Reaper - some questions from a newbie

MagicPigDetective

I've been using Reaper this year to record songs, slow progress, I've followed some of the official tutorial vids to get started, and some youtube vids, so can now record a basic multi-track recording using a HX Stomp as an interface and modeller and EZ Drummer, and have created an mp3 of the song. I'm not that knowledgeable on the whole DAW thing, having only dabbled with garageband, I'd like to ask a few basic questions on Reaper and recording in general, they may be totally obvious and stupid questions.... but a pointer in the right direction would be useful. 

1. So each guitar track is recorded individually, each will have varying levels of effects, reverb etc. How on Reaper do you go about mastering reverb, compression, etc for the whole, finalized songs, or for every track? Or do you need to do every track individually? It was easy on Garageband but I'm not sure how this is done on Reaper. Is it to do with 'routing', which I'm not sure the meaning of,  using built-in plug-ins?

2. Input: When recording guitar with HX Stomp, I can use Input 1 mono, Input 2 mono.... what difference is there between the two? And if you use Input 1 or 2 stereo, will the track be split into stereo, or will it be able to use stereo effects? 

3.  Panning: what do you tend to do, put each guitar track to the right or left? Or down the middle? What's the done thing? What about bass and drums - down the middle? And vocals?

4. What is the best method to create a 'section within a song, so you can create a 'verse', or 'chorus' section and copy and move about all the tracks within that section to re-arrange the song? 

5. Levels of each track - do you just use your ear? Or should the drums be louder than the guitars etc...... are there some basic principles to follow? 

6. EZ Drummer. Do you create the whole drum track on the EZdrummer window within Reaper, then paste it in? Or paste individual 'parts' from EZ drummer into a Reaper track, building it up bit by bit? 

Any advice would be appreciated!

fretmeister

1: You can add separate effects on the Master that will cover all the tracks.




2: No difference. You can have a mono signal or a stereo signal. Depends on what you want to do. Personally I record multiple mono tracks

3: Personal taste. For 2 guitars I tend to have bass and drums in the middle then 1 guitar panned a bit right, and the other a bit left. Say 30%. Inna 1 guitar band I have the bass and the guitar panned a little just to give some spread. BUT changing the pan can have a pleasing effect during a song too.

4: Record each part on a different track. So the chorus track is silent until the chorus and at that point the verse is silent etc. You can do that by chopping up a complete track and pasting it, but it never seems to work as well

5: Personal choice as long as it isn't clipping.

6: I do it all in EZdrummer.


TOP TIP. Don't ever just record 1 guitar track and them time shift it and duplicate it to make it thicker. It doesn't work. It makes it louder but with a slightly crap chorus on it. If you want it thicker, then record another identical track. The tiny differences in each take make it thick.

MagicPigDetective

That's super useful, thanks @fretmeister . Think I'm on the right track.  I've been recording the sections in the way you describe, and will stick with this method. It's an incredible programme... won't be going back to garageband in a hurry. 

Going to finish this track I'm on properly... might even attempt vocals, I assume there are in built plug ins for vocals?? Perhaps heavily processed vocals might hide my crappy voice!

fretmeister

Get out of the mindset of plugins must be for a thing. They are just signal processing. Use them anyway you want. If you want them on guitars, great. If you want reverb and fuzz on the drums, also great! No rules at all.

I have a couple of bought plugins that I use for vocal - the Butch Vig one and another I can't remember at the moment. I like my main vocal to be quite clear and then I often dirty up the backing.

Also - save stuff on multiple hard drives!

I recently lost an entire tune that I had spent months on. All the drum programming gone... gutted. 

