Gear Review: Sonuus G2M - Universal Guitar to MIDI Converter

The world of digital audio is really split into two different types of signals, and it can be hard to get a handle on it for the novice home recorder. The first, audio samples, is the easiest to understand. You record something, and it is stored in a format that sounds like what was put into it, like vocals, guitar, etc. The second type is MIDI. It can be confusing, because the term MIDI is used for both the interface and the data that describes what should be played. You really don't have a lot of crossover between the two worlds, since one is the sound, the other describes how to make the sound.

The one type of crossover that we have seen in recent years is the MIDI guitar. You play it like a guitar, but it sends out MIDI signals. These signals can then be used to control something totally different - a synth, a sample player, a piano, etc. These are very cool and full of possibilities, but they are expensive and usually require a special guitar or permanent modifications to your guitar. It seems like the cool toys are out of reach for the low-cost or frugal home studio.

Enter the Sonuus G2M. Billed as a "Universal Guitar-to-MIDI Converter" and retailing for around $100, the G2M aims to fill that gap in the affordable hardware department. I had the opportunity to spend a few weeks experimenting with the G2M, and I will be sharing my experience here.

Descriptions First...
The G2M is a pretty simple box with a 1/4" Input Jack, 1/4" Thru Jack (for direct routing to your normal signal path), and a standard 5 Pin MIDI Out Jack. There is also a "Boost" switch that amplifies the signal within the G2M, in case your input level is a little low. The "Clip" LED shows when you are clipping the signal (not a bad thing in this case), which you should run your signal so you occasionally clip so you know the G2M is getting a hot enough signal to interpret correctly. However, not having a needle gauge or digital readout of the level, this is only a ballpark accuracy measure for the overall signal strength. There is also a strobe tuner function built into the power light. The slower the light flashes, the closer you are to a standard note tuning. Nice, but that's not the primary purpose of this box. The unit is powered by a 9V battery only. There is no wall wart power supply option, but this isn't a major issue since the battery life is boasted to be about 70 hours. I have played with the G2M a lot, and still haven't run my 9V down, so I tend to believe their claims in that respect.

What Are The Specs?
Note Detection Range: E2 to E6
MIDI Latency: 16 ms to 30 ms (depending on note and characteristics of input signal)

How Do You Use It?
This is possibly the simplest box to get running. Insert a 9 Volt battery, plug a guitar to the input, a MIDI cable in the output leading to a MIDI Interface, and you're in business. Set up something to respond to the MIDI signal on the other end, whether a MIDI keyboard that accepts a MIDI In, or to your DAW, with a VST plugged in and "listening". Play your guitar, and see what happens.

Does It Really Work?
Yes, it really works. I've experimented with a few instruments, and the claims are true, to a point. What's important to remember is there are a few caveats that Sonuus is very up front with making clear. First and foremost, this is MONOPHONIC ONLY. Any attempt to play chords or multiple notes at the same time will scramble the signal and confuse the G2M. This is the one major concession made by having this box sit after the guitar. Since the signal from the guitar is a blended tone of all notes currently sounding, it becomes muddled in the line, and the G2M can't separate it out. Secondly, it works best with MIDI patches/VSTS with a pitch-bend range of + or - 2 semitones. Anything more sensitive is prone to a wobble to the sound. Thirdly, playing in a higher octave will result in better tracking of your notes. Since higher octaves are thinner, sharper tones, they are interpreted more accurately than lower bass tones.

My Guitar Experiences
I was off to a bad start when I first started using the G2M. It is a good idea to read the Sonuus G2M Guide available at http://www.sonuus.com/g2m_guide.html. In the Tips & Tricks section, it explicitly identifies piano sounds as sounding strange with a warble. Not having read that yet, I started with a piano patch. It resulted in tones that we used to describe as "alien" sounds. However, once I switched to a different VST to play through, it worked great. I really enjoyed the experience of playing live through the Prophanity (currently without a web site) and Oddy-Free synths. These are both modeled after classic modular synths (the Prophet V and ARP Odyssey Mk. II). Both of these synths had amazing responses and a really nice "feel" to the sound when triggered by the G2M.

Now I must admit, I have had some difficulties with the G2M, but they have mostly been my fault as a player. I'm a rather sloppy guitarist, with a lot of excess noise coming off the other strings. The G2M picks up the additional sloppy hits, completely misunderstands them, and I get strange high notes popping into the stream, usually about 2 octaves above what I'm playing. Some palm muting at all times helps, but being a clean guitarist helps even more. I feel like I'm becoming a cleaner guitarist the more I play through the G2M.

