Saved my life with this video man. I’m 38. I put the guitar down at 22 and regretted ever since but life happens. I just picked up an Ibanez S for $150 and decided I wanted to just do MY thing. No bands, none of the BS, just me jammin for me and recording it so I can track my own progress and growth. That’s it. This is the millionth video I’ve seen from all over RU-vid and you’re instantly the first person to actually teach me how to do this without making it ridiculously complicated. Thank you man. I can just jam away now.
Same here man. Bands ruined it for me. I put my guitar down because of it. Lol. Just wanna play for fun and a personal challenge. 42 now and getting the fire again :)
Im on the same boat. I had 2 bands my whole life (from 17 till 38 - im 43 now) recently I moved to another city and stopped playing. Tried to start a band again, we rehearse 2 times and the guys just disapeared without saying anything, it let me so so so frustated that I think I got a little bit of a depression, didnt want to do anything! Now it's gone, I said to myself I will write an album and release it on spotify, it will be my "revenge"!
Another great tip is to have different eq for each track to have even more wide stereo image. In general, I think that recording the double separately is better sounding and improves your playing overall.
I’m two weeks into Reaper and I am loving it. I was a touring musician for a long time and produced bands from behind the engineer because I have an ear but I never got the education on a DAW. So here I am. Next I’ll be getting into programming drums.
Awesome! For me, the key to programmed drums is humanizing velocity rather than humanizing timing. Also lean into how much drums can change a guitar riff. Listen to the chorus of No one knows for an example :-)
Thank you so very much for this easy to understand tutorial!! I've been racking my brain for a month on this and now after 20 minutes I've got all the right stuff and made a recording .I'm 54 and this is a great new hobby after playing guitar for past 30+ years..
Yup, same here brother! I spent more time trying to figure out the DAW than I did recording until I tried Reaper. I did ok with Acid but Reaper seemed to be better equipped for my needs so moved on to that many years ago. Great vid! Thanks
Just fantastic. Your video has been super helpful, man. Reading tons of long docs is not as helpful as your short video. It gives a nice start to Reaper. Thanks a lot. Keep staying young, doing "young stuff", like I try to do as well :)
Osiris Guitar, Thank you so much! I'm new to home recording and this tutorial was very helpful. You have yourself a subscriber, sir. I would love to see a tutorial for adding/using EZ Drummer with Reaper. Thanks again.
Huh... I was very intimidated but curious to try this myself. I'm glad I found your video. You made it look simple and I understood everything perfectly. Thank you
Thanks! I haven't used windows in ages but I wish someone had told me about ASIO back then. And that I could have the hours I wasted on ASIO4all back 😅
Thanks so much! I recently discovered Reaper. I only tried Ableton and FL, but Reaper seems more like it for metal. I will install it and try to record some stuff.
7:09 holy sh*t thank you thank you thank you! Dude I was about to pull my hair out because I couldn't understand why my FX weren't coming through, I had it under input one LOL! Earned a sub here
Great simple walk through. One change, a computer MIC input is usable with an adapter from instrument cable to 1/8” stereo jack. Although, it would be much better to just buy a used single input usb audio interface for a few bucks.
Just Done a Bit Experimenting With Track Panning Guitar After Watching Your Video. Yes, it's a Noticeably Different Sound, Much Fuller, Better. I've Been Recording On Reaper For Over 10 Years, With A Line 6 Pod Farm Interface, And Have The Basic Reaper License. I Used It Free For Years, And Find It Relatively Easy To Use For Basic Stuff...I love Finding New Stuff With Recording on there, I'm Learning New Stuff All The Time, Cheers!! - 👍
@@noelduggan72 Yeah, double tracking is magic! Just for the record, Reaper isn't free. You can use the full version for ever without paying, but if you use it you should really pay for it. You get two major versions for just $60. Best money I ever spent.
@@osiris-guitar Yes, I Used It For A Long Time Free, And Loved It!! I Bought The License 2 Years Ago, And Have Recorded Lots Of Songs, Which I Post On RU-vid, And Sound Cloud. - I Love Listening To Metal And Heavy Rock, But I'm Not A Shredder, So I Usually Record Softer, Slower Stuff, But Still Enjoy Myself - 👍
@@osiris-guitar I'm A Lefty....And I years ago, I Picked Up The Black Sabbath Tony Iommi Power Chord Stuff Straight Away, With My Little Zoom 707 effects pedal . I Just Mirrored What He Was Doing.(I Watch RU-vid tutorials now!! 👍) It's What Got Me Into Electric Guitars, I Just Had An Acoustic Before That.
