Grump--And UnGrump
Jun. 24th, 2011 09:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catsittingstillReaper says it will accept MIDI files. And it will--but if you don't have a MIDI device attached to your computer to play them, they "play" in perfect silence, which is as near to completely useless as most things I can think of.
I don't have a MIDI device. Supposedly Reaper accepts "virtual" instruments but I don't know if I can find one anywhere that will work with Reaper and on a Mac and is free (the magic price.) Because I just can't see spending more money on this right now.
And supposedly PrintMusic (the source of the MIDI file in question) can make AIFF files, but if you actually ask it to, it gets right up to "and what would you like the filename to be?" and then says "Oh, I can't do that--some other program is using the file." Even though I quit all the other programs AND restarted the computer, so that is totally a lie. But it's not like there's some way to throttle the truth out of PrintMusic.
My workarounds are getting progressively less and less elegant until I am looking at hooking up the output of the earphone jack of one computer with the microphone jack of the other computer using a male-to-male 1/8 in cord. I'm not quite perching the Zoom on the laptop and aiming its mics at the speakers yet, but we're getting close.
At least I have figured out why the output from PrintMusic was always so infernally quiet.
HA! Wait a minute; I was wrong--Reaper *can* play MIDI, after a fashion--you just have to put an effect called VSTi: ReaSynth on it. Mind you, it doesn't sound a thing like the output from PrintMusic, but it is playing the proper pitches, in the proper time (I can even align the inelegant earphone-to-mic recording of PrintMusic playing it with the ReaSynth playing the MIDI file and they actually match.) Plus ReaSynth doesn't get all squirrely with polyphony, whereas AU: DLSMusicDevice can play a single line but gets completely weirded out when the first chord shows up.
Since the MIDI is just a scratch track at the moment I don't care about the output as long as it is recognizable in the earphones. In the long run it might be nice to have a Reaper Effect that actually played the MIDI as intended...but that's not something I need to worry about right now. And I can always do the earphone-to-mic connection again if necessary.
Also the male-to-male earphones-to-mic? Totally worked. Except it's still pretty quiet; I have boosted the gain +15 dB to get about to where I want to be. But it would do, I think (though this is not a very quiet place to listen; perhaps I should reserve judgment until I get it in the edit bay) if I wanted a robot orchestra for something.
Today in recording in the actual studio, I spent most of my time alternating between Reaper and the Reaper manual, and also plugged in the Zoom as an audio interface and spent a little while learning about retakes and picking the proper take and getting rid of the other ones and fixing the splits because anything shorter than the previous take gets handled as a punch-in.
I discovered some things like, that foam on the walls? Makes a noticeable difference; I started in a larger edit bay (good because it has more table) that had about half its walls bare. And I recorded a second take of something, just to make sure I could get Reaper to recognize the H4n without having to restart the program (which was what worked last time, but I figured there had to be a better way, and there was.) And I was listening to the re-take and thinking--why does this sound better than the other tracks, which were recorded with the *good* microphone? And then I realized it had a little "instant reverb" on it from the concrete walls--and sure enough, if I set both levels to be the same and put about 8% of a small room reverb on the other track, they matched better and the good mic could shine properly.
I guess the short version is I still have a lot to learn about Reaper. But then I've only been using it for three days. (The reminder screen is keeping count for me.)
I don't have a MIDI device. Supposedly Reaper accepts "virtual" instruments but I don't know if I can find one anywhere that will work with Reaper and on a Mac and is free (the magic price.) Because I just can't see spending more money on this right now.
And supposedly PrintMusic (the source of the MIDI file in question) can make AIFF files, but if you actually ask it to, it gets right up to "and what would you like the filename to be?" and then says "Oh, I can't do that--some other program is using the file." Even though I quit all the other programs AND restarted the computer, so that is totally a lie. But it's not like there's some way to throttle the truth out of PrintMusic.
My workarounds are getting progressively less and less elegant until I am looking at hooking up the output of the earphone jack of one computer with the microphone jack of the other computer using a male-to-male 1/8 in cord. I'm not quite perching the Zoom on the laptop and aiming its mics at the speakers yet, but we're getting close.
At least I have figured out why the output from PrintMusic was always so infernally quiet.
HA! Wait a minute; I was wrong--Reaper *can* play MIDI, after a fashion--you just have to put an effect called VSTi: ReaSynth on it. Mind you, it doesn't sound a thing like the output from PrintMusic, but it is playing the proper pitches, in the proper time (I can even align the inelegant earphone-to-mic recording of PrintMusic playing it with the ReaSynth playing the MIDI file and they actually match.) Plus ReaSynth doesn't get all squirrely with polyphony, whereas AU: DLSMusicDevice can play a single line but gets completely weirded out when the first chord shows up.
Since the MIDI is just a scratch track at the moment I don't care about the output as long as it is recognizable in the earphones. In the long run it might be nice to have a Reaper Effect that actually played the MIDI as intended...but that's not something I need to worry about right now. And I can always do the earphone-to-mic connection again if necessary.
Also the male-to-male earphones-to-mic? Totally worked. Except it's still pretty quiet; I have boosted the gain +15 dB to get about to where I want to be. But it would do, I think (though this is not a very quiet place to listen; perhaps I should reserve judgment until I get it in the edit bay) if I wanted a robot orchestra for something.
Today in recording in the actual studio, I spent most of my time alternating between Reaper and the Reaper manual, and also plugged in the Zoom as an audio interface and spent a little while learning about retakes and picking the proper take and getting rid of the other ones and fixing the splits because anything shorter than the previous take gets handled as a punch-in.
I discovered some things like, that foam on the walls? Makes a noticeable difference; I started in a larger edit bay (good because it has more table) that had about half its walls bare. And I recorded a second take of something, just to make sure I could get Reaper to recognize the H4n without having to restart the program (which was what worked last time, but I figured there had to be a better way, and there was.) And I was listening to the re-take and thinking--why does this sound better than the other tracks, which were recorded with the *good* microphone? And then I realized it had a little "instant reverb" on it from the concrete walls--and sure enough, if I set both levels to be the same and put about 8% of a small room reverb on the other track, they matched better and the good mic could shine properly.
I guess the short version is I still have a lot to learn about Reaper. But then I've only been using it for three days. (The reminder screen is keeping count for me.)