I have also had issues with the too-accurate capturing of the notes. It tracks so well, that slight warbles in the notes are translated as pitch bend parameters that are transmitted in the MIDI path. It is this accurate detection of pitch bending that causes piano VSTs to freak out. If you really want piano, you can remove the pitch change information from the recorded MIDI. (In Reaper, you can do this in the Piano Roll. Change the bottom "levels" frame to show "Pitch". If you hold down your right mouse button and wipe across these Pitch levels, it will erase them all, and the sound will clean right up). This doesn't help live situations, but for recording, it will work.

I'm always skeptical when a piece of budget hardware claims to have a low latency, as the G2M does, with the stated 16 ms to 30 ms. I don't have an accurate bench test in my gear to determine the actual latency, except for audible comparison. I have to say that it performs similarly to both POD Farm and Guitar Rig 3, which clock in around the 30 ms total signal time. The latency is low enough that it isn't really noticeable. Of course, there is also the fact that I can't play fast & clean at the same time, so it's possible I'm not pushing the speed threshold where latency might throw you off (i.e. in speed metal shredding).

Alternate Controls
When I first heard about the G2M, my first though went to the "undocumented" options. It takes an audio input. What about other audio sources?

I have tried a Bass guitar, and it is a bad idea. Since the G2M responds best at higher pitches, the bass is mostly out of range. In my testing, I couldn't play a note lower than D on the second string of the bass. Strings 3 and 4 were completely invisible to the G2M. And what I could play was tracked very badly, with a lot of extra blips where it tried to read the harmonics as the note. Worth a try, but not worth using.

The best alternate success I have had was with a microphone. Using a moderately cheap 1/4" mic plugged through to Prophanity and Oddy-Free (in REAPER), the result was delightful. It reminded me of playing with a vocoder with the original voice 100% consumed by the rest of the sound. I also found it to be really fun to control the Delay Lama with the microphone to G2M path. For the most part, though, the more precise the sound from the VST (where all notes really sound distinct - like bells, piano, etc) the worse the performance when using a microphone. I think the human voice has so many pitch variations that it becomes a little too dynamic for the G2M.

My G2M Wish List
A few things I would have liked to see on the G2M:
* Controllable Sensitivity Range (to help sloppy players!)
* Polyphonic ability (Melodyne developed a system that can break apart chords into component notes, so it is technically possible)
* Variable boost control
* External power pack option

Final Thoughts
I really like the G2M and the possibilities it opens up for the home studio. There are definitely limitations and some performance considerations that must be made in a trial and error method (like which VSTs sound good with it), but I still think this is worth the $129 retail price for this little box. I have been listening to more experimental music lately, and this could easily find its way into the toolkit of any glitch, noise, or aggressive electronica project, especially when used as a sidekick process to a vocoder, since you can get really wild effects when you push the G2M to its limits (and beyond).

When used according to the instructions, this can be a nice tool for a guitarist if they play fairly cleanly and monophonic. I think the monophony is the greatest limitation. If you can work with that one concession, this box performs exactly as their claims. As this is the first product from Sonuus (a U.K. based company), I am eager to see what they come up with next.

Disclosure
In the interest of full disclosure, I was provided a review unit by Peterson Tuners, the exclusive distributor of the Sonuus G2M in the United States and Canada. This was a loaned unit only - I had to give it back. There have been no incentives, financial or otherwise, provided to me for this review. (i.e. I didn't get a thing from them except the opportunity to play with this gear)

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Gear Review: REAPER v.3.01 now available!

REAPER has now released version 3.01, and there are some nice changes to it. There is so much new about it, it's hard to know where to start. REAPER's website (http://www.reaper.fm) also has been given a very slick overhaul that now screams "I am a serious contender!". They also appear to have raised the prices slightly (now $225 for full commercial and $60 for discounted) and gotten away from the previously confusing "commercial" vs. "non-commercial" terminology. Basically, if you use it for yourself only, as a business with less than $20K annual income, or are a educational or non-profit, you qualify for discounted pricing. And they still adamantly refuse to engage in any strange copy protection schemes. It's the honor system, folks!

My favorite new features are probably the addition of Automation lanes and the ability to have multiple MIDI items in the editor at the same time. However, there's a lot of other goodness packed into version 3. I'll try to give my take on some of the features here. The full feature list for version 3 is at http://www.reaper.fm/whatsnew-300.txt.

