Reaper, you've done it again. ReaSamplOmatic5000.

As I mentioned earlier I decided to make some drum tracks to play along with for my fingerstyle arrangements, equally to improve my tempo and equally to make them more engaging to audiences. I've played with drummers many times over the years, solo fingerstyle, it makes sense. Solo fingerstyle already incorporates a bassline so don't need a bassist, it incorporates a melody so don't need a singer, it incorporates a rhythm so don't need a rhythm guitarist are out...there's some but not a lot of percussion so drummers are a good fit! I've talked about playing with drummers many times as far back as 2009 and 2010 and at an open night a decade ago not to mention a gig I did this very year at work with my mate Geoff.

I'm not a very good drummer. I own an entry level electric drum kit, a Yamaha DTX Explorer, I dabbled a bit years ago, decided drumming is best left to drummers. But I've always had a love for the drums and how they fit with guitars, and it goes right back. Let my wax nostalgically for a moment.

In the mid 80's I was a Commodore 64 nut. It's where I learnt to program - C64 basic and even hand coded 6502 assembler. Musically, there were a few programs I used on it, one was "Funky Drummer". I would make drum loops and play along with them endlessly. Sadly no recordings of that exist anymore...I do have a few cassette tapes with various stuff on it, perhaps one day I will stand up a cassette player and see if I can find any!

In the mid-late 90's a mate of mine at work introduced me to the DOS multi-track sequencer "Impulse Tracker" which was a whole new level of drum machine, with actual drum samples! I had a lot of fun with that. That eventually gave way to "Modplug Tracker", being Windows based, but I never enjoyed it quite as much. I wrote several original songs in the late 90's early 2000's during the time I was getting more into arranging fingerstyle covers. Fingerstyle had always been my first love, but I had a fun experimental "full band" period of time which ended around 2001.

Impulse Tracker

ModPlug Tracker

Yes, recordings exist from that era...I need to find the masters and remix them...one day. I've never shared any here before, I'm not sure why - possibly because they just aren't any good - but why not. Have a listen to these badly mixed songs I wrote - using Impulse Tracker, my electric guitar, bass and some vocals. Ask me if you want me to talk more about songs from my distant past :-)

Blue Metal:
Sheister Meister:

Which brings me back to the topic of the day, making drum tracks. I'm not going to revive any of that old software, but I have my DAW Reaper, and I have Kenny Gioia, The Legendary Reaperian of Lore. He showed me the FX called "ReaSamplOmatic5000", which is EXACTLY what a sample tracker in the context of Reaper should look like. Good job Repearians. It took me a while to get my head around it, but it is just what I needed. Essentially using MIDI to track samples, making it the drum machine sequencer I loved from my youth. I've already churned out a backing drum track for "Wish You Were Here". What really makes ReaSamplOmatic5000 special for me is that I can us my little AKAI MPK mini mk3 MIDI device as a drum trigger - OR - I can use my Yamaha DTX Explorer as an actual kit through my PreSonus interface to record the drum hits, when I have drummer in the house. Or even, olde school, just click away in the MIDI editor and make them all like I did when I was a kid.

So nice. I've got my WAVBVKERY vintage kit drum samples, I will need to look for others for the various songs I do - but the 70's Ludwig is a great starting point . It will take some time, but it will be good to make these drum backing tracks.

JAW's guide to using ReaSamplOmatic based on Kenny G's tutorials

References: Youtube 1 Youtube 2

Note for Windows OS: In Options->Preferences Device, if you are just using your computer soundcard, then don't use DirectSound, it is gross and laggy. You could use ASIO (either the one that came with your MIDI controller or ASIO4All) but the driver takes over windows sounds so you wan't be able to listen to youtube/music/etc. A good option however is WASAPI, which is Microsoft's answer to ASIO. If you use it in Exclusive mode it is pretty close to ASIO, but then you may as well use ASIO. In Shared mode it is quite good - not too laggy, and you can listen to Youtube at the same time. Change your Block size to be low for low latency, but high enough that you aren't hearing crunchiness.

• Make a new track called Drums. Set it to Record, set the Input to MIDI, All Channels.
• Right mouse click Input, Track Recording Setting, turn on Quantise to 16th notes.
• Right mouse click Input again, set Record MIDI to Overdub. That way each pass just adds drums.
• Make another track called "Kick". Add the FX ReaSamplOmatic5000.
• In the ReaSamplOmatic5000 drag in a Kick Drum sample. The View->MediaExplorer is a great way to browse your sample library, when you have found the one you like, drag it into the waveform window.
• Set the Note start and note end to both be the MIDI number for your target MIDI note. It's a good idea to turn on View->Virtual Keyboard so you can see what number/what is happening.
• Set Min vol to -inf if you are using a touch sensitive (velocity) MIDI trigger. If you are just using your computer keyboard, not really an issue, it's only on/off
• Make sure the Mode is set to Sample (Ignores MIDI note).
• Route your Drums track to the Kick track by dragging the routing icon from one to the other. Set Audio to Off, you only want to route MIDI.

You are now at a stage where you have a MIDI track to record your MIDI triggers, it passes the MIDI down to a drum track, the drum track listens out for the one specific MIDI note and then plays the sample when it gets it. You can add other normal FXs to it, adjust faders, panning, etc, like a normal track.

A few other tips/tricks:

• Obviously, add a track per drum type!
• You can include multiple samples per track, for instance I will have a "Hat" track, and it will include an open and close hat sample.
• In the case of an open hat which rings out, you can make it stop ringing if another hat strike is made. Add an FX "JS: MIDI Choke", set the Choke Note Range Start to the the MIDI note that you want to kill the ringing drum, set the Affected Note Range Start to the MIDI note of the ringing drum. In the ringing drum, set "Obey note-offs" to true. Now, if you trigger an open hat, then a moment later trigger a closed hat, the open hat sample will stop ringing, so more like a real drum kit.
• When in the MIDI editor, setting to "Named Notes" view is nicer, and double right click on a note to name it.
• You can change the Grid size in the MIDI editor in the drop down box at the bottom of the window.
• If you need a different time signature, for example there is a 2/4 bar, then right click on the bar in the main window, Insert Time Signature/Tempo Marker, set it to your new time signature, and then repeat the proces in the next bar to change it back to the previous timing.

