After a look at Reaper and a glance into
the manual one important missing feature
struck me:
Audio: Pooled box for Audio-Items
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Audio: Pooled box for Audio-Items
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Imagine you have recorded the chorus vocals. And
imagine you have chosen the best "takes", put together
all the items, cut + moved the second and third
unisono-vocals for the chorus. Finally there are
many cuts, fades and edits on 6 tracks.
The problem is: You need this identical combination
of a myriad of items at all your chorus positions. And
you have many chorus positions.
What can you do? Copy + Paste every single item?
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Standard procedure in Reaper
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Two possible ways to go on:
1. You can group all the various audio-items of the chorus.
And you can copy this group to all the other
chorus-positions. So then you have your "choruses".
2. You freeze all the chorus-items per track. So you
have only 6 freeze-items which could be copied
very easy.
But one problem remains:
What happens if you need to change a fading or a
take-volume-envelope in the chorus?
In this case you have to do these changes in one
of the choruses and (1) then you have to copy this
chorus-group to all the other chorus positions.
Tedious and time-consuming! Or you (2) have to
defreeze, do your changes , freeze again and copy
again to all the other places.
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Is there a workaround in Reaper?
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Yes: The arrangement of your chorus-vocals must be
so elaborated and accurate that you'll never never
have to change anything in the future. Maybe
Reaper is disciplining its users?
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Conclusion + Solution
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My suggestion is: Create an "item-box"!
You draw a rectangle over all audio-items of a track
and say: "Create item box". Now all selected
audio items of this track will be sourrounded by
a box.
There is a command: "Create item box"
And a second command: "Delete item box". In this
case only the box is deleted, not the items inside.
The items inside become free again, being just
normal items on a track.
The crucial mechanism is: You can
pool-copy this
box. And all pool-copied boxes are not real
copies - they are only references to the original
box!
This would be easy and simple: You put together
your audio-items for the chorus, you do all complex
editings, fadings, envelopes etc. Then you create
a box for every track. Then you select the boxes
on all tracks and "pool-copy" these boxes to all
your chorus-positions.
And that's all: Whenever you need to change the
chorus-vocals you just enter the box. Yeah,
"enter box" is the third command for boxes. So
you enter the box and a box-window opens.
This box window looks exactly like "zoomed
at a single track in a time selection". So it's
nothing special or new. Here in the box-window
you do the needed changes: You change the
volume or the position of an item. Finally you just
close the box.
Nothing more: The changes you did will automatically
apply to all the other chorus vocals. It's like a
miracle!
(If I didn't oversee something or somebody has
a better suggestion ... )