Windows 7 and Reaper

Okay, its been a while since I posted any thing, but I wanted to wait till I stabilized a few things. So now I believe everything is working quite nicely.  Reaper runs on Window 7 effortlessly and loads very quickly, so I finally purchased the discounted license since I'm not making any money from my music (yet!). I have had time now to really get a grasp on using it and am amazed by it's power and flexibility from recording audio or midi tracks, to editing midi, to arranging my compositions, and rendering audio files.  This program seems to have no limits. It will even work as a Rewire slave for Riffworks.  I had problems getting Rewire to work at first in Windows 7 but was able to change a few settings in the Preferences and it seems to work now.  In addition I have added a new midi interface to my recording setup, a Korg padKontrol.  It is awesome, now I can create my own drum loops, fills, etc. I have also purchased Steven Slate drums EX edition at a steal.  This is a VSTi plugin which gives me like 10 drum kits to play with.. Hopefully I can start sharing more detail with using Reaper real soon.

Super Bad

First this is not a movie review.  I'm working on a new song which with a Hip Hop beat which I got from Drum Core Free, from Somona Wireworks. It has both MIDI and Audio samples of a variety of beats. In addition I'm using another free instrument from Native Instruments call Kore Player  It either has some compatibility problems with Reaper or I'm having problems with my PC ASIO driver from Line6 or there is something with the Windows XP Media Center addition operating system that cause Kore Player to start bursting out tones whenever it feels like it, which requires me to reset the player preset or restart Reaper completely.  I'm adding a new hard drive to my PC very soon and am going to install Widows 7 and try running Reaper and my other recording apps on it.  We will see how that goes very soon. That is all for now.

Don't Kill the Reaper

It appears that my KB37 doesn't always initialize correctly and I can use the MIDI to do any recording, so a hard reset of the KB37 is required. But!! If I pull the USB cable from it while running Reaper, Reaper KILLS my computer, sometime the blue screen of death.  So now I learned to shut Reaper down before pulling the USB cable out.

Anyway I started working on a song to experiment with some VSTi (Virtual Studio Technology Instruments) for drums. Found a free one called Maniac which randomizes some sound based on some parameters that you set or select from some pre-defined settings. I'm going to play with this somemore because it looks to have some real potential.  In addition I'm playing around with automation of effects again.  You can hear it on the lead guitar track where I'm varying the envelope to change the knob position of the phasers ENV-LFO mix.  You can hear the song here.

Plan B

So this is what happened with Plan B. I started this song in Riffworks and then Mix down the drums, bass, and guitar parts to separate wav files. Next I opened up the folder where I saved the wav files and just dragged and dropped them in. Reaper created a track automatically so that part of the process was easy. I did a quick check to see how it sounded and everything checked out perfectly. Now here is where the real fun begins but not without some complications. Let me explain. I actually started with a file with some MIDI files already intact but I didn't get any sound from those tracks, not sure why. So I created a new track and dragged the MIDI portion of the song to the new track then proceeded to play it back again. This time was a success. Now I wanted to add some effects to the tracks and mix. I used all free VST plugins which I found on the internet and downloaded. I added Stereo Up to one of the rhythm guitar parts and some Polyphase effect to the other guitar rhythm track for a really cool effect. I did some other effects stuff to including and EQ to the master output. So let me tell you about some of the problems I had.

It seems that my MIDI keyboard track would drop out the audio now and then, so I monkeyed around with the ASIO driver to see if I could fix the drop outs. When I would try to playback or record and monitor the audio everytime I hit a certain key in a lower octave the audio would just drop out completely. If I stopped the recording or playback and resumed it I was able to get the audio back. I think I was able to fix it a little but it would still occur but only one speaker channel would drop the audio signal. This had now effect on the the final rendering of the song from with Reaper. I rendered the song to a wav then used Audacity to do some mastering.

You can here the song here: Infectious

My Rewire experience with Riffworks

Okay, I have wanted to use the Rewire capability of Riffworks for a long time have had little success pulling it off. Why because of the ASIO driver crashing. I'm not sure if it is the Host or the Slave application. For those of you who don't understand that, the host is the application that is receiving the audio stream while the slave is the application sending the stream. I have tried other apps as a slave to Riffworks such as FL Studio with some success but usually the crash at some point. Sometimes I need to reboot my PC because after the crash the ASIO driver is no longer available. I did learn that if I disconnect the USB cable from my audio interface (Line 6 KB37 in my case) and reconnect it, it will restart the driver. However, this only works if I shut down the host application (Riffworks) and restart it. Remember to save your work often so you don't lose anything you recorded. Reaper seamed stable using rewire for a while then it would crash and pop up a message for some error and have to shut down. It seemed to become more frequent the more I added MIDI tracks to the Reaper session, or tried to add effects to different tracks. I played with different buffer settings in the ASIO driver but nothing seemed to matter in the long run. Some of the issues may be some of the VSTs used to but there is know way of really knowing because the crashes just seem random to me.

I have tried doing some Rewiring using the Proppellerhead's Record program with the best success. Why? I guess because they invented Rewire. This is and awesome program and if you own Reason it will with Record flawlessly. The demo period ended so I could do no further testing on it. Reason and Record are proprietary so you can't use any old VST to plug into it. Another reason to use Reaper. VSTs work very well, and I found a lot of good free ones that are pretty awesome. I will cover that in another post sometime. My goal was to add synth sounds and keyboard parts, or drums to recordings in Riffworks so Rewire looked like a viable option. What's next?

Plan B for me to Mix down the Riffworks song to wav and bring that into Reaper to add MIDI tracks to it. Should work but I have done it yet and will keep you posted and share my results with that later.

I will also try to share my "How to" with you.

If you have any Reaper Rewire experience I would like to hear from you. Post your comments please. Till next time. Have a great day (or night).

My Experience with Reaper (DAW) Introduction

Hello, I'm not a professional audio engineer or technician, but rather a hobbyist with a thirst for learning more about recording music with the PC. If your reading this you are probably like me and wonder how can a produce music on my PC for as little money as possible. Well I'm going to share my knowledge and experiences on Reaper by Cockos. I will share what I have learned both good and bad.

So why did I choose Reaper? Because of it low cost to high quality ratio. It has a low price tag, its a small download, and it loads fairly fast. I started my recording music experience with RiffworksSonoma Wireworks by which has a simple and intuitive way for recording and creating songs. Designed mainly for guitar players, it is fundamentally simple and fun to use. Some great features of Riffworks are its built effects, Instant Drummer, Rex Player, and Rewire ability. It was the Rewire ability that got me started in exploring other applications. Rewire was developed by Propellerhead Software as a means to synchronize audio streams from application to application. I have had issues with Rewire working effectively with other applications including Reaper. Rewire doesn't seem to work 100% outside the confines of Propellerheads Reason software which is to pricey for me. I have been using Riffworks for 4 years and don't plan on quitting using it either, but it has some limitations and my thirst for doing more creative music production has lead me to search for other methods of recording and doing music production on my PC. I have searched the internet for other DAWs or Digital Audio Workstations and have done some comparing. There are a good number of other DAWs available including Cakewalk Sonar, Ableton Live, Sony Acid Studio, and Digidesign's Pro Tools used by top musicians and studios around the globe. All come with a price tag and as a novice still learning I don't want to spend that kind of money. Enter Reaper.