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COURSERA - INTRODUCTION TO MUSIC PRODUCTION

Basics editing skills

On Reaper

18/03/2013

Here we are covering this aspects: Trim, separate, crossfade, merge, grid,cycle, markers, zoom, name and color.

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Trimming

1. When you have an audio file just point its edges with your mouse cursor.

2. Now, click and drag it in order to change its length. In the example below we have edged our

track by the end.

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Separate

1. Select a portion of your track by clicking and dragging your mouse.

2. Click with your right button and select "Split items at time selection".

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3. Now you have a track's portion. You could fix it to another track by dragging it, as shown

below.

Crossfade

1. Place your mouse cursor on the top left/right hand corner. The crossfade icon must be

shown on the screen.

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2. Click on it and drag it in order to fix crossfade's duration and level. Crossfading the beginning

and the end of your track will make smoother transitions.

Grid on/off

1. On the top left hand corner you could see 14 quick-access options, just above track settings.

Click on the fifth icon in the second row to enable or disable the grid. This tool will help you onsetting your track in the timeline.

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Cycle

1. Make a time selection as we did before and look for the toggle repeat icon just next to the

record button (the red one). This way, you should listen your selection repeated over and over

as it reaches its end.

Zoom in/out

1. On the top bar click on "view" ---> "zoom"------> "zoom in" or "zoom out". In addition, their

shortcuts are shown.

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Name

1. By naming your tracks you will keep organized and clean your audio files. A handy way of do

it consists on double-click track's dialogue window.

Track Color1. Right-click on your track settings ----> "Track color"----> "Set tracks to custom color...", etc. It

helps you to have a more intuitive track list.

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Markers

1. Place your mouse cursor on the timeline, then right-click and choose "Insert marker...".

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2. Name it and set a color if you like. We name the example's marker as "Chorus" in order to

have indicated where it begins.

3. Here you have.

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Merge

1. At first you should several pieces of the audio track. Then place them properly. As you can

see we have in our example 4 pieces of the track (paying attention to the highlighted selection

should give you a clue about where the joints are).

2. Now double-click on track settings (grey rectangle on the left of the picture) in order toactive it as a whole selection. Next step is right-click and choose the "Glue items" option. After

that you will find all pieces merged in one track.

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Final notes

Until these lines we have covered some basic skills on editing audio files in a DAW, for

instance Reaper.

I hope you find this document useful as its development has been for me.

Thank you for your time!

You could download and get more info about Reaper here:

http://www.reaper.fm/

Visit Coursera here:

https://www.coursera.org/

http://www.reaper.fm/http://www.reaper.fm/https://www.coursera.org/https://www.coursera.org/https://www.coursera.org/http://www.reaper.fm/