Hello GMCers!



My name is Jordan Perks and I live in South Wales in the UK. I'm 18 years old and have been playing guitar since my 15th birthday. I enjoy hiking when i'm not playing guitar- also training for the London marathon.

As some of you know- i have a cool party trick

Now, on to guitar. I love guitarists like John Petrucci, Paul Gilbert, Guthrie Govan and Joe Satriani. My goal as a guitarist is to blend their styles together to create "my own" sound.

Well then; on to the lesson!

There are quite a few people who post on the forum saying they are "unsure how to record" or "don't know what they're doing" when it comes to sharing the licks/riffs they've written.
This lesson should clear things up for those people.

Note: this is not a comprehensive demonstration of everything you can do with Reaper, however it should allow anybody who has the hardware to record the ability to use Reaper to share what they've written with the forum.


Reaper is an inexpensive DAW that has an unlimited trial version. No limitations in functions or time.

You can download Reaper here: http://reaper.fm/

This lesson follows through these stages, to ensure you know you don't miss any stages setting up to record:

- Setting up Audio Device
- Adding a new track/arming for recording
- Checking audio input level
- Recording
- Tidying up our recording
- Rendering

The audio device i'm using is the KORG Pandora PX5d. There are many devices you can use, Line 6 have a great range for starting out with recording, check through the forum for details on that.

I make a reference to Tony's advice to setting An input recording level, which can be found here:

http://www.guitarmasterclass.net/guitar_fo...?showtopic=7635

and be sure to have a look through the rest of the topics here:

http://www.guitarmasterclass.net/guitar_fo...hp?showforum=74 (be sure to read through those once you've got the basics of my lesson done)


Now....when you're ready and have installed Reaper, open my lesson!

Click to view attachment

Note: The video did not run with VLC media player when i tested, but instead worked well with Windows Media Player.

Enjoy the no-nonsense/fast approach to recording your licks!


My next lesson will be about using MIDI to make drums and bass lines.

-Jordan

Nice lesson, I think this should be helpful for a lot of people

Great lesson Jordan! I'm looking forward to your MIDI bass + drum lesson as well!

Thanks.

Me too!! And could you through some keys in there as well? Seriously, great topic for a lesson man, and well explained!

cool lesson man

Thanks all! I'll try and get that MIDI basics lesson done soonish

Nice lesson and clear explanation!

I am gonna download Reaper right now

And hope to see your MIDI bass + drum lesson.

Great explenation

Great lesson DeepRoots

and look forward to the next .

Cheers,
Tony

Great lesson Jordan!

nice and great lesson Deeproots seem very useful

Thanks for your feedback guys

Good topic and nice explanation
Welldone deeproots

Thanks Vinod! Means alot getting your feedback

Awesome lesson. I really could use a program like this and you just saved me atleast 10 hours figuring out how to use it properly.

Is there anyway we can use reaper to mix audio and video. Like lets say we want to do song cover and post it on YouTube. Using a camera to record mostly gives you a pathetic sound. How do we combine the audio and video recorded parts and perfectly synchronise them, other than using windows movie maker?

Hey Jammer, glad you're liking the lesson!

My advice is to set up your reaper session how i advised, then using windows movie maker- or whatever software you are using with your camera- hit record!

Both programs will be running at the same time, start playing, then once finished simply stop recording on both programs and save both items (the audio and the video).

once you have both an audio and a video file saved- you can use windows movie maker to sync them both- a perfect synchronisation would involve using a technique such as muting the guitar strings then strumming them hard. (do this while you are already recording both the audio and video).
Then in movie maker, simply align the video og whacking the strings with the audio- which will be easy to see as a "spike"when you look at the audio track.

Once they are aligned you can start to "crop" both the video and audio together, while they stay sync'd.

When doing this i would advise against trimming the audio track before hand like i did in the video...use your entire audio file and your entire video file and import to movie maker.

So..

Start recording on both programs
Do a mute-strum for refference later
Stop both programs and save both files
Import both to movie maker
Align the video of your strum with the audio spike
Crop/Trim so that you dont have the strum at the beginning
Save!

Good luck mate

edit: ah no movie maker ay? hmmm - try this link for alternatives!
http://www.wareprise.com/2006/07/29/free-m...maker-downloads

Thanks deep sorted out what i was doing wrong great lesson

Thanks,this is really good beginner lesson for basic stuff,and the most important at the same time.

I can't wait for your lesson on the midi. That is the area I am having a bit of trouble with

Thanks for the lesson DR

Very cool lessons, could make a whole series out of it

Excellent lesson mate

nice lesson deeproots

Thanks guys! I'm glad some people have made use of it.

I'm working on a couple of things at the moment- namely riffing and lots of theory, but hopefully i'll get back to doing some recording lessons if and when time allows

I love this lesson !

Quick question - how did you get to record your whole screen and voice at the same time?
I assume you have a mic and which software did you use to capture your on screen actions?

Thanks

Thanks Pedja- i used camstudio to capture the on-screen actions and did a voice over with a cheap mic- either using reaper or movie maker , i can't remember which.

Good lesson, I also use Reaper sometimes.

This one is in the knowledge base now too
http://www.guitarmasterclass.net/wiki/inde...eaper_SI_Lesson

Again it would be cool to upload the vid to youtube to have it embedded both here & at the knowledge base