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GMC Forum _ PRACTICE ROOM _ Help With Improvising Using Reaper Please

Posted by: norules Aug 1 2014, 04:52 PM

Wondering if anyone can tell me if this is possible with reaper.

I love improvising by myself but I get a bit bored playing to one drum pattern/bassline/tempo. I used to have an akai drum machine with foot switches and I could cue the next drum pattern using the foot switches as well as a turn around.

Is it possible to do this on my computer using reaper and say a midi controller/ foot switch or a launch pad type thing so that I can set ideally several drum patterns/basslines/whatever so they are assigned to a button I can hit in real time and que them to play after the current section finishes?

Any advice on how to do this or any other software that will do it instead please?

Thanks very much!

Posted by: Kristofer Dahl Aug 1 2014, 09:29 PM

Interesting, I'd like to know as well. Let's see if we get any answers.

This would be a killer improvement for us bedroom guitarists!

Posted by: Gabriel Leopardi Aug 2 2014, 12:32 AM

As soon as I read this thread I first thought on that amazing pedal called "Beat Buddy" that appeared this year at Namm.






It allows you do do exactly what you are looking for and the good thing is that you can do it with your foot.

About Reaper, I don't use it, but I think that a good trick would be to have many midi channels on a project with different drums loops and use any shortcut to solo and mute different channels to go from one channel to the other one. This is how I would do it with Cubase, let's see if anybody has experience with Reaper and has some ideas on how to do this...


Posted by: huargo Aug 2 2014, 09:55 AM

Hi!
You can use a midi joystick or device to switch between markers... in every marker you can put a different pattern and a different tempo as well....
Maybe this link can help you. This link explain how to setup a gamepad to star playback and record, etc... with the midi learn function. You can use midi learn to switch between markers.

http://damacleod.wordpress.com/2010/11/06/setting-up-reaper-to-work-with-my-usb-footswitch/


i use and easy option, markers and and switch between them with a numpad....

if you make some test keep us updated! smile.gif

cheers!


Posted by: Mith Aug 2 2014, 10:11 AM

Abelton live is more designed for that kind of work. Its what most electronic producers use for on the fly changes

QUOTE (Gabriel Leopardi @ Aug 2 2014, 07:32 AM) *
As soon as I read this thread I first thought on that amazing pedal called "Beat Buddy" that appeared this year at Namm.






It allows you do do exactly what you are looking for and the good thing is that you can do it with your foot.

About Reaper, I don't use it, but I think that a good trick would be to have many midi channels on a project with different drums loops and use any shortcut to solo and mute different channels to go from one channel to the other one. This is how I would do it with Cubase, let's see if anybody has experience with Reaper and has some ideas on how to do this...


Also the camera man in that first clip would have to be the worst camera man to ever be a camera man. zoom in, then out, then in out 1/2 out right in close, side to side.

Posted by: Gabriel Leopardi Aug 2 2014, 04:35 PM

QUOTE (Mith @ Aug 2 2014, 06:11 AM) *
Abelton live is more designed for that kind of work. Its what most electronic producers use for on the fly changes



Also the camera man in that first clip would have to be the worst camera man to ever be a camera man. zoom in, then out, then in out 1/2 out right in close, side to side.



hahah it's true! Yeah, I'm not a user of Ableton but I use Reason which is similar and I think that this could be more doable with it. It includes some loop creators like Redrum that can be automatized or that can be assigned to your keyboard to change loops live.

Posted by: Mertay Aug 2 2014, 05:17 PM

Definitely a DJ sort of experience needed smile.gif but as said Ableton is pretty much designed to do that sort of stuff.

Go to the Reaper forum, search or ask those guys are helpful and most do electronica sort of music anyway. They connect joysticks for midi controller I'm sure they'll figure out something biggrin.gif

Posted by: Todd Simpson Aug 3 2014, 02:44 AM

Well, is there any particular reason you want it real time? Are you just sorta jamming and when you get tired of one section, want to change on the fly? That sort of think? If so, like the guys are saying CUBASE is the DAW for that sort of thing and there are wads of midi controllers made to work with it.

You could always use ez drummer or something similar, which comes with wads of drums beats and drag and drop your drums to build a song. But that would just be drums. You'd need midi or wave files for the rest of the tracks.

If you are looking for jam tracks, youtube is FULL of wads of them. If you are wanting to build your own, you could always build an actual tune and solo over that and build instrumental songs smile.gif

Posted by: Mith Aug 3 2014, 07:18 AM

I use cubase and you can do it with an aranger channel. I use it alot for writing since I can record the chorus Riff once and then the verse riff once and so on And then I use supiriour drummer2 for the drums (OMG They are so good). I often also have a fair few synth VST's. Once I got the general idea of a song I use the arranger to mess about with diff rent arrangements of a song until I find one that I think will work because sometimes it all changes when I write lyrics and what I thought was going to be a verse ends up being a chorus and so on.

When it comes to writing I can put my hand on my heart and say I think Cubase is the best DAW for creating. It does have some short comings like if you have heaps of external gear like compressors and what not or hardware synths it takes a bit longer to patch them in compared to Pro-Tools But it more than makes up for it in other areas.

I also DJ thats how I know about abelton and how popular it is, some also use fruityloops. I messed about with all of them. There is no one DAW that is the absolute best. just find one that does the basic things you want well then learn it.

The one thing I want to look into is an affordable way to transfer my Cubase projects into protools and vice versa if I ever want someone else to mix or master stuff for me

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