Old 08-12-2008, 03:04 PM   #1
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Default Reaper for live use

A sequencer feature I would love to see implemented is a way to define loopable regions in Reaper and jump from one to another smoothly.
People usually use Ableton Live to do this.

I imagine a kind-of-markers floating menu with slots you can store regions in.
Then we should be able to trigger them via a midi note and tell Reaper "when you receive this midi note message, finish your (definable) cycle and go to this region".

Goal : you split your song in parts (intro, verse 1, verse 2, chorus, break, etc.) and can freely loop a part and then jump to another on the fly when you want.

Does this make sense ?

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Old 08-12-2008, 09:34 PM   #2
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Yes - it makes sense - and you can almost do it in REAPER.

There is a feature request out there to have a meta action that is wait until the end of x before continuing.

Such an action will allow you to set up a macro (as I have) that will select a loop region between two markers and set the play cursor to the start of that region.

Having the playback set to repeat will mean that you can jump from loop region to loop region quite happily. However, without some nice delay meta actions, you can only jump realtime rather than in sync with the end of the loop/marker whatever.

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Old 08-13-2008, 02:47 AM   #3
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Default Good start

OK.
Good to know.
The thing is you can't have Reaper finish its first cycle and jump smoothly to another one, right ?

thanx for your input,

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Old 08-13-2008, 04:44 AM   #4
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The thing is you can't have Reaper finish its first cycle and jump smoothly to another one, right ?
Nah not yet - but that's why I mentioned the other feature request. If that were implemented there would be a way of doing it.

As long as you don't mind using keyboard shortcuts to do the jumping around of course.

I'm just jumping into the thread because I'm interested in doing this with REAPER as well.

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Old 08-15-2008, 02:46 AM   #5
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This is a very good idea.

Reaper is poised to be the world's best live-performance DAW for several key reasons (see below) and should be able to stomp on Ableton, once the remote-control (midi controller) implementation is re-vamped. Until then, no frigging way, but I will be pushing the boys hard to fix this, since I use reaper for my live rig right now.

(I officially switched about a week ago. Bye Bye Ableton. Though the remote-control thing in Reaper is REALLY bad, everything else is remarkably better.)

Anyway, the point being that Reaper development should go after Ableton Live in a big way. What are the advantages right now?

1: Efficiency. You just can't have enough.


2: Low latency. With plugins installed, Reaper decimates Ableton, Cubendo, etc. (this is absolute. I did extensive testing.)


3: ReaRoute! It's still a hair finicky, but basically stable. (Thanks, Justin!)

- I wonder how many DJ's out there, using Traktor and cursing Native Insts every day for not implementing ReWire, know that they can port Traktor digitally into Reaper right now?

So yeah, add some real-time, advanced looping functions, as in Ableton, and mimic Ableton's remote-control assignment matrix, and I predict a DAW migration to Reaper en masse.
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Old 08-15-2008, 03:26 AM   #6
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... and it is maybe even time for additional features.

I just have the feeling that there is a lot more to do in the transport dpt of a sequencer.

Back in the days, I used a Yamaha RM1x live and - man - it was great to just click on a section button and have my song going to the next part right on time.

I had so much fun with it that I even recorded my firts electro-dub album like this ... improvising around a sequence and recording the sound to tape (I mean consumer cassette ;-).

I wish Reaper could go in this direction as well and offer some sort of extra enhenced transport panel or something like that.
All I can suggest now is this "slots" approach. That would ask for midi to be pre-read a bit (I am nothing of a technician so don't ask me more ;-) to ensure a smooth transition between sections.

...
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Old 08-20-2008, 02:16 AM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mio*star View Post
A sequencer feature I would love to see implemented is a way to define loopable regions in Reaper and jump from one to another smoothly.
People usually use Ableton Live to do this.
Actually you can do this with the mouse, I've been doing it ever since smoothseeking was introduced (I promoted that FR and tested it out for Justin while he coded it in a night.)

http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=4323

You just double-click on the next region to smoothseek to, within a bar or 2 of the current region ending. You can also double-click items the same way, IF you have the prefs set right. I also have a keyboard shortcut set for setting a time selection to an item.

You can just quickly drag a time selection area and it'll jump to that too.

Another way is to set up a track of empty items to the divisions you need, the advantage of this being you can navigate through them with keystrokes (under item navigation), and you can also enlarge the track to make it real easy to double-click accurately

The KEY THING is to set your playback prefs to go to the start of the loop on a loop selection change, and enable options-smoothseeking.






It would be great to have a playlist operation so you could set a few up ahead of time, at present you have to hover until the region or item is nearly to the end (1 bar or so depending what you set in the smoothseek options.) I'll try and dig up the old FR for this.

I was going to do a video for smoothseek at one stage, but there wasn't much interest so...

edit: http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=5190

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Old 08-20-2008, 04:29 AM   #8
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Default We need more !

Good point.

Now, what if you want to jump from part to part in your song without any dropped beat ?

