New User, Need Some Tips on Getting Started

[nhl19]

Hi,

I (very) recently became fascinated with music production and all it entails, so I'm looking to give this a try. I apologize in advance for the cluelessness.

I installed Reaper and purchased a MIDI iRig Keys keyboard in order to mess around with the instrument, but I cannot hear any sounds coming from my instrument when I record. I set the channel on both my keyboard and Reaper to 1, and I armed a recording session thinking that was my initial problem. I made sure the MIDI option is set to Enabled+Control in the preferences section, but I cannot hear my keyboard on Reaper itself. I have done quite a bit of research over the past few days, but I cannot solve this problem. There might be a simple solution to this, but I am lost and just need a jump start. Any help will be much appreciated. Thanks!

[shosty]

Just to get something out of the way...you know midi keyboards don't make any sound on their own? Have you loaded a synth/sampler/instrument?

[zm11]

Do you have Monitoring turned on? (the 3rd button from the left on the second line of the track, looks like a speaker)

When you press a note on the keyboard, do you see a red line pop up in the armed track on the mixer? If so that means your keybaord and Reaper are working properly, but you need to add an instrument to the FX. Something like ReaSynth would work.

Check out all the videos here to get started with Reaper. They helped me out a lot when I was getting started.

https://www.reaper.fm/videos.php

[nhl19]

Originally Posted by shosty

Just to get something out of the way...you know midi keyboards don't make any sound on their own? Have you loaded a synth/sampler/instrument?

I was aware of this, but I was told that an audio interface is recommended but not required in order to produce simple beats.

[shosty]

Originally Posted by nhl19

I was aware of this, but I was told that an audio interface is recommended but not required in order to produce simple beats.

Midi is just digital data, when you press a key it sends some messages to instruct something to do something.

You do not need an audio interface but you do need something to make a sound, the digital midi data needs a target for it to do anything. A midi keyboard is not a synth itself, it can only send messages.

Right click on the left hand side and choose Insert Virtual Instrument on New Track, then choose something, ReaSynth will do for the sake of the example. Now ReaSynth is the target for your midi data, when you press a key it will trigger ReaSynth to play a sound.

You can think of it like this. In a real synth there is a keyboard and there is some kind of circuit/sound module that reacts to the keys. With a midi keyboard the circuit/sound module is whatever you want it to be inside reaper. However, without loading something on a track it is like a synth with no circuit/sound module.

[Skijumptoes]

Try this:-

1. Open Reaper
2. Go to REAPER menu at top of screen, the Preferences
3. Select Audio/Device and make sure you have your internal sound set in the Audio Device box. (Built-In Output)
4. OK Prefences Window
5. Go to Inser menu at top of screen and select 'virtual Instrument on new track'
6. Pick 'ReaSynth' (As a test) and press OK
7. The track should be all ready to go, just try playing your MIDI notes.

If you get no sound, then try pressing the record button on the transport bar (Cmd+R) and see if any notes get recorded into the timeline, if they don't then your issue is the MIDI device isn't set up correctly.

If this is the case, and you have it selected in REAPER's prefences then download MIDI Monitor, to check that your Mac is receiving notes from the iRig - https://www.snoize.com/MIDIMonitor/

If it does play notes into the timeline but you can't hear any noise, then open the mixer (View > Mixer) and see if you get any audio meters moving when you play - if you do, that means that REAPER is working fine, but your audio isn't coming out of whatever speaker you have setup, so double check your audio interface settings and/or speaker/headphone and volume settings in MacOS.