[Rwp] Midi in Reaper/qws.

[Scott Chesworth]

Hey John,

I'm not the right chap to comment on QWS versus Reaper MIDI
implementation, but can clear up a few other things that have come up
in this thread for you.

First let's look at combined tracks. You're correct that Reaper
doesn't have specific types of tracks for MIDI or audio. A track
contains what Reaper calls items, and an item can be either MIDI data
that triggers whatever softsynth plugin you choose, or a chunk of
audio. You could mix and match those types of data on a single track
if you wanted to, but in the example you gave earlier, Reaper would
only copy the MIDI data and repeat it 30 times, sending it each time
to the softsynth. The softsynth is what spits out the audio at this
stage, Reaper doesn't automagically make MIDI into audio. If you want
that data rendered as audio, the freeze function will do that for you.
It's faster than real-time which is nice, and you can also unfreeze
later if you need to make changes to the plugin you used. It's a neat
way to free up some resources if your project is getting beyond what
your computer can comfortably handle.

When it comes to punching over your mistakes, Juan's approach seems a
bit like hiring a brain surgeon to pierce an ear to me. If it works
for him then cool, but there are simpler ways. Here's one workflow
that I use a lot when I'm trying to wear the muso and engineer hats at
the same time:

1. Find the start of your mistake. You can do this by skipping through
the project in bars (Page Up to go forward or Page Down to go
backward). Add CTRL to those commands if you'd like to move by beats
as you get closer to the dodgy part. To jump in larger increments, hit
CTRL+J to get the jump dialog, where you can type a value such as 12.3
for bar 12, beat 3. The jump dialog can also handle time if you
replace that dot with a colon, so 12:3 would get you to 12 minutes and
3 seconds instead. When you're pretty close, use the left and right
arrows to scrub backward or forward respectively to find the exact
spot.
2. Once you've found a nice clean point to punch in, use Alt+Shift+[
to set that point as the start of selection.
3. Move to the end of the part you want to replace using whatever
method described above works best for you, then hit Alt+Shift+] to set
the end of selection.
4. Go to the options menu, and temporarily choose the second record
mode in that menu, which should be "time selection auto punch".
5. At this point you might want to return to the start of your
selection (a quick way to get there is to hit [), and back up to give
yourself a couple of bars of preroll to jam along as you approach the
troublesome section, unless you're confident enough to go straight in
from a click count.
6. Hit R to record, jam along for a few bars, and hopefully make a
better job of the section you were unhappy with. The record mode we
chose earlier in step 4 means that Reaper will only start recording
once it reaches the start of your selection. When it reaches the end
of your selection, it'll stop recording automatically even if the
project continues to play, so you don't need to worry about having a
hand free to control that.
7. Once you're happy with the take, you'd probably want to go back to
the Options menu and choose "Record mode: normal" at this point unless
you're doing a slew of punches to tidy up all in one go. Might also be
a wise move to hit escape and clear those selection points.

This way, you've skipped needing to create additional tracks, and
there's no copying, pasting, or reassigning extra keystrokes required.
Let me know if anything wasn't clear. As with most of this stuff, it
takes a lot longer to write or read about than it does to execute in
the real world.

Hth, and keep us posted on your progress.

Scott

On 8/21/15, John Schucker via RWP <rwp at bluegrasspals.com> wrote:
> I assume you'd edit audio that way too? Seems a touch complicated
> though, you can't just mark punch points?
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