Good communicating, Deacon.
My involvement in Reaper accelerated after I was challenged to
adjust 12 Band-in-a-Box Wavs to the same effect; namely, knocking down some of the mid-range on the guitar tracks.
The project folder has 12 numbered sub folders, one for each song. Each song folder contains three sub folders of its own. They are:
1) Sheet music production: Here is Crescendo (free from NCH,)
which is a scoring program, MS Paint, and Scribus, an open source high end desktop publishing program. The scores are produced in Crescendo, snagged and opened in Paint, where the words are added. The product is a JPEG.
2) Band-in a Box. This is where the original SGUs (note that is plural) and WAV tracks are stored, after each has been assessed in the on board mixer. If it gets crowded, the SGUs may be filed as well.
3) The Reaper folder. Each song has an RPP. The WAV files that have not been eliminated are transferred to this file. That step is necessary because those WAVs are going to show up in the explorer window. A key file carries the name "bounce."
That's the compiled WAV which has been run through the Reaper mill. There is one last step, and that is to convert the bounced file with Switch, audio file converter to high quality CD.
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That bounced file is now pasted into the songs master folder. That song folder now has the three subfolders and two files. The two files are a bounced and a converted WAV and JPEGs of the score.
Let's say a change must be made in the score. Open the JPEG in MS Paint, make the change, save it, and that change automatically shows up in the Scribus, which has an easy export to Pdf. The same goes for any of the audio files. Identify the problem, locate the source, and make the correction. Then put the corrected file through the paces.
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I transfer the 12 WAVs into a digital recorder as a matter of preference. This process is leadiing up to another bounce, where the heads and tails are cut, and the volume is adjusted. The WAVs are then played into the recording platform of choice, right and left channels.
Anyone see any holes in this method? Once the process has been set up, it actually saves time and surprises.
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Hi Edshaw,
I must confess that I'm struggling to see what each of these steps accomplish, and, as I'm no expert myself, I'm very intrigued.
Re 1: Sheet Music) Why would you export to JPEG from your scoring program? Why not export to MIDI? Reaper has been supporting an editable notation view/mode since (IIRC) release v5.
Re 2: SGUs). That needs no explanation, ofc.
Re 3: Reaper Stuff) Each project directory (assuming you set up your project folders so that everything is saved in subfolders to the same folder) will have WAVs (assuming that's the format you selected in the project settings) and RPP files regardless. As someone who owned a Korg digital 4 track in the early naughts, I understand the concept of bouncing, but why is that necessary in a DAW like Reaper where you have infinite tracks and subtracks available? Regarding converting bounced files, why not use Reaper's brilliantly configurable render functions?
As for the last bit, your score can be edited in Reaper (and then even printed from there), any adjustments you need to make with fade ins/outs, tails, volume adjustments, etc, can be accomplished by editing your tracks, setting volume and FX automation lanes, and even overdubbing mixer/FX parameter moves in realtime w/o affecting the original audio.
Again, I'm a relative newbie and hobbyist compared to most the folks here, so if I'm missing something, I would love to hear more!
Best,
DB
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