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Old 05-13-2018, 01:28 PM   #1
ToetsenMike
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Default New to Reaper, first attempts

Let me introduce myself: I'm Mike, playing keyboards for about 35 years or so, with two time a pause of about 5 years. I shall not bother you guys with reasons for that pause. I play Korg Pa 800, an old but damn good workstation to me. Not in a band but at home, playing for my wife, some friends and myself. To record my own work I use a Yamaha AW1600 Digital Recorder. Old stuff, again, but to me it works fine. For doing rough edits I tend to use Audacity for editing or converting sounds or samples (which I can use back again in my Pa 800 to create my own sounds). As I told: old stuff but it works fine for me, I'm not interested in getting the newest audio-stuff all the time.

After wandering around, looking for good DAW's to use on my MacBook Air I came across Reaper. At first I was astonished, looked hard to me. I was just looking for a DAW which I can use as Midisequencer butit seems I found one. Finally. After months of downloading, trying, trashing several DAWs like Pro Tools, MuLab, Traction etcetera etcetera.

I have to admit Reaper has a steep learning curve. I have to admit I haven't used any DAW's seriously past years so any DAW shall have a steep learning curve to me. But hey, I'm not to old to keep on learning!

After a few days I managed to finalize a song I play myself. First I've recorded everything on my AW1600 and exported those separate tracks to my MacBook. I imported these in Reaper, fiddled around, experimented with everything and at least after trying I rendered a song in Reaper. Still interested? Listen at https://soundcloud.com/user-69195811...nd-my-way-home and don't hesitate to review it, share your thoughts and suggestions.

I like Reaper, it could be the DAW I'm looking for for a long time, but there are still wishes. Ie the UI: I know I can tweak myself a lot, I know I an find a lot of themes for Reaper but I'm still looking for a theme which mimics the mix of both my Pa 800 and my AW 1600. The window colors in light aluminum of my AW1600, including the faders of that awesome machine but with buttons and textface which are the same as on my PA 800. Somebody who can help me make that?
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Old 05-13-2018, 02:39 PM   #2
martifingers
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Welcome to Reaperland Mike. Your track survived the various processes pretty well I thought sounding very clean and well mixed. For me perhaps the percussion sounded a little unconvincing? Something about the choice of samples I think and perhaps it needed to be less dry sounding. But it's probably a matter of taste really...

Someone gave me a Yamaha AW16G that I intended to use as a "portable" recorder and then mix in REAPER. That hasn't really happened as I find the Yamaha quite fiddly to operate and really I can actually most things with a laptop and my Firestudio mobile. So it may be your workflow may change once you start finding your way round REAPER which judging by the first results, may be soon.

I am no expert on themes etc. but surely someone will be along soon with advice.
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Old 05-17-2018, 12:55 PM   #3
ToetsenMike
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ToetsenMike View Post
I like Reaper, it could be the DAW I'm looking for for a long time, but there are still wishes. Ie the UI: I know I can tweak myself a lot, I know I an find a lot of themes for Reaper but I'm still looking for a theme which mimics the mix of both my Pa 800 and my AW 1600. The window colors in light aluminum of my AW1600, including the faders of that awesome machine but with buttons and textface which are the same as on my PA 800. Somebody who can help me make that?
It looks like I found one: Pro Tools 12.5 (https://stash.reaper.fm/theme/1886/Pro%20Tools%2012.5). Looking good to me!

Quote:
Originally Posted by martifingers View Post
Welcome to Reaperland Mike. Your track survived the various processes pretty well I thought sounding very clean and well mixed. For me perhaps the percussion sounded a little unconvincing? Something about the choice of samples I think and perhaps it needed to be less dry sounding. But it's probably a matter of taste really...
Actually it's a chosen sound of the percussion. I chose that especially 'cause it nears the real drums Vangelis used in the original. But I might tweak the EQ somewhat more to bring the percussion more 'to front'. Thnx!

Quote:
Someone gave me a Yamaha AW16G that I intended to use as a "portable" recorder and then mix in REAPER. That hasn't really happened as I find the Yamaha quite fiddly to operate and really I can actually most things with a laptop and my Firestudio mobile. So it may be your workflow may change once you start finding your way round REAPER which judging by the first results, may be soon.
I can imagine you find the AW16G fiddly to operate, the AW1600 is the AW16G's successor and exactly the same in operation. I'm used to it, and it doesn't compare no way in popular DAW's, that's true. I cannot imagine changing my workflow drastically. 'Cause the recorder is installed nearby my keyboard and always connected with each other it's easy for me to record every single note whenever I want to. And after recording I can choose wether I'd remix everything onto the AW1600 or export everything to Reaper. Besides, my MacBook Air isn't that powerful to handle multichannel audio input, lack of memory which might be a bottleneck when recording.

I'm glad I can easily record and edit Midi with Reaper! There's really lack of good Midi-editors on Mac OS X and most of them are fairly expensive compared to Reaper... And I want to use Midi for step-sequencing and for easily editing of music styles for my keyboard.

Quote:
I am no expert on themes etc. but surely someone will be along soon with advice.
Well, it looks I found something which resembles my demand! Thnx anyway for your helping hand!
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