Automation Lanes
Automation lanes are a really nice feature that already exist in a lot of other major DAWs, so seeing REAPER add them is a great step forward to full equality. In prior versions, you could see your automation lines as overlays over the track itself. If you were trying to automate a lot of parameters on the same track, it got rather messy and I was always either having to memorize exactly where I was shifting other parameters, or when I displayed multiple lines at the same time (for reference) I was always grabbing the wrong line (i.e. changing the wrong setting). Now with Automation lanes, the automation parameter lines appear as separate sub-track "lanes" that you can display, hide, or bypass on an individual basis. With all of the parameter-heavy VSTs and VSTis out there, this is a great thing.

Edit Multiple MIDI Items
It's sometimes hard to keep track of what is going on between different MIDI tracks. Previously, to edit multiple MIDI tracks, you had to open separate MIDI windows and fiddle with the window sizes so you could get everything on screen at the same time. As of version 3, you now have options in the "Options" menu of the MIDI window named "Reuse MIDI editor for multiple items" and "Reuse MIDI editor for multiple items, keeping items as secondary". The first will just reuse the window. No big surprise there. The second one - wow. It will shade the notes and parameter settings (like velocity) for any items in the window that are not currently active. The really nice thing about this is that all MIDI items are shown in proper time-context. In other words, all notes are exactly where they should be in relation to one another. This is great for trying to harmonize different synths together - you can actually see what you're doing without a lot of trial and error. You can switch between which MIDI item is active in the window by either using the "Filter" button in the top left, or by simply clicking on a note from the item you want to edit. The clicking on a note can be problematic in a couple of ways - you can't directly write a note over the top of another MIDI item's note, since it will select that track instead of putting down a note - and you can't always see the other item's notes if the current track overlaps. But really, these are spatial issues, not UI issues. I'm loving it!

Multiple Tabbed Projects
Another exciting improvement is the ability to have multiple projects loaded at the same time. This is handled beautifully by the addition of a simple tab control at the top of the screen. Obviously, this adds load on your system as you add more simultaneous projects, but the flexibility this allows is so much better than the prior one-at-a-time design.

A Lot More...
There are so many improvements, many behind the scenes performance upgrades, it is an exhausting list to read. There are a lot of MIDI enhancements (MIDI sysex is now fully supported, for example). Ther are also quite a few general performance enhancements to make REAPER play nicer with some potentially unruly plug-ins. And a lot of memory management improvements. Bottom line: you need this upgrade. If you're not a current REAPER user, now is the perfect time to jump in and try it out. The trial version is NOT time limited or crippled in any way. You've got nothing to lose, and version 3 continues the trend of growing stronger and more powerful with each release.

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Improving Your Drum Track, Part 1: Getting Started With Independence Free

In a home studio, it is easy to make electronica, techno, and dance tracks. There is an expected level of machine-like precision to the music. Perfectly accurate precision and artificial drum beats are readily acceptable. (Let me go on record with a disclaimer: making those forms in a home studio are easy. Making good or great tracks is another story. I am not trying to downplay the level of artistry involved. I saw Aphex Twin spin live in the mid 90's, so I can appreciate the level of complexity of the art form.)

Where it becomes much more of a challenge in the home studio is when you're trying to sound like a traditional band (guitars, bass, drums, vocals). There is some level of trickery that is required to achieve your desired sound for all of these instruments. Right now I want to focus on the difficulty of drummers. Much like Spinal Tap, I have always had a hard time keeping a drummer on call. And then you have the acoustic issues of sound isolation, excess mic bleed, having enough mics and inputs to record the whole kit, complaints from the neighbors, etc. As usual, I will be focusing on use of this within REAPER.

My Dream Drums, For Now
Years ago, I had a Yamaha RY-30 Drum Machine. Bought it used for $330 in about 1993. Like an idiot, I sold it around 1998. Now they're hard to find, but it had very sweet sounding drum kits. Their natural kits were extremely beautiful, using 16 bit samples at a time where the average home user was rocking out to 8 bit. Listening to old recordings I did with that drum machine make me once again regret having parted with it. I have been working to try to achieve the "is that a real drummer?" sound and feel using only free tools.

This is the first part of an ongoing series of posts that will be focused on the best tools I have found to "fake a drummer" and how to tweak your drum tracks to get the "real" drum feel.