What's happening December 2024

I'm mucking around with a number of musical stuff at the moment!

On the fingerstyle arrangement front, I am polishing, practising, and getting a few ready for recording over Christmas. It's been a while since I recorded an arrangement, I'm looking forward to getting some done. After around a year of mixing and learning about the DAW Reaper I have a slightly different perspective on recording, I might even start to sound a bit professional in the future - Watch this space!

In other news I have recorded a song from my teenage daughter's "girl band"...they are the quintessential power trio, Lyds is the singer/songwriter/guitarist front person, my Naomi is singer/bassist and Jess is the drummer. I'm thinking "Cream" with Clapton/Bruce/Baker, but they were well before even my time, so maybe "Nirvana" is slightly more contemporary, but I don't think Krist ever sang? Anyway.

I got them to record one of their originals to a click track. Mostly because all I *had* was a two channel mixer. Recorded stereo drums, then guitar and bass, then two vocals. It took several hours, it was like herding cats...they are 15&16 year old teenage girls. I later put together a mix, it took most of my effort just doing audio quantisation on the drums and the bass. Because the song is punchy, it needed to be super-tight and it wasn't. The vocals and the distorted electric guitar were okay - the guitar was not punchy so slightly out timing is not noticeable. The girls have been singing together for a while so they matched in nicely. And besides when vocals are leading or training a beat, well, that's "expression" :-)

Two things came out of that session. First is that recording with only two channels is not enough. In a fortuitous set of circumstance, while chatting about it to one of my mates at work who has been creating music for years, he said "Oh I have an old PreSonus with 8 channels, I'm upgrading to a Focus-Right, do you want to buy it off me?" So I have a PreSonus Studio 18|24 USB sitting in front of me that I need to get familiar with.

The other thing to come out of that session is I recorded electric drums as a stereo channel straight from my drum machine. I felt helpless mixing it. I'm now quite used to mixing an analogue kit with 7 mics on it, and I love the flexibility. In the stereo mix the snare sound was not at all what I wanted. I ended up putting a sample on top of it for all the hits of the snare, that was tedious. I know that my drum machine can act as a midi trigger, I even bought a midi cable for it a while ago, just haven't used it. The PreSonus has a midi interface, so I need to get familiar with that, I need to go back to glorious multi tracked drums.

So as if all that is not enough, I have been playing a bit more often to a metronome. I still dislike them, but as far as being a useful all round musician, you need to be able to play super tight to a click. But recently, I had switched to a drum beat instead of a metronome. It is less like being constantly hit in the brain with a stick. I've found it almost pleasant. The problem is, not every drumbeat suits every song. So I thought "why don't I use a drum machine app where I can save each beat, and the tempo, and recall it when needed?" Not to mention not having to remember a tempo I like to play each song as. While looking for something that could do this, I found that most apps that will do what I want are cut down-DAWs, rich in features, of stuff I don't want to learn. So then I figured, I'm already learning a DAW, reaper, why not just knock up a MIDI drum track for a song, export it as MP3, and then play along to each one? It ties in with my need to use my drum kit as a midi trigger anyway, so two birds with one stone there.

The fingerstyle guitar snob purist in me squawked "You can't do that, you can't have any sound other than what your fingers and guitar is doing!" I've never done backing tracks or looping, and to be honest it's forced me to be a better guitarist - forced me to think outside the box to fill out a song, forced me to develop techniques for a rich guitar only sound. Maybe playing along to a drum track is a gateway drug, but my path of being "just a solo instrumental fingerstyle guitar player" has blurred over the years, I think there would be benefits in playing along to a drum track - firstly being a tighter rhythmist, and secondly a bit of enhancement to the music I play to audiences.

Vox Pathfinder Bass 10

My mate Steve and I both have pieces of paper that say "Batchelor of Electronic Engineering", but neither of us do that for a living. We both however want to be able to say that we can actually work on electronics. For example, a while back I fixed a broken amp. So when a broken Vox Pathfinder Bass 10 fell into my hands I felt compelled to fix it.

I have however come to realise that I will only go so far. If it's not a broken wire, popped fuse or simple power supply issue, then it's going to take too long and I neither have the patience or equipment to really dig in deep. This amp was no simple fix. It had a weird distortion coming through. Steve however, he loves a challenge. And since this is just a little analogue amp, I threw it his way and he persisted until he fixed it.

During the, I'm going to guess hundreds of hours he spent debugging it, he produced an electrical schematic. It needs to be on the internet, so here is a pdf of the electrical schematic and here is a jpg.

A short discourse...it presented with some high mid/high frequency distortion on top of the expected signal. You could set the bass volume and the amp volume to reduce it, and if you played softly it wasn't too bad, but it was always there.

On first inspection Steve discovered a hole in one of the speakers which I hadn't noticed and sent it back. Seemed fair enough, that could cause noise. The speakers in there were a fairly non standard 5", I decided that some cheap 4" speakers from AliExpress would do the job. Put them in, no, distortion still there. and they were pretty rubbish. Without thinkng too hard I grabbed some slightly less cheap 6" speakers, and put them in with some slight hassle (they were a bit big, but I made them fit). Still distorting. I had concluded it wasn't the speakers and sent it back to Steve. He was not convinced and bought some not-so-cheap correctly fitting 5" speakers...still distorting.

