Hey all,
I'm slowly working my way through Reaper but one aspect has me beat.

I now know how to trim sample items on a longish track and keep just the good bits, separated by an empty space between each.

But when I place one of the shorter sample items on a new track and use the handles on the left and right I can pull it back out to the larger non-edited original track containing all the bits I don't want.

My question is: how can I process each sample item so it can't be pulled out, leaving me with just the sample and nothing else - that I can then save to a mini library.

Knowing Reaper there's gotta be a way but I'm flummoxed.

Thanks and appreciation for your help!

 

In most other daws it's just something like Create Audio From Regions, after having them all selected.
Or a Bounce In Place for the regions.

 

The thing is, you are not cutting the sample, but a window through which you can see the sample. So, as long as you don't bounce or ex- and re-import them, the complete audiofile is still there, in every single item you cutted out. You just can't see it.
IAW, by cutting an item you are not editing the audiofile.

 

Try 'Render Item as New Take', then set up an action for a custom hotkey
This will create a completely new .wav file

 

Ah! It's starting to make sense. Your "window" idea clicked for me @No Avenger
So if the complete audiofile is still there for every sample item, does this use extra system memory?

Dankeschoen!

Thanks also @Smoove Grooves. I'll check how Reaper describes 'Create Audio From Regions' and 'Bounce In Place'.

 

Thanks @Pinkman
Will do.

 

Nope, it's more a virtual window which tells the DAW what to play.

Bitte schön.

 

All of the above answers have nudged you ever closer to your aha moment
> Ah! It's starting to make sense. Your "window" idea clicked for me"

That suggests you previously still had a minor misunderstanding of what regions are offering you.
I say that only because the answers are definitely already in the videos that we previously discussed in your other thread.
https://audiosex.pro/posts/504362/

Now that you've gone through what you described as 'trimming and separating, and moving onto separate tracks', etc.
if you revisit the video specifically about regions, you'll find that applying regions to your trimmed sections is probably what you want to do next. Having specified regions you can then render the regions individually or as a batch of regions.
(as in the rendering video) (EDIT: maybe you don't need to do this - see my edit below)

The fact that there is additional audio lying outside the regions (what you see when you move the handles), just doesn't matter if you deliberately render only the regions.
There's probably some cosmetic locking that you could apply such that you can't accidentally move the handles but I don't think that's what you're discussing here. The only way you would have items that you cannot extend with the handles is if you re-imported your saved samples (your shorter audio files) back into the project as separate audio files. (or do that 'one at a time' in situ as decribed by Pinkman)

With your 'aha moment' in place, and after you've revisited the idea of regions in those videos, you may find that all that trimming and spacing and moving onto separate tracks was unnecessary (but educational) because applying the same regions to the original source item would have achieved the same result. i.e., each of the specified regions on the original audio file can be rendered as a separate small audio file (your mini library).
(EDIT: On the other hand, now that you have gone to the trouble of visually separating it all in the way you described, then (maybe) using Reaper's option "Render to File: Selected media items - Outputs one file for each media item selected" would now work without explicitly specifying a region for each item. I've never used this option - maybe you can tell us whether it does what you want?)

I bet those videos will look different second time around.

All good fun

 

Last edited: Oct 4, 2020

Hey guys, additional question. More about workflow than if it is possible (ofc it is..;). I totally understand the non destructive editing, but there are cases (I'd say many), when you just want that new .wav(s) showing up up in a folder of your choice (making a sample/beat library to import in a ..sampler, aso. And the solution is what @Pinkman pointed out.

Now, when you split and render item as new take, a new file is created. All good. But in Reaper you than have two takes, in most other daws the consolidate, bounce, render.. replaces the selection entirely.

So in Reaper it would be 'render item as a new take' then selecting the original one - 'delete active take'. This is a bit clumsy ..and I dont know how to automate the selection of the upper (original) take. Any suggestions? Tnx

 

Files are imported via reference to save space. FOr most purposes, if you trim off audio, it's still there as it's not modifying the original, so you'll need to save your ' sample library' as a standard project.

If you really don't want trimmed material to appear after you un-trim, in item properties:

• [v] section
• [ ] loop

then you can un-trim a bunch of silence afterwards. This is useful for the (rare) case you want to apply reverb on the specific clip & keep the tail. You will still need to save a standard project for this configuration. But you can copypasta clips between projects.

 

@TaxiDriver Try:
Item: Render items to new take
Take: Crop to active take in items

Another way of doing this would be with the SWS extension: SWS/AW: Render tracks to mono(/stereo) stem tracks, obeying time selection
Use your cursor to select the portion of the sample and render the time selection. It renders as a single take and a new audio file.

http://www.standingwaterstudios.com/

For your reference: http://www.standingwaterstudios.com/download/REAPERPlusSWS171.pdf
Don't let the program or the manual intimidate you. Install the extensions, then open Actions in Reaper and search by keyword for whatever you want to do or modify.

 

Last edited: Oct 4, 2020

From my fairly recent introduction to (and only minor exploration of) Reaper,
I now won't be surprised if this thread eventually exposes another 40 ways of doing stuff like this.
The ideas may be old but Reaper's sometimes very novel way of doing it all is impressive.
I really like Reaper's scope for generating your own customised solutions for almost anything.
I think this DAW will be growing on me a lot.