andy_k

All good advice, the most useful thing I have found, is to make changes non destructively, even as far as copying the entire project to a new version, which always allows you to go back to earlier versions.
Do duplicate tracks to perform edits-mute out the original.
Re-positioning, it is generally accepted that anything bass should be in mono and centred, as bass frequencies are not directional, so having them in stereo or panned will only make a mix muddy.
Double tracking guitars is useful, and best with different takes of the same thing, using different guitar / amp combinations, there are a few cheats that can help, such as just using the same DI with different amp plugins, or different effects chains, but it is the small discrepancies between performance that create a bigger sound.
Using more tracks to create bigger sounds can sometimes work the opposite way, the guitars become less distinct and smaller in the mix, another way of thinking of this is the fact that some of the biggest sounds come from the smallest amps.
We now have the freedom of being able to use unlimited tracks for a mix, so it becomes more about keeping the project tidy, Reaper has a few ways to do this, duplicates, folders and track visibility can all make things neat-but can sometimes mean the signal path can get confusing.
I like to work towards a final mix which uses stem audio tracks, by rendering things together, so for example, multiple drum plugins become a single stereo track, which is pre mixed with bass elements in the centre.
When I have my stems created, it is then a much simpler mixing project, and sections can be automated for volume much easier.
This then turns into a final mastering project, by having everything inside a folder containing basic mastering plugins which are only active for the final render, otherwise they are offline.
Reaper allows track templates, and plugin patch templates that can be saved and used depending on the type of project, but all projects are started from a default template that can be set up in any way you choose, with plugins for metering and analysis already in place, there really is no correct way-if it works for you, it works.
My own setup relies quite a lot on folders and colour codes, which makes mixing quick, and I haven't bothered making many custom shortcuts, it is too easy to try something, and then forget about it, which can create problems later with an accidental key press.
I haven't even started to look into Razor editing, which is a fairly new addition, and seems to enable very simple project rearranging, but if I did use it, I would create a copy of my original tracks further down the timeline, leaving the original one intact.
The only downside to this kind of thing, is if you forget to use a region for the final render, when a 3 minute track becomes a 2 hour mess. Markers and regions are your friends here- there really isn't much impact on project size until you make that mistake a few times.
So much to learn.

PolarityMan

Im going to talk about 1 mostly.

Use folder tracks, they are both a way to organise the session and a bus rolled into 1 so you can apply FX to the entire folder or to individual tracks.

You can also apply FX directly to the master track although I tend to reserve that for my referencing plugin as it makes sure that my reference isnt ever processed no matter what I do to the mix.

I often use a fake 2-bus as my master bus for this reason so I can apply mastering plugins (who am I kidding 90% of the time its just oxford inflator!) to my entire mix there. 

The other way to group process tracks is to use send-FX. This is very common with time based effects like delay and reverb. Here you would create a separate track that has no audio for your reverb or delay. You put your plugin on there and set it to 100% wet.

Then on any track or folder that you want to apply the effect you add a send to the FX track. The amount you send controls how much of teh effect you get. 

This is great because it reduces CPU since you can use the same plugin instance to process many effect and also can help glue tracks together if they are all going to the same reverb instead of like 8 different ones.  Also when you automate the send level your automation can stay the same even if you swap the plugin out. 

For number 4 check out regions. They are especially awesome because as far as I can tell they are the only way to move time sig markers. In my band we have loads of stuff that has alternating time sigs (ie 6/8, 7/8, 6/8, 7/8 etc) so being able to stick a region around that section and copy it is awesome. Every other way I have found of moving sections around in reaper doesnt work with time sig markers.

One more tip while I'm here is that you normally want your timebase setting to be "beats" for midi and "time (secs)" for audio. That way when you drag midi over a tempo change it will just do the right thing and map into the new tempo but it wont try to change your audio playback rate if you drag audio over them. 

The rest is kinda personal taste but I like my guitars panned pretty hard L and R, bass in mono then fro drums snare and kick in mono and the rest of the kit panned according to position on the kit (usually drummers perspective). 

For levels  theres a few tricks you can use to get started. You could look up some gain staging tutorials and use those as a starting point. For example recently Ive been trying out George Lever's gain staging numbers. They are basically set peak levels you should aim for as a starting point for each instrument / bus. Then you tweak from there based on what the song needs.

The other thing you can do is balance every track against pink noise. The idea here is you get a track of pink noise at a certain level then individually bring each track up so you can jsut hear it over the pink noise.

When youve finished you should then have all your tracks audible without being overpowered too much.

The key thing with both the gain staging and pink noise trick though is its just a starting point where nothing is way out of whack you need ton sue your ears from there. 

If your starting from scratch Id usually balance kick / snare first making sure I leave plenty of headroom then bring in overheads, rooms then finally spot mics. After that I'll bring in the bass guitar, balancing against the kick, then guitars and finally vocals. 

Its important you start with enough headroom though as otherwise you'll end up increasing the overall vol above 0 when everything is in and end up bringing down your master fader. 

MagicPigDetective

Thanks all, great advice, plenty to get stuck into. The last two posts go somewhat beyond my current knowledge, but I'll use them for future reference and further investigation.