During let's call it "the speaker phase" Steve mapped out a frequency response curve of the 4" (YH-1008) and 6" (YH-600) speakers, and for reference the sub speaker from his home theatre system. Remembering that the low E on a bass is around 40Hz you can see that the two cheapy speakers aren't great around there and don't really flatten out frequency reponse wise until over 100Hz. The sub speaker starts flattening out at 50Hz which is better, but we discovered that for bass amp design you really need to think about how you are going to get those low frequencies pumping air.

But the speakers proved to be a red herring.

Steve's equipment was struggling to show the nature of the distortion, which is kinda frustrating "I can hear it, but I can't see it". Looking at a bass guitar signal as it goes through the circuit, we could see that there seemed to be a few pixels of high frequence noise superimposed on sections of the waveform. But neither of us would declare "that was it". Steve, being persistent, then went to town replacing components.

Signal vs Opamp 1a Maybe noisy?

Signal vs Opamp 1b Inverted, looks fine!

Signal vs Opamp 2 Inverted, maybe noisy?

Signal vs power Opamp 3 Inverted, DC offset, some noise?

An interesting part of this amp design is that the power side is an opamp! That is, an Operational Amplifier, which is more of a circuit in a chip than just a transister/FET/tube valve. Opamps are great, because they have a pretty flat frequency response across the full spectrum, super high gain, super high input impedence...I didn't imagine a power opamp would be the power house behind an amp! There are some low power opamps in the circuit too, which are there to handle the overdrive circuit, the treble, mid and bass EQ signal adjustments.

Steve's experience with electronics makes him suspect capacitors every time. Because capacitors fail. He popped every single one of the board, and tested them. None were a problem.

He discovered that although the signal opamps and the power opamps were obsolete, there were equivalent replacements which he also swapped out. It was not a function of the opamp.

At this stage we were both scratching our heads. There wasn't much left to swap out. Something that he had noticed along the way is that the transformer power supply was being pulled down pretty hard, getting close to the minimum operating voltage for the power opamp. While the supply was within spec, after looking at what the opamps can handle voltage wise, he decided to buy a higher voltage transformer with a few more VAs too. The one he selected could fit in, it was right at the upper limit of the opamp capabilities, se he swapped out two resistors to ease back a little on the voltage.

Oh, and he grumbled a lot about the board. How 240VAC was intertwined with signal voltages, how there were so many links on the board and just a generally poor layout of the board, and how difficult it was to pull apart and put back together - that it, like so many things these days, is not designed to be easily serviced. Are you listening Vox?

Well Steve was right. With a new transformer kicking in a bit more juice, the distortion went away. Fixed. My take on this is that the power supply selection is build down to a price, and most of the time, when things are running to specification, it will work. But without a little bit of over-engineering in place, the moment the transformer had dropped a few VAs, some higher frequency weird opamp distortion crept in. Getting those opamps back up to plenty of voltage headspace, problem solved. Vox - spend a bit more money on parts!

Board Before

Board Modified

Good work Steve! We both learnt something! Oh, and one other very cool thing I learnt - inside the unit were two LEDs back to back. "Why are there LEDs inside the unit, that will never be seen?" After staring at the circuit for a while, working from our electronics first principles knowledge Steve and I realised that as the "drive" level is turned up, the LED foward volt drop, probably around 2V, will start to kick in, which will begin to clip the waveform. As we know, if you raise the amplitude of a signal but then start to clip the peaks, you get both an additional loudness increase, and all those extra harmonics as it clips which brings more complexity to the sound. After reading up about it on the internet, aparently LEDs have quite a sonically pleasing soft-clipping sound rather than the much harder clipping found in other diodes!

What's happening October 2024

I've continued to do a lot of mixing. It's easy to load an SD card into the deck at my local church and record all 32 tracks, and then you have 4 songs to experiment with. I have a mate from work who has been doing that sort of thing for years, and trained, so it's great to pass mixes to him for a critique. It is a universe into itself the world of mixing, I've got at least my toe in it now. The more I do, the more I practise, the better and faster I am getting at it. I'm not aiming for perfection, I'm aiming to be competant at it - so when it actually counts I might be able to mix a song with some skills.

From a fingerstyle guitar point of view, you may think "What's the point JAW?" I have noticed it is making me think more about production. What does a song need? How can I fit the bassline in? Percussive strums to make a strong beat? The melody IS SO IMPORTANT! There is no doubt that mixing a multi-instrumentalist song will improve your overall musicianship - and it helps improve your ear. So would many other musical pursuits - like learning more theory! What is the best bang for buck? I don't know. But I do know that I'm enjoying the world of mixing and I'm more likely to do something that is fun than something that may be more beneficial, but I don't currently have any interest in.

Meanwhile I need to do a stocktake on fingerstyle arrangements that I really should record. Before I forget I can play them :-)

• Don't Dream it's Over - Crowded House
• It Feels Like We Only Go Backwards - Tame Impala
• Come on Eileen - Dexys Midnight Runners
• White Room - Cream
• I Want to Break Free - Queen
• Horse With No Name - America
• Rain - Dragon

There's few others that I have put effort into but I'm not sure if I will continue to pursue them...

• Got What You Need - Eskimo Joe
• Live it Up - Mental as Anything
• Pumped Up Kicks - Foster the People
• Toccata - Bach (Sky Version)
• 19-2000 - Gorillaz
• It's All Over Now Baby Blue - Bob Dylan/Graham Bonnet
• Fly Like an Eagle - Steve Miller Band

Mmm. Fly like an Eagle.

Mmm.