Great video. Idk if you still check these but when I record a track, put distortion on it, save it to my files on Mac, and when I listen to it it’s just clean guitar. 😵💫
Reaper uses what is called non-destructive editing, which is a great thing. No matter how much you cut up or manipulate a track, the original file is always left alone. This means, if you want to get an audio file with all of the changes applied (such as having a distortion plugin) you have to render it. Mark the time segment you want to export, select render in the menu (file -> render), set Bounds to "time selection" (or entire project if you want that), select format and then press the "Render 1 file" button.
Be sure to check Privacy settings on a Mac and give Reaper the proper rights if there is no input and everything else is set up correctly. Learnt the hard way.
One of the coolest, simplest and easy to follow tutorials I have ever watched on RU-vid. But, do you have links for the plugins that you used? Also do you tutorial on how to mix that drums and how to do it? Liked and subbed!
Thanks! I haven't done any videos on drums, mainly because I'm... not great with drums :-D. But it's my biggest focus right now in my metal production, so it's not impossible there will be a video about it down the line. I'll update the description with the plugins I've used.
Oh, that's such a difficult question to answer depending on what you want to do. For instruments, I really recommend the NeuralDSP guitar amp sims and Superior Drummer. Also wouldn't make it without Izotope Ozone for mastering...
I recommend people have their 0 point of the session, not right on the zero for tracking. I have all my tracks start at around 5 secs up the timeline. It avoids cutoffs of the start. Then if you want, once complete, you can simply pull all your tracks back to 0 before you print.
Good advice! I'm almost always a little bit off when tracking, and if you're early you will just miss a tiny bit of your recording. Also when you are rendering your track for upload to Spotify etc you want a short silence (200-300 milliseconds) at the start of a track so it won't get cut off when it's streamed.
Super simple - melody panned to one side, harmony panned to the other. I made a whole video on harmonies (but that's more about creating hamonies than producing) Guitar Harmonies for Beginners [Reaper Tutorial] ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-aEtZ8EqV5Vs.html
Put the cursor where you want the split and press S on the keyboard. That's the standard cut command in Reaper. After splitting the clip into two parts, just drag and drop them to the sub tracks. Dragging a clip into an empty area will even create tge the track for you (as its own track, not a sub track)
@@hargappelpie4845 Back then I never did anything outside a bit of tracker doodles. But that was the big selling point of the Atari over the Amiga right - MIDI. (I was an Amiga guy 😅)
Thanks man, you clear so many things how to do it and do it easy. I have only one question, i have Emu 0404 USB and M-audio fast track pro sound card on each pc, so i need turn up the gain on sound card inst all the way up but keep under the clip before using VST plugins or i can leave gain all the way down?
Yes - gain should be up, but not clipping. The gain affects the input, not the output (to the computer), so if you turn it all the way down you won't get any signal at all into the interface and consequently nothing into the computer.
I don't know any key bindings, but with a mouse: 1. Press the little folder icon on a track. That will make all the following tracks subtracks of the current one 2. Drag tracks like to reorder them, but drag them "inwards" (to the right). Then the line marking where the track will end up gets indented indicating it will become a subtrack.
Hi, i just,purchased reaper V6, but i can t find any plug in for my guitar, for example i tryed to to find the neural DPS, but it doesn t appear in the list
Reaper isn't bundled with any instrument plugins. The Neural DSP plugins you have to purchase separately. There are free amp sims as well, links to them and tutorial is here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-qCI6qJgRNy4.html
Can someone please help me? At 8:00, you can see that he goes through the input settings. He selects mono 2. I would like to record my guitar sound in stereo. When I click on this, my guitar sounds best through the headphones, and it also sounds stereo. This is true during recording as well. But when I listen back to the recording, I only hear the guitar playing in my right ear. This stereo setting sounds the best, so I would like to record my guitar in stereo. What am I doing wrong?
