Basic REAPER Audio Editing Tricks

By Uncle Noobee - October 13, 2015 - No Comments

Hello noobster, welcome to the fourth tutorial of audio editing basics with Reaper. In this tutorial I will show how to you perform the most important editing operations in Reaper, to follow this tutorial you will need an audio file just use any sort of your file you have available in your computer and import it into Reaper.

Because it is a non-destructive editor, the edit operation we do in imported audio file will not affect the original file. So don't be afraid to experiment with editing because your original files will be always save. Every time you import an audio file Reaper will automatically create a new track for it, in every track the audio files called audio clips are represented as rectangles usually with the wav form of the audio trunk in it. Think of them as pieces of paper that can be cut, move around, copied, etc.

Moving and Zooming Audio Clip

To move a clip just put the mouse over it and click on track as you do when you move files around in your computer. You may know this that the movement is not very smooth, this is visible clearly when I zoom in.The beginning of the clip is always on one of these gray vertical lines, all these lines form a grid which act as a magnetic layout for the clips, helping to keep them in sync with the rest of the clips. This is very useful when working with electronic music for example but we don't need that feature right now so you can activate or deactivate both the grid and there's nothing function on the main tool bar. This is there's nothing function now I can move freely around and this is the visibility of the grid right now there is no grid anymore . As for vertical movement Reaper just create another track to start the clip it is new position, let's zoom out, if I move below it creates another track to put their clip there, so I can move wherever you want, it doesn't matter.

Copy, Paste and Delete

Reaper makes use of the classic windows editing shortcuts So to make a copy of an existing audio clip first select it with your mouse I haven't selected, if I click outside it is not selected so to copy first select the audio clip and then press Ctrl-C to make a copy, now click anywhere outside and CTRL-V to paste then you copy. If I click here, a new copy you or really anywhere you want. Apart from that there is a faster way to make copies of clips which is the method I always use just press CTRL and click and drag the new clip, as you see the original clip remains in place while a copy has been made. To delete any clip just select it and click Delete key in your computer keyboard. R

Remember that any action can be undone by typing control Z or by using the Undo button on the main toolbar.

Cutting a clip

If for some reason you only need a section of a file you will have to cut it, to do so grab the cursor and place it at the exact place in which you want to cut the clip. let's see for instance there is a silence here which is separates the first movement from the second of this is beautiful Brahms First Cello. This is a live recording, and now the second movement, so an ideal place to cut would be here so I just have to press the S key on my computer and Reaper will cut this clip at the exact place where the cursor is. So now I have two independent clips which I can move, delete or do anything with them, now I just have the first movement.

Fold/Unfold

For any clip you can hide the beginning, the end or both by folding apart of it, let's have a look first zoom it, now if I place my mouse over the edge of the clip you see this horizontal arrow appears that means I can fold the audio clip to the center. To get rid of some section and the end too. Now, if I go beyond the original lens of the audio clip what will happen is that Reaper creates copies let's zoom out. I just have copies of the original file you see this is all these are all copies of the original file. This is a technique mostly use in electronic music that saves a lot of time. two or more clips that are in the same track coming low together to a single clip which in some cases makes it easier to work with, let's say I have two clips like that.

If I want to make one of them I just select both, hit on the right button of your mouse and click loop items. because these files are very long, it takes some seconds but usually it's almost automatic.

Group Edit

All these basic editing actions can be performed over a group of audio clips instead of just one. The only difference is that I need to select all clips first instead of just one of them. To do a multiple selection there are two ways which you can even combine, First let's create many more clips like that, now the first way to make a group of clips is by selecting one of them and then hit control and select the rest of them, okay. But this is very slow I have faster to do it, It's using the mouse, right click outside in this empty area and wrap over all of them now I have all 5 of the audio clips selected, now I want to move all of them at the same time just click and drag to copy and paste : CTRL-C and Ctrl V to paste, to cut all of them at the same time, all of this press S, to delete a group of clips yes select them and press Delete, to fold/unfold select them first and then (do like folding/unfolding shown before) and to join let's have two groups of clips and if I selectt all of them and select here>loop items, the magic happens.

These are the most common editing operations when working with audio, practice each of them and memorize the shortcuts it will save you lots of time and remember even if you are not using Reaper to follow these tutorials your alley editing software should do all that too.

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