<Some Time Later>

I'd forgotten how groovy that song is! I noodled further with my previous efforts from a few years back, started developing a cool bassline. I needed to refer to the chords (ultimate guitar) and a quick check of melody (musescore). I had a rough for the verse and the chorus pretty quick just from memory. I then re-listened to the song again :-) So much cool electronics in it. But I can't really emulate that. The bassline rocks, but the studio recording relies on the synth and the electronics to carry the, um, chord extensions progression? You can hear the chorus and verses moving through some chord extensions, but it's not in the bass. The bass is just hanging onto an A, popping up from a G on a beat, but it's hanging on the chord of Am. I couldn't come up with a chord progression and hang onto the A without it sounding a bit boring. But I can make the bassline emulate the chord extensions.  Maybe the first verse could be just on the A?  So much I could do!

And so groovy! I hooked up my practise electric guitar, dialed in a tiny bit of distortion and recorded a quick rough so I'd remember what I was playing with, have a listen!

Fly Like an Eagle rough thoughts:

Yamaha G65-A

Another vintage Yamaha found its way to me, I was pleased that it was not a C40. Don't get me wrong, a Yamaha C40 is an adequate classical guitar, often not bad at all. But often not good. This G65-A (serial 31109517 - 0426423 so probably 1983) is in good condition, doesn't look like it has been played much. I whipped the few remaining strings off it and checked the fret level and neck angle, all was okay. Well, neck angles always seem out once a classical guitar is 20 years old, but we make do.

I ran a block with sandpaper across the frets and it did not take very long before it was touching everywhere.  I barely needed to put my fret file on it. Note: my latest fret file is nice, the one with the wooden handle, but the profile is too deep and was barely touching the frets. I am going to have to splurge on a decent fret file.

There were no sharp fret ends!  I think it is because the manufacturers tapped in frets already cut to size with pre-finished ends...and they are slightly too narrow!  It feel like that's not great because you lose a bit of fretboard at the edge. I want every bit of my fretboard to count. I reckon it is better to put the frets in and then sand them flush to the fretboard edge.

After polishing all the frets and giving the fretboard a heavy oiling, I decided to replace the nut. The existing one was pretty awful.  I had already bought a bag of standard classical bone nuts a while back, and they are a perfect fit.  Well, other than sanding the bottom down a few millimetres to get the nut height right.

The saddle was not the worst saddle I've ever seen, but, yikes, comes close! A cheap plastic one, and so thin! I've never seen a saddle so thin, I was tempted to open up the saddle slot a bit more to fit a bone saddle in, but, nah. A little too much effort for this calibre of guitar.

Restrung it up, it sounded okay.  Marginally better than your average C40. It has the usual G string resonance nastiness when you dig in, so many classical guitars have that.  I reckon that is your first test with a classical guitar. Pluck the G string hard, does it have a tedious resonance that grinds your ears - and does it sound a bit out of balance with the other strings? Otherwise this guitar has a good bass, the mids are bolder than I was expecting, and the trebles are adequate. It is not the worst vintage Yamaha I have played.

It is a cheap model, that's for sure, marginally up from my G-55A. For starters it does actually have a solid wood (rosewood?) fretboard, and a solid bookmatched soundboard (cedar?).  The rest of the body is all veneer, so quite cheap, and no attempts to bookmatch the back or sides. Although the back is interestingly pretty though, I mean veneer is still wood, just a really thin sheet of wood, I'm guessing this is an example of rotary peeled veneer. At least the veneer is not on a backing of MDF, it looks to be on some sort of (probably) laminated cheaper wood.

As found

Fret tool not quite right sadly

New nut installed, compared with old

Interesting veneer back

So overall it came up okay, sounds okay, and it is pretty, so ready to go back to its owner.

Here is my standard test song, raw from the microphone.

Yamaha G65-A:

My Reaper Mixing Notes

This article is a work in progress and will be constantly updated, for me, as I learn new skills!

I use the Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) called "Reaper" for mixing and I quite often get a multi-track recording from a Behringer X32/Midas M32 deck (they are virtually the same thing). This post is a dumping ground for all the things I have learnt from the process so that I have a coherent centralised place to keep them for me - and maybe they will also be useful to you.

Remember some golden rules: use your ears, not your eyes; keep it simple; mix in context not in solo.

Important things to do to Reaper before you start:

• Download and install SWS Extensions, it's, umm, to enable you to, ahh... just do it. sws-extension.org
• Download and install ReaPack, for managing scripts. Reapack.com
• Options->Preferences->Project Backups and tick the top level Auto-save. To prevent heartache later on when you forgot to press save when you should have, or presses save when you shouldn't have.
• File->Project Settings:
• Set you desired sample rate - 48kHz for an X32/M32 deck
• If you are working to a click track, set the BPM here.
• If you are not working to a click track, set "Timebase for items/envelopes/markers" to "Time" (won't automatically stretch items pasted from a different timebase)
• In Reaper use the WASAPI driver instead of Windows direct sound, it is better. Options->Preferences->Device and select WASAPI. Go for Shared Mode so that other apps can use sound. Set the sample and bit rate to say 48kHz 24 bit. In Windows sound settings make sure you input and output devices the same setting. If you get the error "WASAPI shared mode device error: input device sample rate does not match output device samplerate!" then hard select the Input device and Output device to match your windows devices, you shouldn't need to fall back to exclusive mode.
• You can save fx chains and reuse them, very handy.  They MUST be in the Reaper FXChains directory so be seen in the fx dialog, so any that you have (or save) will be (Windows) in C:\Users\<you>\AppData\Roaming\REAPER\FXChains
• Windows users: In System->Sound your device->Properties MAKE SURE AUDIO ENHANCEMENTS ARE OFF! And Spatial sound. And anything that Windows uses to mess with the signal.

Raw files

Acquiring from X32/M32

While the X32/M32 has a USB port on the front it will only record a deck-mixed stereo signal. However if you have the SD card module added, you can record all 32 channels pre-mixer. Format any SD card to FAT32 and pop it in. While the manual talks about 32GB as the limit, I have been using 128GB cards no problem which can record a 5 hour session. Class 4 SD cards are fine for bandwidth.

