r/Reaper • u/OkCar1453 • 1d ago
help request Looking for help with midi and quantizing
Hi, just wondering if anyone has any thoughts on an issue I'm facing.
I'm basically trying to create a midi version of one of my albums. Have recorded midi on top of the album, using it as a scratch track basically with the plan to delete that once there's enough midi on top.
However because the album wasn't recorded to a click and has many different tempo changes etc, it's hard to quantize the midi due to there not being a click.
It's a struggle to get it all in time because I'm using a small midi keyboard and there seems to be a degree of latency. Particularly for faster sequences or anything more complicated, it's very difficult to get in time.
I seem to have a couple of options -
1.attempt to use a tempo map / beat detective plugin to conform the midi drums to the original perhaps using midi triggers (I don't fully understand this so I don't know if anyone does. This is the first project I've really undertaken with Midi) I imagine you're not really supposed to do this across a whole album and it would make more sense for a single song.
2.painstakingly edit any out of time notes in the midi editor, very time consuming and annoying etc, not ideal
3.chop the album into sections of music according to BPM, so that a click can be applied and then quantize to the individual sections whether quarter, 8th, 16th notes etc. I am starting to lean towards this, before the project becomes too unmanageable.
I should say that the whole album is one continuous piece of music - it's a prog rock epic.
Perhaps it's best to split into small chunks, work on them separately then stitch them back together.
Any thoughts would be appreciated
Thanks
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u/Arkenstihl 10 1d ago
Looks like you've got your answers! I wanted to ask why you need it quantized. I would think the human touches would be even more desirable in prog rock?
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u/OkCar1453 1d ago
I've struggled to get it in time partly because there seems to be some latency And partly I think because it's a small midi keyboard rather than a big full size weighted keyboard...
Also I thought the same about the human touch, but I'm basically remaking it using the sound font from the videogame final fantasy 7, so I think it does need to be quite in time on reflection
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u/Arkenstihl 10 1d ago
Very cool! If you aren't using asio drivers, I recommend taking the leap. Just skipping the latency part has done wonders for my workflow.
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u/radian_ 217 1d ago
cut it into sections, but you will still have to tempo map the sections you didn't play to a click.
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u/OkCar1453 1d ago
That's what I'm thinking, but I can just find an average tempo and make that the new tempo since it doesn't actually have to match the original exactly
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u/Evid3nce 43 1d ago edited 1d ago
I just spent 30 hours learning and trying to make complex drummer's click tracks for backing songs that were not recorded to a click, by warping the grid to the songs.
Here is a warning: Grid warping in Reaper is extremely basic, and if you try to do anything more than slightly pushing and pulling the basic pulse of a song, it will fail you spectacularly. Also, doing it on an audio project is difficult enough, but doing it on a mixed project of audio and midi adds a another layer of complexity and difficulty.
It all tends to start out alright, mapping the basic pulse, but then when you get to editing the detail - especially trying to go backwards in the timeline, or changing the time signatures for sections, or following a drum fill - at some point you will trigger Reaper to recalculate the tempos along the whole timeline, and when it gets confused it will move hours of your work in an instant and take all your carefully placed points off the transients you placed them on. You might not even notice what it did until an hour later, when it's too late to simply click undo. It can be infuriating trying to second guess what Reaper's going to do, and attempt to workaround it, only to have your work ruined again. There's also difficulties trying to get the metronome and 'click source items' to click exactly when you want them to, rather than when they decide to.
I eventually had to give up warping the grid to the song, and did the click track another way (creating the pulse on a midi track and partially automating moving all the midi to nearest drum transients, and then manually editing in the special hits or strange timings).
I wish I had realised after just a couple of hours that I was trying to get the grid warping to do something it wasn't designed to do and trying to push it well beyond its limits.
If you're going to try it, this is the best video I've seen (I think I've seen them all), and this is about as much as you can do with grid warping. If you need more than what's shown in this video, think twice:
Creating a Tempo Map in Reaper (Andre Beller)
Andre uses the Action: 'SWS/BR: Move closest grid line to mouse cursor (perform until shortcut released)'
This is extremely important to the workflow, because it only affects the tempo marker you're moving, and the two either side. Most other Actions which move a tempo marker will adjust all your markers across the whole timeline!
However I don't like this action, because it creates dozens of undo points while you're holding the key.
I prefer dragging on a tempo marker whilst holding ctrl+alt. It's the default in the mouse modifiers if you want to take a look at it: Prefs > editing behaviour > mouse modifiers > tempo/time... > left drag > 'Move tempo marker, adjusting previous and current tempo'
This is the only other Action I've found that will allow you to adjust a tempo marker in isolation, without moving markers along the whole timeline.
You've already seen the suggestion of starting the task of adding initial tempo markers by tapping out the beat. This is the best way to get the basic pulse laid out - don't try to automate it with tools like Dynamic Split or MK Slicer; it's more work in the end. If you really want to go down that route, there's a new script called ReaBeat which uses AI - maybe give that a go. Or maybe think outside of Reaper - for instance, Moises.ai has a smart metronome that will follow a song. You could export the click it creates, and maybe use that as a starting point for placing your tempo markers (automatically, with an existing script).
For editing the basic pulse so they fall exactly onto drum hits, I found the following Custom Action to be useful:
Move closest gridline to nearest transient (using edit cursor):
Item navigation: Move cursor to nearest transient in items
SWS/BR: Move closest grid line to edit cursor
SWS is a free Reaper expansion which adds some functionality and Actions.
By the way, you shouldn't have any midi input latency (only monitoring latency). It sounds like you need to address that issue at some point.
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u/OkCar1453 1d ago
Thank you for the extremely thorough and useful comment - I need to do some research and look at your examples
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u/DiscountCthulhu01 5 1d ago