Sorry again for my absence. That time of year when you take stock (and there’s been some weird stuff to take stock of this past year…)
So what better way to kick off than by starting weird. I’ve extolled the virtues of a DAW called REAPER before (see here), and one of the reasons I like it is that it’s so flexible you can happily fiddle around, confuse yourself and pleasantly avoid work for hours. In particular, it’s very skinnable, templateable and scriptable in no fewer than three languages.
So for any out there who use it, here are some things I’ve been cooking up, when I should have been hard at work on the actual music.
First up, we have a full orchestral MIDI template. Not a Hollywood kitchen sink job, more your sort of turn of the century massive. It defaults to Garritan Personal Orchestra 5, augmented with Cinematic Studio Strings, Kirk Hunter Brass, Cinewinds Core and Pianoteq Stage 6, but don’t worry if you don’t have them. REAPER will just say “can’t find” half a dozen times then let you in anyway – at which point you can substitute in your own sample libraries. It loads fully purged and should just about squeeze into 8GB RAM. It also uses Jason Tackaberry’s plugin Reaticulate. Copious user notes will display on load.
Orchestral manoeuvres in the light.
Download Orchestral Template
Download Reaticulate Bank File
Next, we have a script to split a MIDI track into RH and LH at a user-specified note. It’s obviously useful for piano parts, but you can also use it to separate comping from walking bass, or trumpets from trombones, or violins and violas from basses and cellos. Well, at least roughly.
Before…
…After
Finally, here’s one for straight audio work. This script will take all selected items and shift them to a duplicate track with the same routing, settings and FX as the original. I was mooching around on the REAPER user forum and got involved with a request that I thought is actually a bloody useful thing to be able to do.
Before…
…After
Right, well that’s the propeller-head stuff out of the way. Next week I’ll get back into the noble art of putting people off their pizzas with funny chords and scales and such…
And a belated happy new year.
Jason Lyon on Music 
Here’s their user forum: https://forum.cockos.com/forumdisplay.php?f=20
I’ve always felt that the user community is one of the greatest strengths of REAPER.
The developers monitor it (that’s where a lot of upgrades come from) and often post themselves.
I’ve learned a lot from it and contributed a fair bit too.