It records everything into a WAV file, split into 4GB chunks, not useful yet. Here is my process:

1. They are hexadecimally named which doesn't sort well, so I made this little script to rename them:Rename x32 hex to dec.cmd.
2. Drag all these files directly into a Reaper track, "sequential time positions on a single track". You will now have a single track containing multiple items (the wav chunks), each containing the 32 channels.
3. In Reaper, Extensions (previously installed from ReaPack) browse and install the package "Explode multichannel items to mono items in new tracks (without render)" by Rodilab. Run the script as an action. It will explode the WAV into separate tracks.
4. In Reaper run my "prep" script which will get rid of the unused tracks, add colour, group, pan, based on rules. Download this script and edit it according to the rules you need. This will require some experimenting on your behalf! JAW X32 Track Rules Parser.lua

Consolidating

Now that you have multiple mono tracks with multiple items, all referencing rather large WAV files, it's a good time to consolodate into smaller MP3 files and throw away the unused tracks and quiet sections.

1. Delete any tracks that weren't active, eg, there was no electric guitar playing that day, only 3 vocalists, etc)
2. Set Reaper into "Ripple Editing All Tracks" - there is a button on the toolbar. Click to show a cursor, ctrl-A to select all tracks, S to split. Then use right mouse to drag click select, press delete and sections of the tracks will be removed. Turn off Ripple Editing
3. File->Consolidate/Export Tracks, create a new directory, give it a name, set the resample mode to the highest quality MP3 or FLAC if disk space is not an issue, entire project all tracks, and tick all the boxes to update project with consolidated files and saving as a new project. This will create a much smaller set of files but still high quality files, with only one item per track. Much easier to deal with. Will take quite a while, all tracks will be rendered.
4. Ctrl-A, Right click on any item, Item Processing, Normalise items. Normalise to Peak, "Normalise each item Separately". Depending on what the gains were like, this will get all tracks to the highest amplitude without any distortion. Again, to make it easier to deal with.
   NOTE: for dual mono channels that represent a stereo signal, do these "Normalise to loudest item" to ensure that they remain "paired" as part of the normalisation process. Otherwise you risk making one channel louder than the other.

Rough Mix

Faders(volume)

Set all faders to an appropriate level before applying any effects to get a rough mix. GIVE YOURSELF SOME HEADROOM! Don't try to max out the gain at this stage, leave yourself some room in the master track, don't worry, you can make it loud later.

You should only add effects to fix problems. With that said, if you already know a heap of problems that happen every time, and you have already solved them before, then add those effects in.

Pan

Not really an effect as such but definitely think about where you want each track to be situated from left to right. It's a good idea to get tracks off centre, even just by 10%, to create 3D space, unless you specifically want your track to be straight down the middle. With that said, to really create width pan tracks 100% left or right. Particularly good for multiple vocalists or a solo instrument that you can to hear "over there". Don't be frightened about going to extremes.

Phase

Maybe some of your mics have a different latency, and maybe the latency will cause phase cancellation or distortion. but if you want the tightest of the tight, then zoom right in on your master track and see how all the tracks are overlapping, specifically on punchy transients. Particularly useful on the drums, if you notice some tracks are offset to each other, you can move tracks in time slightly to line up the signals.

In Reaper 7.40 there is now an action to auto-align phase. Run the action "Item edit: Phase alignment" and let it do the work for you! Tip: For really long items, select a small section, tick "Use time selection" and the calculations will be much quicker. Always let it invert phase - it knows best. Cut a bit off the front of the tracks to allow the system to move tracks left, and hit apply.

Double Tracking

If you have recorded more than one track of the same song, to a click track, then add in a new track, synchronise them, hard pan one track left and one track right. This is fantastic for acoustic guitars. You might need to go through and re-align any errors that stand out - but use your ears, not your eyes. Perfectionism is a killer.

Routing Tips

When you create folders, containing children tracks, THE CHILDREN ALWAYS ROUTE TO THE PARENT. So if you wanted to route from one track to another, they can't be related. So for example say you had a complicated chopped up vocal track and you wanted a clean version with several vocal effects, but then another grungey version with abunch of unrelated effects, you would have three tracks all at the same level, you would then drag the routing icon from the first chopped up track to the clean track, then again to the grunge track. Then you can add you effects to those other two tracks.

Make sure you click on the routing for the sending track and untick Parent Send channels so that track isn't going to the master. Note that that track will act like a parent folder - if you solo it you will here all the tracks it is sending to coming back through it.

Vocal Isolation

Meta (Facebook) have been working on AI in the music scene for a while now, and to show how good they are they release their models for free! If you have a crowd mic and you want to incorporate it (it really adds ambience to a mix!) but it is full of reflections of the PA you can get quite an impressive vocal isolation, albeit not perfect. It will have artifacts which if glued nicely at a reasonable level in the mix won't be noticed. You can do this locally on your own PC, don't waste time with online isolators:

Initial Setup:

• install python, make sure it is in your environment path. If you don't know how to do this, chat to the LLMs.
• download the program "ffmpeg", unzip into a directory, add ffmeg/bin to environment path. If this doesn't make sense, chat to the LLMs.
• in a command box execute:
• pip install demucs
• pip install soundfile
• Do some research with your favourite Chatbot about GPUs.  Install the latest driver, look up how to use Torch with your GPU to really speed the process up.  Something like:
• pip install torch torchvision torchaudio --index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/cu124

Ongoing Use:

• turn your crowd mic into an mp3 - if you have a stage left and stage right then hard pan them and save as a stereo mp3.
• in a command box run: demucs -n htdemucs_ft "your audio file.mp3" --two-stems=vocals --device=cuda
  Note: htdemucs_ft is slower but better.  For faster response just use hrdemucs
  Note: drop the --device=cuda if you don't have a GPU set up
  Note: you might need to set the GPU if you have more than one:
     python: device = torch.device("cuda:0" if torch.cuda.is_available() else "cpu")
     bash: set CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=0
  

Effects

Delay

My favourite use of delay is a stereo delay - having different times in the left/right channels. This can make a mono signal sound like a wide stereo signal and is great to re-situate a track into a different 3D space to the rest of the tracks. Use "ReaDelay", set length to say time=80ms (musical=0), pan full left, then add a new tap, set to time=120ms pan full right. Adjust the wet for a good feel. Adjust the times to get the spacing you like the sound of.