 

@Ad Heesive Do you know why @No Avenger's comment worked so well for me? Because he speaks/writes in a predominantly VISUAL language. Of course he speaks AUDITORY too, as well as KINESTHETIC, being a musician and a good teacher.

I'm profoundly deaf so there are other communication modes that are much harder for me to absorb. My experience of communication on many forums is that one member may communicate predominanly with what they REMEMBER, which may as well be metaphorical Chinese to another member who speaks metaphorical Russian. People can and do give up easily when they don't "click".

Researchers Bandler and Grinder discovered how the modality (the words you use when you describe/speak/write) is the prime cause of misunderstanding and miscommunication in relationships, marriages, friendships, forums etc.

There you have it ladies and gentlemen. I do a lot of visual looking and KINESTHETIC awareness, as when I build, use tools, renovate my humble studio.

To get a handle on your own methods of communication, just ask yourself: Do I think in words, images, movies, movement, feelings, gustatory-taste, olfactory-smell or intuitively, like a light bulb going off in your head? I love those moments!!

But remember your answers for YOU may be a mixture of several strong modalities and others that are more in the backround.

When you're talking to someone, watch their eye movements. This will give you big clues about their dominant internal modes. Then try to meet them by adjusting your languaging:
"I SEE what you're trying to SHOW me", "I HEAR you", "Try HOLDING the bow like this", "Can you remember the first time you DANCED to music?"

 

Last edited by a moderator: Oct 4, 2020

If you need to create a 1-bar or x-bar long single sample, you can add an empty item after the clipped section you need, stopping at the beginning of the next bar. Then select both your clipped audio item and your empty item (CTRL+click) and right-clicking, you can select "glue items", and you'll get one single audio item with the right bar length.

 

Reaperites? That sounds really insulting and creepy; like Cenobites! I think a far more PC way to refer to them is to call them Reapists? >____>

 

I see this as an advantage, because this way you still have the original file in case you messed up or forgot something.

 

Last edited: Oct 4, 2020

Agree. In my case I almost obsessively agree. I retain far too many development stages in all my projects.
I end up with a tiny 5 minute piece of finished music and a multi gigabyte project folder of all the stuff that happened en route. It's obsessive but I have no intention of changing that strategy ever.

 

Thank you - I love what you're writing here, and dare I say it - "in all its off-topic glory"
You can't write a comment like that without being a natural fan of conceptual analysis. So here's a reply that I hope you like.

I am wary of trying to define all our cognitive and communicative processes
in terms of the normal senses that we are familiar with (and I'm not suggesting you are doing that).
It seems like a useful, informal, and metaphorical place to start,
but then the terrain gets too complicated for the metaphors to endure.

An example that I like is 'Analogical Cognition' (some refs below in the spoiler)

So, ask a question like "how do I 'sense' an analogy".
We are likely to say "I 'see' a connection between two ideas". but the word 'seeing' is merely a metaphor for a 'cognitive sensing'
that we don't have a vocabulary to describe. I can say I 'see' a concept without implying that I am thinking visually.
and it might actually be a mistake to think of 'seeing a concept' as 'visual thinking', other than metaphorically visual.

Another example (music) where the words don't work well...
When I write a song, if it starts on an instrument then no problem - I'm working with real audio.
But sometimes it might start in my head with a melody or riff.
I might then say "I 'hear' it in my head" but I'm not hallucinating. I'm not really hearing.
Which is a pity because I really would like to be able to hallucinate it so that it was as vivid as actually hearing it.
What I have instead is some 'sense of' hearing it but it really is not auditory.
I'll call it pseudo-hearing (because I can't think of a better word). Pseudo-hearing is a poor shadow of auditory,
but it's good enough to compose with, work with, analyse with, and produce music, and without hallucinations it's all I've got.
And even more subtle, when I pseudo-hear a melody in my head there is an implied harmony (impossible to hear a melody without an implied harmony but that's another discussion) I can tell (later when using an instrument to figure it out) which of the many possible harmonisations was underpinning this pseudo-hearing of the melody, but my ability to actually vividly hear that harmony is even more remote and vague than the pseudo-hearing of the melody. But it really is there (somewhere) and it definitely guides my figuring out the chords on an instrument.
Interesting as that is (to me), labelling it as 'auditory thinking' just feels like too much of a simplification.

It seems analogous to remembering a face. You know and definitely recognise a face in your memory
but you can't quite 'see' it in the vivid way that you 'see' with actual vision, or hallucinations or even dreams.
What do you call that 'visual remembering'. To me it's not really visual enough to call it 'seeing' but I have no better vocabulary and given that it refers to something that I did previously see, I'll just lazily and erroneously call it 'seeing'.
But again, I'm not quite comfortable with simplifying that cognitive process with a label like 'visual thinking'.

Understanding our inner instrument? - fat chance - but it's magic to keep on trying.

Spoiler: Refs: Analogical Cognition

Refs:
Hofstadter Analogical cognition http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/hofstadter/analogy.html

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQjBGT3Cq1k

Analogical cognition, which embraces all cognitive processes involved in discovering, constructing and using analogies, is broader than analogical reasoning. Understanding these processes is an important objective of current cognitive science research, and an objective that generates many questions. How do humans identify analogies? Do nonhuman animals use analogies in ways similar to humans? How do analogies and metaphors influence concept formation?

 

I was worried about my post being too off topic. Happy to have it deleted or moved.