Yellow Tools Independence Free
One of the best all-in-one packages I have found so far is Yellow Tools' Independence Free 2.0. As the name implies, this is the free version of their very robust sampler tool. There's a couple features disabled in this version, and the bundled sample library is "only" 2 GB of data. The "Basic" version ships with 12 GB of samples, and the "Pro" version ships with a whopping 70 GB sample library!

My initial goal is to have one or two good "natural" kits. Included in the free 2 GB library are 6 acoustic drum kits, so there are plenty of options. The kits have multiple velocity samples for each sound, so there's more detail than your average single-sample kit.

So What's Missing?
The Free version lacks a couple of major items. The most notable is the lack of ability to import your own samples. The other is the lack of ability to import 3rd party VSTs. Of course, if you're hosting this in your own DAW (like REAPER), that's not really a problem. You can add your VSTs to the chain after Independence Free, and have as many add-ons as you want. Lacking the ability to import your own samples is more of a concern if you want to branch out into custom kits. Later in this series I will tackle this issue with another tool.

How Do I Start?
You can start by going to Yellow Tools' website at http://yellowtools.com. Under their "Products" section, you can find Independence FREE. You'll have to register on their site to download it, but registration is free. All of this is detailed on the page. (Alternately, you can pick up a copy of the UK magazine "Computer Music", which comes with a DVD that includes the "Independence Free CM Edition". Same thing, with an extra logo on the UI. You will still have to register on the site & download the instrument files separately, however.)

When you install it, the installation location is for the standalone app only. It will prompt you separately for the location for the VST. Either install in with your other VSTs, or add a path in REAPER's VST configuration screen to find it. Either way, the next time you boot REAPER, you should see a new entry in FX "VSTi: Independence Free (Yellow Tools) (24 out)"

Starting Simple
To start a simple track in REAPER, open a new project. Insert Independence Free as a VST, and then open it. Your first view is probably going to be overwhelming. This is a very complex and sophisticated interface. Since we're starting simple, look for the layer controls. There will be a highlighted item that says "01 click here to load instrument". When you click on it, you will get a popup menu. Select "Load Layer". When the standard file requestor opens, navigate to the "Independence Free - Instruments" folder, and then into "01 Acoustic & Electronic Drum Kits". The .ytil files are the ones you care about. Select "Acoustic Drum Kit 1.ytil", and click "Open". Now your Drum Kit is ready for you on MIDI channel 1.

If you want to hear the sounds in this "layer", click on the "Mapping" button at the top of the VST's display. You will get a piano key layout, with colored bars representing the samples. If there are breaks in the line, that represents different samples used for different velocity ranges. As you can see in this kit, there are 11 velocities for B1 and C1, which are your kick drums. You can play the samples on the keyboard by clicking on them, but it is not going to be easy to trigger at varying velocities that way. It's easier using REAPER to control it.

Close the FX chain window and insert a "New MIDI Item" in the track where you set up Independence Free. Hit some notes, and you'll hear your new drum kit. How simple is that?

Ummm....What Happened To My Octave?
The first thing you might notice when you compare Independence Free to REAPER's piano roll is that the octave notations don't match. What Independence Free calls C1, REAPER calls C2. This is a common problem across music apps, because of differences in opinion on what octave is considered to contain middle C. You have 2 options: make a mental note of this difference, or reconfigure REAPER to honor the offset.

To reset REAPER to use the same notation as Independence Free, go to Options->Preferences->Media->MIDI. The option "MIDI octave name display offset: 0 octaves". Change the value to -1. Now REAPER will call the notes the same as Independence Free. This change only affects the labeling in REAPER's piano roll. The same/correct MIDI note numbers will be used regardless of this setting.

What Now?
Start experimenting with the kits available and see how good the samples are. Be sure to vary the velocities, so you can get the full impact of the multi-sampled drums. So far I've been quite happy with the kits in Independence Free. Keep in mind that this is a sampler tool, NOT a drum machine. Look at all the other instruments that come bundled with it. They are of equally high quality and very useful in their own right.

Up Next...
In Part 2, we will go into more features and uses of Independence Free as a drum machine, including adding effects, using multiple ins and outs to minimize CPU usage, and some other random tweaks.

Read the full post here!