Compression

Tame a signal where the dynamics are bigger than you want them to be, squeezes the levels together. Use on almost anything. Set the ratio higher to have less effect, but 4:1 is a good starting point. Move the threshold up - if you aren't exceeding the threshold anywhere, you aren't going into compression, there is no point having it. Set the attack fast if you need to the compressor to respond quickly, set the release slow if you want the compressor to not come off so quickly, sounds more natural. ReaComp is a good go to, don't forget to tick "Auto make-up" to keep the volume consistent. Choosing one of the stock presets for your application is a great starting point.

The JS 1175 is an emulated Urei 1176 fast compressor worth looking at, ReaXComp get even more fancy by having multiple frequency bands of compression.

Limiter

When compression isn't enough...use a limiter to prevent clipping on aggressive transients while bringing up all the subtleties underneath. Great on drums and in mastering to Make It Loud.

Set attack and release times so it doesn't sound unnatural.

For a The Ultimate Limiter use "Event Horizon Limiter/Clipper" which has zero delay response, this will clean up anything that escapes out of the normal limiter.

EQ

Boost and reduce frequency ranges, surely everyone knows what EQ does. A good way to work out what frequencies you want more or less of is to make a fairly narrow band boost, drag it extremely high, then sweep across the frequency ranges listening for what you like and don't like, and set it accordingly. Some good rules of thumb:

• 20-70 : Rumble/Subbass : for dums and bass need this.
• 70-300 : Boomy/Warmth/Muddiness/Fullness : Sometimes there are resonances here, notch them out.
• 300-1.2k : Boxy/Nasal : often worth reducing on some tracks to create space for other tracks.
• 1.2k-5k : Honky/Harsh : can add clarity. Look to remove vocal esses (sibilance) in here.
• 5k-11k : Sparkle/Presence
• 11k+ : Air

Use ReaEQ for creating normal boost/cut EQ. Use ReaFIR set to Dynamic EQ mode which can be great to tame harshness in vocals or solo instruments: Set mode to Compressor, set the Compression Ratio fairly low, say 1.5:1 and then set up a band profile where the compressor is starting to do stuff on the peaks across the frequency spectrum. This will smooth out peaks in frequencies depending on how hard you set the compression ratio.

Reverberation

Ubiquitous and overused but quite essential. Because we aren't always recording in a warm room or a cathedral, but those sounds are nice, so apply artificial versions of them. Don't overdo it! Argh! Reverb does not make up for a bad recording! A little bit of reverb underneath a vocal or a solo instrument can be quite nice, a good one as recommended by Kenny Gioia is ReaVerb: set to file, use the "Fat Plate" impulse file from the Lexicon 480L last seen at http://www.housecallfm.com/download.php?f=BGLex480.zip somewhere around -30dB.

Another great free reverb is Magic7.

A simpler Reaper built in reverb that can be quite effective is ReaVerbate: set the room size to massive - even say 95, and use very sparingly to make a vocal ring. Use side chained or automate the wet mix or manually add it in a separate track.

Gate

If something sits on background noise most of the time and then bursts into life, then gate it - ie, it will be silent unless the gate is exceeded. It will sound unnatural solo'd, but in a mix it will be fine. Drums are good to gate, sometimes even the vocals. Use ReaGate and set the attack/hold/release to something that suites your track, and most importantly set the threshold.

Tuning

It's okay to tune up a few vocals here or there, especially when there are multiple singers doing harmonies, but you can't fix a bad recording. Add in ReaTune in Auto mode, if you choose the key for the song it will make sure no notes leave the key - or just set it for chromatic so any normal note is allowed - so any off notes will snap to the closest note. 

If you need to fix just a few bad vocal notes is to do it manually: on the Correction tab change the attack time to around 100ms, then on the Manual Correction tab tick "Manual Correction" and then draw blue lines to fix missed pitches. Put your blue line slightly after the point at which the pitch is hit, to make it sound smoother, and finish the line a bit early. Put ReaTune first in your effects chains. Note - if you have to manually tune notes, it's probably already a lost cause...

Sometimes when there is sibilance ('S'es/etc) the tuner will go warbly and yuck, you will notice it. A straightforward way to deal with it is to simply turn off the tuner during those sections. Go to ReaTune, click Param and select "Show Track Envelope" (use "Wet").  Now you have an envelope under the track, simply block out the sections where you are hearing tuning nonsense. Using "Wet" to turn it off is a better idea than "Bypass" as you can often get pops and clicks and the VST energises - when you are using wet it continues to run in the background, you just don't use it for a bit.

Saturation

This is a quirky little effect, basically distorts the signal based on the way old analogue equipment like tape machines or tube amplifiers would distort when driven hard. Adds harmonics which are "richer, warmer" ie pleasing. I found the free plugin "GSat+" does a good job, load it up and at the top menu press the right arrow to say "Medium" or "Warm", wind the input up until it is going onto saturation for at least part of the range.

Another good saturator is Korneff "Chocolate Milk" which is a tape based saturator rather than the GSatplus tube based saturator. Because saturators are simulations of the real word effect of overdriving analogue signals through something like a vacuum tube or magnetic tape.

