filter all the way up, set your sync rate, and then adjust the freq modulation to taste. Instant fuzzy, thicc wobbles on your sub)
Izotope Vinyl (vinyl distortion emulator - add crunch, fuzz, crackle, dust, warp machine noise etc)
Finally.
Simple sub.
Open Audacity.
Click on Generate>Tone
Enter your parameters (this is a good guide for frequencies and their corresponding musical notes. I just use a straight 40hz sub all the time.)
Hit OK et voila. A sub tone. Export as a .wav and you can then drag this into Reaper and chop it up and mainpulate it as you wish. Or load it into a sampler and move it up and down the notes.
3 Likes
Good tips all around, i’d just add that you can make your own shortcuts for just about anything,
and if you find yourself doing something often you can create your own toolbars with buttons and shit and rearrange and drag stuff around, you could have the transport bar at the top of the screen, if you want.
Also, re: subs, just pick any of the synths you listed and use 1 oscillator set to sine, same thing as the tone generator, just without setting a specific frequency.
Then there’s a fuckload of things you can do to add some character to it, like adding other oscillators and detuning, messing with pitch envelopes, parallel distortion etc, but a simple sinewave will be powerful on a big system
3 Likes
I really need to sit down for a few hours and work this out. I feel dumb af not getting it.
I’ve watched a few vids and read everything you guys talk about but I just cannot for the life of me figure it out. Hence why I use a wav of a 40hz, I can make it do what I want it to (mostly) but it just doesn’t sound good like other ppls subs. And it’s not a clean way of working which grieves me,
Cheers mate i will use this later on at work!
Isn’t there any decent delays that are free?