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Old 02-23-2017, 05:24 PM   #1
wjmwpg
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Default Make looped section of item darker, shadowed or faded?

Howdy. My third day learning Reaper after more than a decade on Logic and I'm trying to figure out if there's a way to make the looped portion of an item look different from the item it is looping? I'll settle for them being lighter, darker, faded, translucent, whatever, I'd just like to be able to differentiate very quickly at a glance what is the item, and what is the looping portion of that item.

I hope that makes sense - I'm still learning all the Reaper terms for these things.

Thanks!
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Old 02-23-2017, 08:20 PM   #2
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You're maybe thinking about it the wrong way. Once you pull the edge of an item over to loop, that whole thing is the item; there is no "original" copy, because it's just looping the source file over and over.
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Old 02-23-2017, 09:12 PM   #3
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Lokasenna View Post
You're maybe thinking about it the wrong way. Once you pull the edge of an item over to loop, that whole thing is the item; there is no "original" copy, because it's just looping the source file over and over.
Maybe you're right . . . I hadn't thought of it that way. I'm coming to Reaper from 10+ years on Logic, so I'm just used to seeing things a certain way . . .



. . . but that doesn't mean it's the right way!

I'll work with it like this for awhile and see if there are any practical workflow reasons to have it the way I picture it - quite likely there won't be.
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Old 02-23-2017, 09:33 PM   #4
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Unless there's something special about items vs their looped counterparts in Logic, it just seems redundant when you've already got the little indents at each loop point.

What happens in Logic if you drag out the left side of the item as well - does it shade both sides and leave the middle lit up?
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Old 02-23-2017, 11:02 PM   #5
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Lokasenna View Post
What happens in Logic if you drag out the left side of the item as well - does it shade both sides and leave the middle lit up?
You can't drag out the loop to the left side of a region/item in Logic - only to the right.

I think maybe my issue is more that I don't find the indentations that demarcate the start and finish of each repetition of the loop to stand out enough to my eye. But then I'm about to try out some different themes so the issue might clear itself up there.
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Old 02-23-2017, 11:23 PM   #6
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In Logic, it HAS a meaning to have the first green item highlighted and the following items shaded.
Cause the first green item IS the source: when you change it's midi content, the following
green items will "follow" these changes.
In Logic, you can't change the content of the shaded green items.

So, comparing to Reaper, look at it as being "sort of" pooled midi items.

BUT, in Reaper, there is no real "source" midi item, when pooled.
When you have pooled midi items, every item in this pool can be changed, and those changes will be reflected to the other pooled midi items.
So there is no need in Reaper to hightlight a certain pooled midi item as being the source, cause there is no real source.
And this is the big difference with Logic.

Further more, afaik, in Reaper you can't drag right edge of an item (with a hold mouse modifier) to DIRECTLY make pooled copies of that item.

You first have to turn on "loop source" for that item.
Abit of a miss i think ..
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Old 02-23-2017, 11:41 PM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by vanhaze View Post
In Logic, it HAS a meaning to have the first green item highlighted and the following items shaded.
Cause the first green item IS the source: when you change it's midi content, the following
green items will "follow" these changes.
In Logic, you can't change the content of the shaded green items.

So, comparing to Reaper, look at it as being "sort of" pooled midi items.

BUT, in Reaper, there is no real "source" midi item, when pooled.
When you have pooled midi items, every item in this pool can be changed, and those changes will be reflected to the other pooled midi items.
So there is no need in Reaper to hightlight a certain pooled midi item as being the source, cause there is no real source.
And this is the big difference with Logic.
Thanks van Haze. That's a great explanation.
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Old 03-02-2017, 03:43 PM   #8
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Here's the thing I'm missing about the Logic workflow with looped items, and maybe there's a Reaper equivalent, but if so I've yet to find it . . .

Let's say I want to change the length of the item I'm looping. Maybe I've got a 2 bar item that's looping (every two bars), but I decided that I only want to loop the first 1.5 bars of the item. In Logic I would grab the lower-right corner of the first instance of the looped item (the one that's shaded darker) and t'd drag it to the left until the item was 1.5 bars instead of 2 bars. As I'm dragging to reduce the length of my "origin" item all of its looped regions that follow would automatically shrink with it. So with one click-drag of my item I've reduced its length to 1.5 bars and the length of all of its looping sections to 1.5 bars. If I want to undo this at some later point I can simply click that lower-right corner of the first (darker shaded) item again, and drag its length back to 2 bars and its following looped sections will grow with it to 2 bars each. Either way the change takes one click-drag and is reversible with one click-drag.

In Reaper, so far as I've learned, I can no longer click and access the right side of my first item in the looped series to affect it. Instead I have to click on the right side of where all the looping items end (which could be at the other end of the song) and drag it back to the left until it is pulled past all my "looping items" and I'm left with only my original item length (of 2 bars), keep dragging until the original item length is reduced from 2 bars to 1.5 bars. (Or I could slice my the first portion of my looped items into 1.5 bars and delete all the remaining looped items that followed it). Either way, now I have to glue that new item at it's new length of 1.5 bars, (otherwise when I attempt to drag its right edge again to create looped regions it will first grow back to its full 2 bars before beginning to loop). So now that the item is glued at 1.5 bars I can grab it's right side again and drag it to the right to redo my looping. One step has become three . . . not the end of the world. But now, later, if I want to return my item to its original length of 2 bars (and loop that) I can't now drag the right side of the item to again make it 2 bars long (and then loop that 2 bar item) because I've had to glue this item at 1.5 bars to make loops of 1.5 bars. Now I'm going to have to dig to find the original file I was using for the 2 bar looping, and bring that back into my track to replace the 1.5 bar "glued item ", and then drag to redo my 2 bar looping. So now one step to "go back" (at a later date) to the 2 bar looping I had, becomes many clunky steps.

I hope that explanation makes some sense . . .
Is there a better way?
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