Where is My Cowbell? (a.k.a. General MIDI Drum Assignments)

When you are first beginning to use Drum VSTs, it sometimes comes as a shock when try to actually find the notes that trigger the sounds. This is primarily because drums are attached to individual notes (unlike a synth that you can play up and down the range). It is also because not all Kits are created equal. Most freeware drum VSTs only offer support for a standard 8 drum kit, sometimes more, sometimes less. This makes the game of "find my drum triggers!" even harder, if you're just hunting and pecking.

General MIDI standards
Fortunately for us, this has been a problem from the early days of MIDI music. The General MIDI standard was developed in 1991, and expanded in 1999. In a nutshell, the General MIDI standard included several pieces, most notably the assignments of specific instrument assignments to specific bank slots. So, for example, instrument 10 is always a Glockenspiel on an instrument that adheres to the General MIDI standard.

Drum Standards
For the mostly software-based home studio, most of the General MIDI standard doesn't impact too much, since we are more likely to have pieces that are custom-written specialized for out gear. The portion that I think is more important is the General MIDI Drum Standards. According to the standard, Drums should always be on MIDI Channel 10 (and 11 if you have 2 kits in use at the same time). Even more useful is that specific drum sounds are identified by specific note numbers. Notes 35 to 81 are identified as very specific sounds.

Why Should We Care?
Simply put, it allows you to swap out full drum kits without having to tweak your music. If we didn't follow a common standard, that means to change from one drum VST to another might require you to re-write all the drum parts to connect the entered notes in your DAW to the actual notes the new VST wants. By using General MIDI Drum Assignments, everything is much more portable. And easier to find the sounds you're looking for. (In the piano roll in most DAWs, you should have the option to see "named notes" or "note numbers", so you can see exactly where these sounds should trigger from.)

General MIDI Drum Note Assignments
35 Bass Drum 2
36 Bass Drum 1
37 Side Stick
38 Snare Drum 1
39 Hand Clap
40 Snare Drum 2
41 Low Tom 2
42 Closed Hi-hat
43 Low Tom 1
44 Pedal Hi-hat
45 Mid Tom 2
46 Open Hi-hat
47 Mid Tom 1
48 High Tom 2
49 Crash Cymbal 1
50 High Tom 1
51 Ride Cymbal 1
52 Chinese Cymbal
53 Ride Bell
54 Tambourine
55 Splash Cymbal
56 Cowbell
57 Crash Cymbal 2
58 Vibra Slap
59 Ride Cymbal 2
60 High Bongo
61 Low Bongo
62 Mute High Conga
63 Open High Conga
64 Low Conga
65 High Timbale
66 Low Timbale
67 High Agogo
68 Low Agogo
69 Cabasa
70 Maracas
71 Short Whistle
72 Long Whistle
73 Short Guiro
74 Long Guiro
75 Claves
76 High Wood Block
77 Low Wood Block
78 Mute Cuica
79 Open Cuica
80 Mute Triangle
81 Open Triangle

Closing Thoughts
These are only applicable to instruments that adhere to the GM Standard. Not everyone honors the standard, and there are variations created by plug-in makers who are apparently blissfully unaware that they are making something completely incompatible with any existing drum standard. There are also a number of other accepted formats (mostly pricey "pro" kits) that don't necessarily adhere to the GM Standard. Keep an eye for GM Standards-compliant packages while building your discount studio. It will make transitions a lot easier, and you will always know where your cowbell is. (It's note 56, in case you missed it.)

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Gear Review: M-Audio KeyStudio 25

I came to the realization very early on my musical career that it is basically impossible to let your creativity free-flow while programming your tunes one note at a time, either using a normal PC keyboard or by clicking on notes on the screen. Don't get me wrong, there is a place and time where alternate entry forms, like a piano roll are appropriate, but it is no match for noodling on an actual music keyboard and having tunes pop out at you.

What I Needed
My requirements were simple: I needed a keyboard controller that was not very expensive, small enough to not get in the way when I didn't need it, have some level of controls beyond just piano keys. My search led me scouring the web until I found a MIDI controller that seemed to fit the bill, and to me, seems to be completely overlooked by musicians.

What I Found
The KeyStudio 25 from M-Audio is a wonderful 25 key MIDI controller, with velocity-sensitive keys, Pitch Bender, 8 assignable knobs, 8 assignable buttons, Octave change buttons, support for a sustain pedal, volume slider, and a host of other on-board functions, it can draw power from the USB port or from an external power supply, and has a power switch so you don't have to unplug it whenever you are done with it. There, I've gotten the main list taken care of. Oh, yes, it comes bundled with Session, which pretends to be a music program but is a beginner's toy, mostly useful only if you want to see if the keyboard works. (I'll write more about Session at another time).