Quantisation

With your drum MIDI that you have captured and had played to a click track, and you want to fix up mis-timed hits, first start with quantisation:

• Double click your MIDI to get the MIDI editor window
• In the bottom left, first choose your grid - if the fastest notes you played for example were 1/16 then set it to that. Change to straight/swing, or triplets if you were playing them.
• Press Q to bring up the quantise window.
• A simple quantise would be: Use Grid, Uncheck Bypass, All notes, Position, Strength around 80% so it still sounds like a human played it and Fix overlaps, Hit commit and OK.
• You might like to get your snare snappy and accurate - select all the snare notes and hit quantize again, set them to 100%
• Now listen, and anything that was too out of time will be pretty obvious, click and drag into the right position.

Tip: when playing with midi, make a text file where each line is <midi note> <description> and import in with File - Note/CC names - Load note from file. Set the view to be note names rather than piano.

Dealing with Takes

If you are layering/overdubbing, Reaper will automatically make takes into a second lane in that track. You can be a total pro about it and comp it and finalise a take, or you can explode it into individual tracks and do it olde school. This is probably essential if you "accidentally" recorded more than just one thing into a single track. Right mouse drag to select all items in track, right click on one of them, Take - Explode all takes into tracks. For bonus points you can re-select all split items and right click - Heal items in split, as doing takes will naturally split at the point your take started and ended.

Instruments

Drums

The setup I spend a lot of time with has 7 mics. I will always make a track that is a folder (bus) for all the drum tracks and I add a limiter to that to "clean up" those times when the drummer has hit 3 drums full tilt at the same time.

• Gate all drums except the overheads. Set the gate so that only the "fundamental" drum sound comes through, so usually the fastest attack possible and only a hold/release for as long as required, hopefully not before the next hit.
• Put on a limiter rather than a compressor. Drums have a massive impulse on the initial hit which doesn't suit any compressor I've played with. Whereas the limiter, with a brickwall ceiling, can bring up the tail without losing too much initial impulse. Push the threshold until the limiter is only just coming in.
• Add some saturation where you need a drum to really punch
• EQ to the drum in question. Use an online cheatsheet. Note that the full mix will contain everything - let the overheads glue it together. Set each individual mic have an EQ that captures the essence of that drum:
• Kick drum - low frequencies important here, but some highs to get drum character.
• Tom drum2 - keep low frequencies and some mid.
• Snare drum - keep mid frequencies and some highs.
• Overheads - remove the low frequencies and most of the mids, keep only highs. The overhead mics glue the drum kit together through the middle - the low end is dealt with in their own tracks.
• On the snare drum add the free VST "snare buzz". It is fantastic to bring out that snare sound.

Electric Piano

Since it is electric it's already perfect, leave it alone. The only thing you might want to do is compress it if you want to squish the dynamics, or adjust the EQ to create some space for another instrument.

Acoustic Guitar

Generally this is already coming in from a pedal, so like the piano you might not need to touch it. However I rarely find an acoustic guitar that has a frequency response I like, so I usually add EQ to remove boominess and boxiness. It's also a good idea to remove everything from around 80Hz and below, acoustic guitars can't hit those frequencies.

Vocals

Ah, the most challenging instrument of all. Compress - if there are really peaky parts, use two compressors, one to scrub the peaks, the other to smooth it out without crushing it.

I love a saturator on a vocal. Korneff Chocolate Milk (tape saturator) is great, GSatPlus (tube saturator) is free and also quite good.

Add in a further compressor to do sibilance de-essing. In ReaComp, in the detector, adjust the Lowpass and and Highpass so the detector is only working on a frequency range where the esses are, say around 7k-11k for a female. The attack should be fast and the release fast-ish, say 1ms and 30ms.

EQ - varies from person to person, but 120Hz for fullness, 240 for boxiness, 5k for presence, 8k for sibilance, 10k for air. Sweep the mid to find frequencies you like/dislike

Sax

I found that the sax is dynamically unbalanced even between notes. I compress it a lot. Either go for a little bit of reverb, or add some back slap delay if you don't want to muddy it with reverb. EQ this for sure.

Fine tuning and Mastering

Envelopes

Right click on a track header, click Envelopes and then choose say Volume or Pan. Now you can drag the fader/pan around as the song progresses. I normally do the 4 click trapezoid to bring a section up or down. You are almost re-producing the song with this - you can say drop a solo instrument right down so it isn't competing with the vocals, and then crank it up during insturmental sections.

Edit

Don't be afraid to split tracks up! You can realign missed tempo notes, or copy sections from another take or verse to punch out bad sections. Overlap all cuts so they seamlessly transition. Normally you can drag around the cross-fades, but if the fade isn't showing, right click the track, select Item Properties, and then type in new values for the fade in and fade out.

Mastering

The JS 1175 Compressor is nice to glue it all together if it feels a bit unstuck. Use the ReaXcomp multiband compressor to make it pop. Some very minor EQ to tweak up anything that presents itself in the final mix (because you were too keen EQ'ing individual insturment). Top it all off with the JS Event Horizon Limiter/Clipper, set the ceiling to 0, and wind down the threshold a little bit to make it louder but don't go too far or it will start to distort.

Handy Functionality

SWS/S&M

Action - SWS/S&M Copy FX chain from selected track (bind to key I)
Action - SWS/S&M Paste FX chain to selected tracks (bind to key O)

MIDI double hits

I found my older cheaper Yamaha DTXplorer was giving double/triple hits, probably picking up hit bouncing (they are pretty firm rubber pads) but I probably have the sensitivity and threshold too low in the drum head unit.

But all is not lost! I created a script that will remove hits that are clearly too short. The rule is if it finds a hit that happens too quickly after the same note hit then it removes it and stretches the first hit to be the same length as the two hits together.

In the MIDI editor, select all the notes. Under Actions, change the section to Main, and run a lua script. point it to my script and run it. Yah!

