After using these mods for a full day and getting them tweaked to my liking, I have to say that they are even more impressive than I had first thought. The right click menus alone make life SO much easier, so thanks again for this mod you did Adam, because it's pure gold
Anyway, I got a few questions, hopefully they don't come off as ungrateful.
1. Why group all simultaneously recorded tracks together automatically? I take it that this is just your personal preference because you do a lot of recording with one musician at a time, and not so many recordings with multiple musicians playing at the same time, or am I missing something?
Yeah you have it exactly right! I only ever record one musician at a time and adding that function to the macro means that anything recorded at the same time is automatically grouped. So DI + Amp Track is grouped automatically just because they were recorded at once and same with drum tracks. This is an annoying workaround for edit groups since we don't have them in Reaper yet :/ I am making a video about this shortly but maybe I should remove that from the keymap as default and just leave it there with no action in case someone likes the idea and wants to use it to save themselves from having to group everything manually.
2. Why make the record function automatically switch over to regular recording mode? It seems like it makes sense, but if you don't want to quick-punch and you select an auto-punching mode instead, it's going to switch back to regular mode when you hit your record shortcut. Again, am I feel like I am missing something
This is because I use 2 different record macros. I was going to explain this in the "Mimicking Quick Punch" video, so here it is, just did it especially for you!
http://www.adamwathan.com/reaper/tutorials/4-MimickingQuickPunch.swf
3. When you have a track with a bunch of different takes displayed in lanes, is there a way to select which take AND time selection you want in one go? I know I'm getting greedy on this one, but as of right now I have to make the time selection and then click on the take that I want. What would be awesome, is if I could right click and marquee the time selection and the take at the same time.
There are a lot of complaints about the take system in general :/ I don't think you can do what you want but it does sound like a neat feature. I personally do not use the takes system in Reaper at all. The only thing I use it for is to still have copies of vocal tracks before I "apply track FX" when I'm autotuning or VocAligning them. I have it set so takes do not display in lanes which I toggle with cmd+L, so I can tune a vocal, "apply track fx" to it and then I'm done with autotune so I disable it in the FX chain. Then if I ever need the original vocal track, I just hit cmd+L, select the previous take, and retune it or do whatever I want to it.
But yeah, I never ever use the take system for actual take comping, but I also never really record takes. I have Reaper set to "Trim behind media items when recording" so takes don't even get created while recording. I never "pick the best take", I just keep trying until it's good enough to keep. If I think I need to try recording it again, then the last one wasn't good enough so there's no reason to keep it around anyways, but in the case that I do want to keep it, just control+windows+alt+V, that will copy it to a new track and mute that track. Sort of like copying to a new playlist in Pro Tools.
Going to make a video about take comping in Reaper as well, but NOT using the takes system!
4. How come the custom color set makes your theme look so awesome, but every other theme look like crap
I'm guessing a custom color set would have to be made for each theme right?
Haha this is because Reaper uses item_bg.png and item_selbg.png. These are dumb images that are overlayed on media items in normal themes and give them that retarded 3D look with the gradient shadow effect making colored items look like shit. In my theme, I deleted those images from the theme resource directory to make my regions look like Pro Tools regions and it looks WAY better IMO!
Good questions! If anyone has any others even if they aren't related to the customizations just ask, I am more than willing to make videos to cover things people want to know about if they are considering the Reaper switch.
