You have to build your own drum machine. Good news is, you can save it as a fx chain to quickly load it the next time. Sample loading works fast because you can jump to a folder and scroll thru the samples. Looks a bit ancient. But it works.
Drum machine - empty.RTrackTemplate <- here is a simple drum template you can download. Put it in your track template folder! (options/open reaper resource path ...)
To open the template, right click in the tcp and choose load track template.
Hope that helps a bit, because Reaper seems not to be the coolest midi champ.
I don't know if Kennys video mentioned this, but my RS5000 setup used multiple tracks, one for each drum instrument. Each track has a single instance of RS5K, dialed to accept only one note, and to play 16 velocity mapped layers for a single drum instrument. These are gathered in a folder track with Parent Send disabled. Using a separate track for each allows separate level, pan, and effects for each drum, just like you'd have if it were a multi-mic'ed drum kit.
To manage and save routing, I also added 2 other tracks: Midi Input, and Audio Out.
Routing:
All midi from the Midi In track routes to every drum track.
The audio out of all the drum tracks routes to the Audio Out track, which has parent send enabled and is not in the drum tracks folder.
All of this is saved as a track template.
To use it, Midi for drums can be recorded on any track, then that midi is sent to the Midi In track.
You have to build your own drum machine. Good news is, you can save it as a fx chain to quickly load it the next time. Sample loading works fast because you can jump to a folder and scroll thru the samples. Looks a bit ancient. But it works.
Attachment 34940 <- here is a simple drum template you can download. Put it in your track template folder! (options/open reaper resource path ...)
To open the template, right click in the tcp and choose load track template.
Hope that helps a bit, because Reaper seems not to be the coolest midi champ.
I've been using RSM5K, but it's a slog to use and demo kits and samples. Drum Rack is so much easier.
You can also drag and drop items from the Media Explorer (Ctrl+Alt+X on PC, having a well organized sample library will be key regardless) onto each instance of RS5K.
Yeah, I get it, it's not the prettiest looking, and you probably rather look at all "pads" at the same time. But you can audition the samples in the Media Explorer without having to drag them anywhere first (and you can select how to audition them: where to play them from, what volume, loop or no loop...), and then RS5K gives you all the flexibility you want, including ADSR control for each sample, velocity controls, pitch bend controls, max voices active, note-off's, modes (ignoring pitch or following the pitch on your keyboard...so you can sample one thing and create your own weird instrument out of it...), you can import the sample from the arrange (selected item)...
And the thing that I love the most: it plays anything. MP3's, WAV's, or whatever... 16 bit, 24 bit, Stereo, Mono... Pretty much anything you throw into it, it will play it.