Ease Of Use
To get this keyboard fired up, you can just plug it into the USB port and turn it on. If you want Windows to use the proper driver, you can install M-Audio's software. I was using the keyboard fine before I ever installed from the CD. Anyway, I tried it out with REAPER, and once I changed my input to this device (which oddly shows as USB 02 In, perhaps showing off that it is in fact based on the O2 line of more expensive M-Audio controllers), it worked like a charm.

Keyed Up
The keys have a good weight to them - nowhere near as heavy as a real piano, but they have enough mass that this doesn't feel like a toy. The keys themselves seem to be OK for a home studio, but I definitely wouldn't want to take this out as a touring keyboard. The plastic keys seem like they might be a bit more fragile, though I haven't (and won't) subject the keyboard to any stress tests. In my testing, the velocity sensitivity on the keys is captured and encoded properly, so your DAW will get an accurate recording of your playing.

We Have Control
The part I like best about the keyboard is probably the assignable knobs and buttons. If you desire, you can remap nearly everything on the keyboard to an alternate MIDI command trigger. Want to send a note with a button (instead of a key)? No problem. Remap the pitch bend control to be a different control? Easy. I usually keep the knobs and buttons at their defaults and use the "MIDI Learn" in my DAW so I don't have to keep monkeying about with different settings for different songs/projects.

Software Blips and Glitches
My biggest unhappiness is really with M-Audio's software. Not only am I disappointed with their Session software, but the KeyStudio 25 manual says I can use their "Enigma" configuration and librarian software for this keyboard - just download it from their site. On their site, it does NOT list this keyboard as being compatible. I downloaded it anyway, only to discover it doesn't load at all. Apparently, Windows XP Media Center Edition is not an officially supported OS, although every other Windows OS is supported. I have seen this on other products before, and I'm really not sure why companies seem to have gone out of their way to ignore support for users who bought new PCs in the 2005-2006 time frame.
It does, however, come with 21 generally decent VSTs as part of the Session installation. These are standard VSTs, and you can point your DAW at them. There's nothing amazing about them, but they do seem to be stable and produce reliable results.
Still, I bought this for the controller. Everything else I like is gravy to me.

Big Brother
There is a big brother to this keyboard, which is a 49 key controller for about the same price. The 49 key keyboard is missing the assignable knobs and buttons, but does come with an built-in audio interface and a piano sound. Whoopee. I'd rather have the extra knobs for the control aspect, and I am using it as a programming tool more than a performance device, so who needs the piano sound?

Another Way To Get It?
I'm not positive, but I believe M-Audio's KeyRig 25 package comes with this same controller, but with their KeyRig software instead of Session. I'm not positive, but the features list and the pictures look identical.

Wrap It Up, I'll Take It
At the end of the day, I have to say I'm still very happy with my purchase of this MIDI keyboard controller. It is compact, but still feels good to play, and it gives me a mini-control surface that I can use for minor fiddling with my DAW settings. It is too small a keyboard for "serious" keyboardists and pianists, but my use is more as a scratch-pad input device. For that purpose, this is a stellar keyboard.

The major music retailers don't appear to carry this, but I've found it at Best Buy (in-store only) as well as at Amazon.com. Street price is around $100.

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REAPER Tutorial 1 - part 1

BEGINNER TUTORIAL

Part 1: Let’s make some pretty sounds...

We are kicking off our instructional series with this tutorial on how to start making music with REAPER. As you may have seen in my Gear Review of REAPER, it has one major benefit over other similarly-featured DAWs on the market: you can download the trial version which is not time-limited and not crippled like other trial versions. If you like it, you can register it for $50, which is less than the “LITE” versions of other major DAWs.

Since this tutorial is based on the idea that we’re starting from a basic system, this tutorial will begin with the assumption that you don’t have anything. Like I said, we’re starting at the ground and will begin building up from there.

Get started with REAPER
Download and install REAPER from http://reaper.fm. Follow all the instructions for setting it up and load it. If you’re using an unregistered copy, you’ll get a brief “Buy it” nag screen when you first open it. After 5 seconds, you can close it. If this is your first time loading REAPER, you’ll probably see the demo song “Making Me Nervous” in the display. We don’t care about that song right now. Select File->New Project to get into your own space.