Recording in stereo does nothing helpful since the output from the guitar is mono (unless you have stereo effects like ping pong delay). It sounds better in your headphones since it's playing in both ears, but it's still mono. If you want an awesome sounding guitar tone record mono twice and put those as the right and left channels of a stereo track. Look up double tracking for more in-depth tutorial (haven't made one myself).
For the double-tracking part: when you drag the recording from the parent track to the sub-tracks, are you actually removing the audio from the parent track itself and not just duplicating it on the sub-tracks? Is that why the audio on the parent track is grayed out after you drag it to the sub-tracks?
I'm dragging it away from the parent track. The gray waveform shown on the parent track is a sort of superimposed "shadow" of all the child tracks combined.
Great tutorial, thank you! When you add the plugin effect for metal sound (at 10:14), you jump directly to the plugins window, but I can't see how exactly to get there.
I don't know exactly how to do this in Windows.... You can change audio device in preferences to your system default audio device. But I'm guessing you want to use input from your audio interface and output to your regular sound card. In MacOS you do that by creating an aggregate audio device, in Windows... It's been too long since I used Reaper in Windows 😅
im having a lot of trouble with this. the meter on the track isnt getting any input even with the track armed and input selected. im on windows 10. if i go to preferences and under audio im on direct sound and have the input and output selected to my interface. any help? Ive used it in the pass but after i get through a hiatus its like everything just stops working
To hear the sound as you play, you need to arm the track and have monitoring (the little speaker icon on the track) activated. If the meters on the track aren't moving there's something wrong with your input (the wrong device or port selected for instance).
Is it buzzing when you are playing or between notes? If it is between, increase the gate. If it is when you are playing it's a bit more tricky to find... I would start by listening to the incoming signal, by disabling the plugin and listening to just the guitar - does it sound clean? Is there buzz or weird noises?
Very true. You also can't control the volume on the channels separately if you do one plugin on a parent track (if you lower the volume on the left it will make the input lower on the left, not the output). So one completely separate track for each channel is safer. The only reasons I usually put the amp sim on the parent track is for better performance and to be able to make adjustments in just one place.
Hi I'm new to reaper so to do two seperate recordings and or extra effects to I need to have amp sim instances on all the tracks? thats a bit CPU intensive also how can I record over a certain part of a riff to play it better but also have a few bars before recording that I can have the guitar ready in my hands and not record over the track? I can't find any videos on this
You can do one parent track with amp sims and the two recordings on sub tracks panned 100% left and right. But it's easier to get right with effects put on both tracks, especially if you don't pan 100%, do volume changes on the sub tracks etc
Question: I have a Neural DSP Quad Cortex. I want to double track. Can I just record a left mono track and right mono track into my DAW with one play through. Then pan each left and right . I am also able to record in stereo on one track with two different amps. Help or do I have to always record twice meaning the same lines twice or can I record one line into two different amps that are on a left mono and right mono ?? Help thanks 🙏
I won't be true double tracking. For a live situation it would be good, but when you record you want two different takes. There's something in the subtle differences between to similar but not identical takes that creates width and smoothes over small mistakes. That doesn't happen with one take, even if it's split, hard panned and routed through different amps.
I have a question, I need help with transitions, so let’s say I play a riff for an intro, it abruptly stops and abruptly starts the next riff I record. It doesn’t sound fluid into the next riff, how do I make them flow correctly? If you want I have a recording I did I could send you and you can tell me what I’m doing wrong?
thank you is it okay to use my Marshall guitar amplifier for the audio output, or is it necessary to have monitors or headphones for good sound clarity? there are multiple output ports in the focusrite interface.... which port should I use for getting clear recording? thanks again
Depends on what you are doing. For playing the amp is fine. I think that if you're mixing though, you'd want at least headphones to be able to hear small differences and get a more neutral output.
Regarding latency: What then, would I do in a situation where my latency is over 10ms and I simply MUST HAVE a guitar sound with plug-in effects running in real time in order to record my parts? Do I need a better computer with a faster processor at that point? I'm not sure what benefit setting the input/playback knob fully counterclockwise (full input signal only) would be unless I was recording completely un-effected mic or line signals in.