Thus the idea to have slots containing region loops you can trigger, loop, chain, etc.

It has to be straighforward : midi note XY = intro, midi note YZ = verse 1, etc.
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Old 08-20-2008, 04:47 PM   #9
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Hey Bevosss, nice settings display.
That simplifies a couple of macros I created recently.

I agree with mio*star though that we need to be able to jump to different areas in a synchronised way. Actually I already know you agree with that as well because you not only mentioned the playlist idea in your post but also created the thread about the "wait until...." meta action.

Both of these would enable more planned and synchronised jumping around on the timeline.

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Old 08-21-2008, 04:38 PM   #10
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We also "need" to be able to define loops, on the fly, with foot-pedals, and then switch between them also with footpedals.

That's Abelton's live-performance trump card.
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Old 08-21-2008, 05:02 PM   #11
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Cableaddict View Post
We also "need" to be able to define loops, on the fly, with foot-pedals, and then switch between them also with footpedals.

That's Abelton's live-performance trump card.

You should be already able to do that mostly, by setting your footpedals to item navigation, and a macro to loop select the item in question and move the edit cursor to the start of it. Then you can just stack 2-3 dummy tracks with empty items of varying loop lengths, even name them, and whizz through and select them via foot pedals.

Still no planning ahead more than the next change though, and not possible at all to use loops from a browser Live-style.

Which is why we need a playlist of some kind, so we can specify chorus x3 or loop indefinitely etc.

*Just pointing out what's possible now already in Reaper, in case you want to use it now rather than waiting for a perfect implementation, which may or may not be under way.
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Old 08-22-2008, 12:18 AM   #12
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Cableaddict View Post
We also "need" to be able to define loops, on the fly, with foot-pedals, and then switch between them also with footpedals.

That's Abelton's live-performance trump card.
Yes !
Let's have midi notes trigerring the insertion of a loop marker, at the nearest bar when hit.
Do this for the beginning of the loop, do that for the end of the loop.
Reaper loops.
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Old 08-21-2008, 05:06 PM   #13
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Quote:
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I agree with mio*star though that we need to be able to jump to different areas in a synchronised way.
Not exactly sure what you mean by 'in a synchronised way'...

if it's not dropping beats while changing, that's options-smoothseek enabled, which is no different to Live really

if it's a playlist order, well yes, I put an FR in for that long ago: http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=5190
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Old 08-21-2008, 04:51 PM   #14
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mio*star View Post

Now, what if you want to jump from part to part in your song without any dropped beat ?
Options-smoothseek changes when the bar or 2 is finished, depending on how you set it:




Downside is you have to be waiting until the last measure or so before you can change to the other part, and you can't set them up ahead of time like you can with a playlist...but they do change smoothly without dropping beats...that's why it's called smoothseek.
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Old 08-22-2008, 06:20 AM   #15
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Bevosss View Post
Options-smoothseek changes when the bar or 2 is finished, depending on how you set it:




Downside is you have to be waiting until the last measure or so before you can change to the other part, and you can't set them up ahead of time like you can with a playlist...but they do change smoothly without dropping beats...that's why it's called smoothseek.
Oh - this is righteous dude! Now I understand what "smoothseek" actually means. That's very fine.

If I set up regions and select the seek at next marker/region edge option I can get almost what I'm looking for. This is what I meant by synchronised by the way - very cool.

Why are there no actions for selecting a region like there is with selecting a marker? It seems odd to have one and not the other. The advantage with region selection is that it creates a loop selection on either edge of the region.

I was making some custom macros for selecting the region between two markers as an alternative, but that doesn't work once I enable smoothseek unfortunately - probably because I'm moving the edit cursor multiple times in the macro.

Still want the "Wait until...." meta action though as I might also want to "synchronise" the muting/soloing of tracks etc..

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Old 01-04-2010, 02:06 AM   #16
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mio*star View Post
Thus the idea to have slots containing region loops you can trigger, loop, chain, etc.

It has to be straighforward : midi note XY = intro, midi note YZ = verse 1, etc.
This would be exactly the same as a "scene" in Ableton Live.
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Old 11-10-2009, 12:37 PM   #17
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Killer Thread!

I'm the drummer for my band, Sik Fiction ([link]http://www.myspace.com/sikfiction[/link]), I use reaper with my rack which contains a tascam us-1641, furman power conditioner, alesis dm4 drum module, and a pc laptop).

I basically use it as a drum trigger module with a vocal track containing effects. 1 ReaSamplomatic per sample, per track, that I trigger with my dm4. Check out the screenshot.


I propose to implement some kind of cell window or trigger box window into ripper, along with the ability to trigger sample playback. The "trigger box" window would work just as the name suggests, you could drag&drop any parameter of reaper into one of the cells and have midi-learn attached to that cell. The cell window could look something like this:


I dunno, just an idea!

Btw, if anybody has a better way to achieve my live setup, let me know!
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