How to Record Yourself Playing, the Easy Way! (Rapid-fire Reaper Tutorials Ep30)

Rapid-Fire Reaper Tutorials Ep30: How to Record Yourself Playing, the Easy Way!

Hey folks! Been a long time! Well, it's been a day but I had to miss a couple of Rapid-Fire Videos so excited to be back. Today we're answering another community question on how to record yourself.

If you are your own performer and engineer, sometimes it can be a tedious and gruesome task, and it can have you wrap up on recording early because of how annoying it is. Today I wanna share with you some ways I have found to make this process a little more streamlined for me.

In reality I do use a Remote control App for this, but I'm gonna show you the barebones version first before we get fancy!

Like, Comment, Subscribe & hit the Notification bell for a Rapid-Fire tutorial every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, and if you have any questions about Reaper, SWS, or anything regarding audio, let me know in the comments and I'll make you a video ASAP!

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:53 Pre-Roll in Reaper
1:21 Custom Record Action
1:51 Recording Takes in Reaper
2:22 How Takes are Saved in Reaper
3:40 Recording Takes without Time Selection
4:02 More Useful Record Actions
4:55 Comping Takes 101
5:30 Coming up Next

[samuelconnolly]

That person on Reddit was me - thanks! This was really helpful, not just in doing the takes, but also having a look at the scary-looking scripting panel and on comping. Will definitely watch tomorrow's video. These tutorials are useful for complete beginners like myself - appreciated.

[daviddahl]

I learned about you through Jon Tidy you did an interview with him. This video I believe is really going to help. I've been doing guitar duets. I also I use the irealpro to get my chord progressions. Takes are what I need and saves time from doing the samething over again and again. What I learned also from Kenny Gioia is creating a library in different folders which I'll save my takes in along with a note inside. I've had reaper for about a year and of course I always got to learn the hard way. which sucks

[bnw]

Great channel! Great approach! Keep it up

[elderozone]

Great video as always! I have a small tip for making things even more efficient regarding deleting the last take that you don't want: Go to Preferences -> Loop Recording and check the box "In loop recording, discard incomplete first or last takes if at least one full loop was recorded". This will automatically delete the last take based on a threshold value that you set to be considered a complete take.

For example: say you record a two-bar loop and set it to 50%; whenever you record one bar or more the last take will be kept, but if you record less than one bar the take is deleted. I set mine to 90% but you should experiment to get it right. This is a small thing but saves a lot of time for me since my process usually involves recording looped takes

[observant_sound]

Very nice tutorial! Just found it by accident on reddit looking for another issue. Your recommended settings and custom actions are very useful ideas that I will implement myself!

[danieldabatera]

Hi, how did u make this reaper layout? I liked your channel, very nice! Hi from Brazil 🇧🇷

[samsonavackaa]

Why do you call it the wheel of doom? 😅