As you say, there's no point in direct monitoring unless you are working without plugins. But there's a lot you can do to mediate latency. Optimize your OS: stop things that are running that you don't need (applications and background services). Turn off any plugins you don't absolutely need when recording. Especially stuff like mastering plugins on the master track can be a real latency killer. You can also freeze the other tracks (= temporarily prerender them with effects applied). You can record in a separate project with a minimum of tracks, and then move the recorded tracks into your main project. Even with a crappy laptop you should be completely fine with real-time monitoring when recording a guitar with an active amp sim. Here's a blog post I wrote about it ages ago: www.osirisguitar.com/optimizing-audio-latency-reaper/ . There are also uncountable other videos and blog posts about this topic.
Im new to this so forgive me in advance. I have a peavy 6505mh that has a Input for my computer built in. Would i still need an audio interface or will that peavy act as that with the built in input?
The answer is a bit complicated. The USB on the 6505mh theoretically acts as an audio interface. However, if you're using Windows there is no low-latency ASIO driver for it. So you should be able to use it as an audio interface, but it might be lagging when you record. If you are not going to do monitoring via your DAW, it could be fine (i.e. if you listen to what you play through the amp while you're recording). If you want to use an amp sim in real time however, you need to monitor through the DAW and that means you need to get latency down for it work (down to something like 10 ms for you to be able to play and hear without lag). You could try installing ASIO4all to see if that works. That's a generic ASIO driver that sometimes works well enough to make a generic audio interface low latency.
for any guitar player out there that is looking to record his/her guitar parts and at the same time sounding thick and heavy i dont recommend to copy/paste your samples into another tracks, just play them by default that way you are getting the full benefits of the "stereo" recording if you do however copy/paste your samples into your guitar tracks than actually playing them, its still OK but you are basicly recording at "Mono" which is bad
I'm not copying the same sample. If you watch carefully I record the same part twice, split the recording in half and drag the second part to another track. There's no copying going on whatsoever. This is the most misunderstood part of this video, I'm thinking I should probably make a separate video about just that.
1792 sounds absolutely insane, I'm surprised you don't get a lot of latency. I'm at 64 :-o. What audio interface do you have? If you're on windows, are you using asio4all or an asio driver that is specifically made for your interface?
Thx for the time you put to explained everything its clear and very well done but i have a main problem.I have a Focusrite solo 3 rd Gen.Everything seems to be well set but i dont see the reaper bar at the bottom.The one where we see record button.Just the one in the left grey area.When i push record button and space bar,after i set the metronome,i dont see the waveforms while im playing.Do you have any idea why? I can hear my playing but not the wave of the sound.Like if it wasnt recording. Thx in advanced Mate great video.
Have you armed the track you are recording to? (it's the round button to the left on the track) The transport bar at the bottom (with play, rec etc) can be shown with View -> Transport in the menus. If it's enabled but you can't see it, you might have accidentally dragged it away somewhere...
@@osiris-guitar Yes i did armed the button but its good now i manage to record the track with control R thx a lot. And thx again now i can see the button rec with play,rec,etc with the transport in the menu you are a life saver :)
And now I need the funktion of Audio Quantize! And I use as a beginner 4 x Guitar 1 and 4x Guitar 2 for Wall of Sound. Chorus 8x Guitar 1 and 8x Guitar 2. I cant' copy becsuse of Phase and I will use my Valve Amps and no PlugIns.. Do you have a Video for me, please?
I usually do just 1 x guitar 1 and 1 x guitar 2 for rhythm (verse and chorus). That's double tracking. Rarely I do 2 x left and 2 x right (quad tracking). But for that you need four really really tight takes. 4 x of each will not give you a wall of sound unless you're exactly spot on with every take, it will give you a wall of mud. Make sure you're using the bass correctly to provide the right punch and low end including low mids. Guitars provide mids and highs, not lows.
I use Superior Drummer 2. It's a VST that you use inside of Reaper. The drum track plays MIDI through the drum plugin. To sync drums and guitar I just play in tempo with a metronome. Sometimes I play the guitars first to the metronome, sometimes I make the drum track first and then play guitars to that to help keep the tempo.