Channels

Generally, each track will only have 2 channels shown in the mixer. Even for mono, because FX will often create stereo. If however you have ended up with say 32 (and the track is really wide) you can fix it by clicking on the Route icon, set channels 2.

Timeline

If you want to make an arbitrary point your new zero, right click on the ruler -> change start time/measure - > Set to zero. You can later undo this with a Reset Project Start Time.

VST Drums

Steven Slate VST drums (SSDSampler5) is popular and a great solution if you don't have access to a real drum kit. If you don't have a midi input and just want to draw on the grid:

• Add a track and add the fx SSDSampler5
• In Create double click on a kit to select it
• Click somewhere in the track Insert->New Midi item
• Double click on the midi item to bring up the MIDI editor
• Set the toolbar to note names
• File->Note names->load note names and point to an SSD drums note name file

If you do have a drum kit and use midi triggering through an interface, don't forget to set Reaper enabled on MIDI inputs.

Sound Interface

If you are using an interface to record directly into Reaper, and you want to be listening as you go, then minimum latency is critical. I can hear a latency of 10ms and it is too distracting - you can't pluck guitar strings and have more than 10ms delay and remain sane and calm. You have two choices - have a setup with low latency, or don't listen to the signal, just record.

To get low latency (I'm in Microsoft Windows land) you can try using WASAPI, you might be fine, it's pretty good. You will need to tweak with buffers (keep them small, ie using less time, but requires a faster computer). What you really need is equipment that supports ASIO. Note that ASIO4all is not actually ASIO, it is a fudge, like WASAPI it might be okay. You need to specifically buy equipment with its own ASIO driver, such as the stuff from Focusrite, Presonus, various Behringer gear. Unfortunately at the moment it is not cheap.

Note: if you experience noise while connecting your laptop to your interface over USB, you might have a ground loop issue. If you unplug your charger and the noise goes away, then definitely a ground loop issue. Try a different charger, run on battery only, or put a galvanic isolator on your USB between your laptop and your interface to eliminate the gound loop.

JAW's Quick Notes To Himself for M32 mixes

• Copy WAV to local drive, name the folder yyyymmdd <leader> - song 1 - song 2 - song 3 - song 4
• Run ..\Rename x32 hex to dec.cmd
• Drag WAV to new Reaper session, sequence time positions on a single track
• Run JAW's Explode & Track Rules Parse.lua
• Delete inactive tracks and rename tracks according to the prep standard
• Using Ripple Edit mode, cut out bits not required
• Save as yyyymmdd-1.rpp
• Consolidate tracks into FLAC: Set output directory correctly, project name as yyyymmdd-2, set consolidated filename as $project-$track
• Isolate vocals: after doing the consolidate there will be 4 flac tracks for the congregation in the root directory.  To pack and isolate them run
  ..\ProcessCongregationIsolation.cmd
• Run JAW's Pre Mix Prep.lua
• Optional: Phase alignment on drums (pull all tracks right a tad to allow space). Use a short section that features plenty of snare (bleeds into other mics), MAKE SURE it is "Adjust each item separately" and Adjust "Position". Use snare as the master.
• Drag isolated vocals in and add the fx chain.
• Double track acoustic guitar/etc if required.
• Rough fader re-adjustment: GIVE YOURSELF HEADROOM!
• Solo and tweak individual drums if necessary - levels, amount of gating, limits.
• Going forward - don't be afraid to split tracks and do coarse volume adjustments on those (pre-fx) items.
• Add in Bass and tweak.
• Add in Piano, Guitar and any solo instruments and tweak.
• Solo the vocalists, add in fx if not already there and tweak.
• Make the START of the song really hit.
• Run through the VSX checks.
  
  
Note: these are some of the decent isolators:
Demucs:
demucs -n htdemucs_ft "cong.wav" --two-stems=vocals

Melband Roformer is possibly slightly better but takes ages:
audio-separator "cong.wav" --model_filename "melband_roformer_instvox_duality_v2.ckpt" --mdxc_segment_size 256 --mdxc_overlap 4 --use_autocast --output_format=WAV

What's happening July 2024

I continued to progress "Don't Dream it's Over" and very nearly recorded a Jawmunji Talks video. I still might, it's worth a discussion.

However this month my local church had an open night, and the kids and I wrote two tunes for it. So a bit of time spent working on that. We had actually written the tunes some time ago, which came down to me putting together chord progressions and writing lyrics...yes, I do them both at the same time...as in, I don't write lyrics and then set it to music - I don't write music and then create lyrics - they are informing each other as I go. I have a vague idea of melody, but once I have a chord progression and words, I give it to my youngest daughter and she immediately comes up with a melody far better than I could do. It must be a singer thing. And she'll normally tweak the words to fit better with her word flow. Finally, once we have that together, we play it a few time for my son, give him the chord structure, and he will improvise something over it on the sax.

I decided to play the double bass for this one, plucked, bluegrass style. I love the sound of the double bass - particularly when bowed, but I'm bad at bowing it so plucked it needed to be. My youngest played keys and sung on the first song, sung and played electric guitar on the second song.

We needed to have done a bit more practise, but the gig went off without a hitch. All three of us had more anxiety than we were expecting, which was weird, we have all played to audiences many times. I think it was because we normally play covers, there must be something about originals that heightens the anxiety. An increase vulnerability perhaps.

Anyway, good fun. My youngest daughter is a born performer, having her front our little trio with a low slung telecaster belting out some lyrics is in her element. My son can wail out soulful expressions on the sax, we were using a new sax pedal which introduced some nice tones. I love the big fat sound I can get from the double bass, we had it mic'd up so it was kickin'. It is still hard to play, and I am still sporting two blisters on my right first two fingers. I did carefully knife them open, splashed with a methylated spirits to keep the bugs away. A long time ago I decided that pricking open blood/fluid blisters is much faster recovery than letting them do their own thing.

All done, back to working on my fingerstyle arrangements!