hey all-

welp.. i need some help with software stuff.

i need to record, cut and paste riffs together to make test arrangements. i use reaper.

last i checked (and it's been a while)-- this wasn't reapers strength. all my vst's are in reaper-- and i know that program the best.

is there another program that i could do this in (i.e. audacity)-- and i know-- there's loads of nice expensive DAWs that feature this.

am i looking at something like ableton or something else?

i seriously haven't got a clue as to the most flexible engine for making what equates to cut and paste electronic music.. just with organic mic'd sounds. i never worked on a grid in my life.. so i'm a little bit scairt.. but what the hell are my options-- 'cause i still use my computer like tape..

anybody do this?

thankee!

Reaper will work fine for that. If you don't know the tempo, just hit alt+s (default) and Reaper will ignore the grid. Cut & paste to your heart's content.


I use my computer like a tape machine too though.

I just installed Reaper on here to figure out how to do this.

Place your edit cursor (is that what that's called? The line that travels across the screen as stuff's playing. It never occurred to me it had a name) at the beginning of whatever you want to cut and hit "S". No modifier keys, just "S" to split the audio region at that point. Move the mouse to the lower right-hand corner of the audio region. You should see a cursor that looks something like <-]->. Click and hold there and drag the edge of the audio region back to where you want it to end.

You should disable "Snap" for this unless you're working to a metronome. (And if you are, you might still want to do so after the fact and drag out the edges of things a bit so they don't sound like hard edits so much?)

That's the quick and stupid way I found to do it, at least.

What I don't know how to do is highlight a region and then split only the highlighted part. ie. select four bars and then just split those four to copy/paste/move around as you see fit. But I am a complete n00b to Reaper.

hrm.. i'll have to give this a whirl. i didn't know about the whole 'snap' thing.. i disabled it a long time back as the grid fucked up my fades for whatever reason- but it HAS been about 20 iterations since i tried it last with reaper 3. something.

since the band member possibilities here are pretty non-existent, and my last collaborator split for ohio ( ).. i gotta find a new way, so i guess i'm gonna be my own band for the time being, and this'll help a lot, methinks. cut and paste'll at least help me pull stuff together quicker and write parts-- and hell-- even just plugging in amplitube'll expedite matters further.

thanks gents-- looks like i gotta put a coffeepot out in the garage now for longer evenings.

It's all about setting a tempo and turning on 'snap to grid'... record to a click and you can copy and paste bars or bunches of bars with such precision!

Aslo, if you want a riff to repeat, select it so that it loops right, then use the "right click>copy selected area as a loop" command. When you ctl-v that shizz into your new track, you can just pull the back edge of it to make it repeat.

If you ever used Sonic Foundry/Sony Acid(which was a loop-based arranger sort of dealio), you can basically use Reaper exactly the same way. I much prefer Reaper for this type of cut/paste biz than any of the other ones i have used, though, including the ones you mentioned.

Almost everything I do is cut and paste in reaper.



What I do is select one side of the bar, hit Split At Cursor, move to the other side and repeat then you have a split section of whatever you want. This is how I pasta riffs because it gives me a little bit of organic control over the bits.

In fact, the two songs I did for my wife's videos are pretty much ENTIRELY copy pasta in Reaper:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXnqhG2h9QA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZptfO4YhPIQ


It helps for keeping production time and costs down really low.