Where Do I Start?
Now we have a blank workspace. Maybe I’m a little stuck in my ways, but the first thing I do with a new project is to do a File->Save Project As… and save the blank workspace. Why? Because once I start creating, I like to be able to hit the “Save” button without having to worry about what to call it.

As you can see in the picture, there are check boxes at the bottom of the window for “Create subdirectory for project” and “Copy all media into project directory”. These are great options to check, because it will help keep your individual projects/songs and all their related files in the same place. (Few things are as heart-breaking as destroying one song because you altered a sound file for another song.) Go ahead and name it “Tutorial 1” and hit Save.

Let’s Make a Track
Now that the housekeeping is out of the way, let’s add a new track. You can do this in a few ways, but the simplest is to double-click in the blank space on the left of the REAPER window.

Check the Musical Toy Box
Since we are going to be using only native REAPER resources right now, the next thing we need is to get a virtual instrument to play. Click on the button labeled “FX” on the new track you just created. This will bring up the interface displaying all the plug-ins you have available on your system. REAPER ships with a few, so we’ll stick to using those for the moment.

Pick your instrument
If you want to see which are instruments, click on the “Instruments” option, and the display will display only those plug-ins that are capable of creating their own sound.
Let’s select “VSTi: ReaSynth (Cockos)” by double-clicking on it. This will get rid of the selection window and present you with the FX Chain window.

Here is where you can change the settings for the plug-in, if you desire. For now, let’s leave this at default settings and close this window. You’ll notice that there is now a green light on the “FX” button you pressed. This lets you know there is a plug-in of some sort active on this track.

Let’s Write Some Music, finally!
On the overhead menu, select Insert->New MIDI Item. This will put a nice little “untitled MIDI event” box in your track. Double-click on it. This will launch the piano roll interface that represents the item you just double-clicked on.

If you click on the piano keys on the left, you can actually play the ReaSynth instrument we selected. You can scroll up and down the octaves by using the scroll bar in this window. The ReaSynth is so deep below about C1 that you can feel it, not hear it. So try scrolling up to around C3 or so for a higher tone. Now you can write your music in the grid on the right by clicking in the boxes. If you want to hold a note longer, you can stretch the rectangles out to represent the holding of those notes.

To audition the sound, there is a play button in the lower left. If you want to hear how it sounds as a loop, click on the circling arrow icon on the far right of that same control strip. This will allow the clip to loop infinitely.

Here’s what my semi-dissonant clip looks like. (Feel free to copy if you like.)

The Measure In the Roll
When you’re working in this screen, it’s important to keep an eye on the markers just above the piano roll grid. The numbers represent standard measures, and the heavy black line on the right identifies exactly where to end point of the clip is. This is your loop point/end of track. If you haven’t made it move, it should be right on the line with left edge of the “2” section. This means your clip is exactly one measure long. You can expand each clip to be as long as you need to fit your “musical phrase”. If you’ve bumped it out (by drawing notes past it), you can get it back to a single measure by deleting any notes that are in the way, and click-and-drag it back to where you want it.

Now that we have something beautiful music to work with, close the piano roll window. Your “untitled MIDI event” box now shows a thumbnail of the notes you entered on the piano roll.

Now Let's Get Loopy
Now if you want to make that one phrase be repeated in your song, you can click on the right side of the “untitled MIDI event” box, (in the lower half), and click-hold-drag it out as far as you want. At every point where the pattern is repeated, there will be an indent on the top and bottom of the section.

Now you can use the transport controls in the lower left to listen to your creation. Go ahead and save your work by either selecting File->Save Project or by clicking on the Floppy Disk icon in the upper right. (Third icon from the left, top row)

You’re reached the end of Part 1. In part 2, we’ll begin exploring the art of “knob twiddling” – how you can change settings on the fly within your music.

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Terminology: MIDI

MIDI is an acronym for Musical Instrument Digital Interface. The is a communication protocol/language between electronic instruments and computers. Instead of actually sending an audio signal, MIDI sends "events" between devices. Events are things like "play a middle C note", "lower the volume", "change to instrument number 20", etc. MIDI is the common method of communicating these things. The MIDI standard defines specific numbers to each command and each note, so for example, to play a C-6, the MIDI device would actually transit "play note 84".

Since it was first introduced to the world in 1983, MIDI has become the de facto standard interface for communicating between musical devices.

MIDI can also mean the MIDI Interface, which is the industry standard cord and plug used to connect MIDI-compatible devices together.

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