Saya hampir frustasi menggunakan reaper. Permasalahan yang Saya hadapi Adalah suara gitar Saya tidak terekam di reaper. Bagaimana mengatur device preference? Saya menggunakan effek zoom G3Xn kemudian ke guitar link. Tapi suara gitar tidak terekam di reaper. Mohon bantuanya. Terimakasih
Hi! Thanks for the tutorial, it helped me a lot. I have one question though. While recording, I can hear the guitar but only clean sound. I can't hear the effect I'm using (guitar rig). Once I stop recording I can hear the plug in but not while I press record and play. All settings are just like yours in the video. Do you have an idea of why could that be?
It sounds like you have direct monitoring activated on your audio interface, that could explain why you hear the clean while recording (I'm thinking that's activated all the time, but you can't hear the clean when the monitoring from Reaper is on). It's super weird though why Reaper is only monitoring when NOT recording... The monitoring icon (the little speaker) on each track has three states - off, automatic and always on. Is yours in auto or always on?
@@osiris-guitar Thanks for the reply! I have Reaper 5, and my version doesn't have the speaker icon. Maybe there's another way of activate/desactive the monitoring from Reaper? And yes, I activate the direct monitoring from my audio interface because otherwise it doesn't sound anything at all.
@@rickhammel9541 Thanks for the advice, but very bad news. My audio interface is not even letting me turn on the computer. So the problem was that all along. Thank you anyways for your replies!
You are correct! But I didn't copy it, I just played it twice in the same recording and then split the recording in half. So that's exactly the same as recording the left, stopping and then recording the right. If I had copied the entire take there would have been no widening at all.
Subscribed...🤘 Thank for the video! I have a question,I have Boss Katana and how can I record dry signal and wet signal as I see a lot of guitaris after they record they play the recording and change the amp to hear if they can get a better sound..I hope it makes sense what I am trying to say Or this is possibel just with plug ins or things like Helix pedal board?
I don't know a lot about the Boss Katana, but I know that my old Line 6 Pod X3 had multichannel USB input. With that you could do stereo recording, OR you could select input dry for one track and input wet for another and record those two at the same time. What do the inputs from the Katana look like in your DAW?
@@osiris-guitar I use record out from Katana to Presounus interface and Reaper..sorry I don't know a lot about this type of recording I am new to this 😊
Hey! I have a burning question: when I recorded my guitar, and play it back, I can’t hear it. I have headphones plugged in, my speakers on, but I don’t hear anything. How? Also, how to save it as MP3?
No I didn't copy and paste it, even though it might look like it (probably the biggest mistake in this video, not making it clearer what I actually did). If you do, you don't get a stereo widening effect, you just get the same as a single track but louder. What I did was record the same part twice. Then I split that recording in half, putting one half on the left track and the other on the right track. It absolutely works for leads as well, as long as you get the two takes similar enough (just like with rhythms).
I have a question about that. Shortly I tried to record guitar riffs for a song and I've put drums over those riffs. And although I played the riffs on time with the drums, on the playback it's really out of beat. How can I fix it? Do I need to mix something or cut something to get it fixed or?
Do you monitor what is recorded in real-time through the DAW? If yes, does that sound like it's on-beat? If you are using direct monitoring from your audio interface and that sounds right, but the recording is off your problem is input latency. What drivers are you using?
@@osiris-guitar what do you mean by real time 😅I use line 6 ux2 and it goes into my laptop and that goes into reaper. And I use pod farm 2 for guitar sound that's it. I reduced the latency down to 3 ms I think now i solved the problem really big thanks for your help. But what do you mean by real time?
When I play my two takes back to back in doubling I can't figure out to split them in half. When I play them play back together after doubling it's all out of time!
Not entirely sure what you mean... But you don't split the tracks, you pan them. One take to the right, one take to the left. When it comes to time sync, did you record with a metronome or a drum track so that the recordings sit right on the grid?
You drag the track to a special position under the parent where the line indicating its new position becomes shorter. You can also press the folder icon on the parent track (bottom left) to make it into a folder (i.e. make the track under it into a subtrack)
Hello! I've got a problem regarding Reaper! After I finish recording my guitar, before I export the project I want to listen to what I recorded, but when I press play, I cannot hear anything I recorded, the audio interface is set correctly though!
@@osiris-guitar I have a Neural Dsp plug-in in a track, and i hear dry and plug-in at the same time, i tried to push the monitor button on my audio interface but still the sound :/
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