this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2025
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Music Production

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DAW options? (lemmy.world)
submitted 4 days ago by NineMileTower@lemmy.world to c/musicproduction@sh.itjust.works
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Would anyone be willing to lay out their experiences with DAWs? Preferably free ones? I tried waveform, but I'm thinking I'm going to use Cakewalk. A lot of people say Reaper, but the UI seems lackluster. What do yo think?

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[–] ma1w4re@lemm.ee 8 points 4 days ago (2 children)

I use Reaper for all sound/music related stuff, never failed me once. It has real nice selection of plugins, if you want more you can either get free plugins made by reaper community on the forum, or elsewhere. Ui honestly is just perfect for me, I wouldn't have it any other way.

[–] rigatti@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago

Also about the UI, it's extremely flexible and skinnable. So you can make it look almost however you want.

[–] NineMileTower@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I'll have to mess around with it. The UI looks a bit daunting compared to Cakewalk, but people seem to enjoy it.

[–] Revered_Beard@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I've been using Reaper daily for 15 years. If you run into any issues that you can't figure out, feel free to reach out, I'm happy to answer questions.

[–] NineMileTower@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I'm trying to use MIDI drums and I have no idea how. I've inserted a MIDI synth track, so I should be able to do drums. Is there some sort of virtual instrument plugins I can download?

[–] can@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Like connecting an electronic kit or pads on a controller? Or just triggering hits on your timeline? Either way yes there are several VSTs but your DAW probably comes with a drum machine or sampler that can do a lot. Plenty of free drums samples out there. Could you elaborate more on what you want to achieve?

[–] NineMileTower@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I would compose the drum tracks on the timeline for now. I may get a MIDI keyboard in the future though. I think VST is the term I needed to learn there

[–] can@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

What DAW are you using? Most should be able to accomplish what you're after without any plugins. Is there a sampler? Like a virtual instrument that lets you play different audio files? You could trigger them via midi on the piano roll (timeline).

Edit: the only VST for drums I find useful is XO but that's just to manage a large sample library. You don't need that now.

[–] NineMileTower@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Reaper. I figured out how to use the piano roll. I found a synth, but no drum samples

[–] can@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 days ago

I don't know Reaper but you probably want to load a sampler. I'm sure there's one included.

Edit: some quick googling brought up this script

[–] ma1w4re@lemm.ee 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

You can try doing It this way, but I'm 100% sure on that, I mostly used my guitar with an Audio interface and a midi keyboard:

  1. Connect your drum kit using MIDI-OUT MIDI-IN sockets (on some devices USB is used for midi signal)
  2. In settings there's a menu for all connected devices, make sure your drums are in that list and are active
  3. Create a new track and choose your drum kit as midi input device
  4. Open piano roll and check on drums which notes are triggered by which drum
  5. Load multiple ReaSamploMatic plugins one for each drum and configure them for the notes that the drum kit is triggering

Or, if your kit has audio outputs then just connect it to your interface, it's plug and play in this case.

Once again, I never used drums, so it's just what I would try to do if I had to connect the drums.

[–] NineMileTower@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I explained wrong. I do not have a midi drum controller, I just want to make a drum track with my mouse and can't figure out how to find drums or if they are even there yet

[–] ma1w4re@lemm.ee 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Addendum:

When I first started using reaper, I followed this guide on drums setup

Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWn4nUTRjrY

Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K34kQBX2gKc

Part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFuR7K1HSNw

[–] NineMileTower@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago

I'll give it a shot. Thanks!

[–] ma1w4re@lemm.ee 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Oh. The plugin you're looking for is either a sampler or a drum machine. I prefer samplers, there's a handy one comes with Reaper called ReaSamploMatic.

Either find some free VST plugin for a drum machine on the internet, or make one yourself using the sampler and some free samples off the internet.

I'll explain how I do it and used to do it.

There's a few ways to do that, my preferred way is this, it's a bit hard to draw but it is way easier for mixing:

  1. Create a new track, name it Drums
  2. Create a few more tracks, each for Kick, Snare, HiHat, each for toms and your preferred cymbals.
  3. On the Drums track, there's a button on the left lower side of the track that looks like a plus sign on mouse over, clicking it will make Drums track a folder for all tracks below it.
  4. In each drum track you've created load the ReaSamploMatic plugin, and load drums samples (that you should have downloaded somewhere, it's easy to find them especially on reddit) into the plugin.
  5. Pretty much done. Ctrl+click+drag on the timeline will create a roll, double click the roll and draw the notes within.

Now save the Drums folder as a template for future use.

A bit more easier setup, but I find it lacking a bit during mixing:

  1. Create a single track called Drums
  2. Load multiple ReaSamploMatic plugins into it
  3. Load samples into each plugin
  4. Configure each plugin to use specific note on the piano roll, so that you can draw the entire drum kit midi inside a single roll, usually it's the setting that has a range of note X to note Y.
  5. Create the roll, edit the roll.

Your best friend soon will become Kenny from REAPER Mania YouTube channel, he has a truckload of extremely valuable content about reaper and music production, here's one of the vids about creating a drum machine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZg1LFFhqms

He has a few good vids about drums, just look up "reaper Mania drums" on YouTube.

[–] NineMileTower@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

That sounds so complicated. Cakewalk has all the drum kit sounds on one piano roll. No need for multiple tracks within the same track

[–] ma1w4re@lemm.ee 1 points 3 days ago

Once again, its just the way I prefer it. You can easily make it all drums on one roll, as I explained in the message to which you've replied...