He automated all the boring parts of being a composer

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-18

[00:00:00]Hello, welcome back to the Reaper blog.

[00:00:02]Today we are joined again by Joel Schwarz. If you missed our previous conversation, I'll have a link down below to where we talked about the basics of media composition. And in this one, we're going deeper into some advanced workflows stuff from his own experience working on television shows.

[00:00:19]You can find Joel online at filmguitars.com.

[00:00:25]Welcome, Joel.

[00:00:26]>> Thank you, John. Great to be back. This was super fun to do. I've just been in this very admittedly very very nerdy phase uh with Reaper. I mean, it's always a bit nerdy, but it's been especially nerdy. And it's kind of fun to like see comments from other fellow nerds. The questions from like people who are really advanced, but also like kind of beginning and the whole range is cool to get the discussion going. So, thanks for inviting me.

[00:00:53]>> Yeah, we got a really good response from the last video, so doing it again. Well, we already planned on doing a second video, but now we I now I think we have a bit more energy going towards that.

[00:01:03]So, yes. Yeah, I I know that people are going to like it. So, where do we start with this one?

[00:01:07]>> Basically, like again, I want to circle back to this concept, which is fundamentally the most important concept for me, which is this studio as an integrated system for creativity. Like I'm not in this to be a vibe coder or like a tinkerer with Reaper, you know? I I'm doing this because I love composing.

[00:01:30]I love producing. I want it to be very smooth when I have a client here or I'm working on a film or something. So that's the entire goal. I'm saying that because we're we are going to get into some very nerdy in the weed stuff. And I feel like in the last 3 or 4 months, I've taken Reaper to the these kind of extremes. And I'm sure there's other people doing really cool stuff, but I feel like so excited about where I came to with this. So, there's two things with this. One is the potentially controversial aspect is like I'm not a programmer at all. I don't understand code really beyond HTML. So this is deeply vibecoded. There's a lot of AI.

[00:02:15]There's no AI in the creative part. You know, I'm not it's everything works without AI, but there in the creation of this, there was a lot of AI. I'm okay with it. There are times when something wouldn't exist without an AI tool to help you. we're solving a problem and we're using any of the resources available where we need this problem resolved like right away and so AI for coding tends to work pretty well for that.

[00:02:47]>> Yeah, I mean look I I I think it's a important discussion to consider and I know what I love about Reaper is it's kind of my feeling from the community.

[00:02:57]It's kind of anti- AI in a in a way and I I support that. like we don't want AI in Reaper in terms of creation. I don't I I don't want that. I'm not interested.

[00:03:09]Um but this is like a a bit of a different thing in terms of it's all about workflow. So there's that.

[00:03:17]>> Yeah. Taking away a lot of the busy work I imagine of getting getting stuff ready to go into the project.

[00:03:24]>> Yeah. And that's kind of where where I have used AI tools to generate scripts or workflows for like I just cannot remember the FF ffmpeg code that I need on a regular basis, >> right, to to convert files into different formats that are easy to to import and stuff like that. So like I could read it a a thousand times and then the next time I need it, I'm not going to remember it. So I can build a tool with >> you know within 30 seconds with chat GBT or whatever and it works forever.

[00:03:58]And just the fact that Reaper accepts scripts so readily, it's it's really incredible like uh that you know I think other DAWs are are doing workarounds like keyboard maestro and there's other third party tools right >> um that you can kind of get around that but not in such a deep way as Reaper like as far as I know and it's just it's it's mindblowing for me.

[00:04:25]>> Yeah. I don't think anything else comes close. Yeah, I guess the last thing that we should say is, you know, Christian Henson from Crow Hill gave us a shout out and that was cool of him and and uh so hi hi Christian. I hope these have been useful and thanks for the shout out.

[00:04:40]>> Yeah.

[00:04:41]>> So, some of the stuff that we're going to be doing here, it extends a little bit outside of Reaper specifically, but it's all going to be integrated. When I'm starting a project, a new uh film or television series, there's a ton of admin. As far as like folder creation, there's local folders that have to exist on my hard drive. There's uh Dropbox folders. There's if I'm working with a team, which is often like there's another composer or a music editor, etc. There's a calendar. Uh there's a spotting sheet that has to be created which I've in the past worked with QDB uh which a lot of composers will know.

[00:05:24]There's project management. There's all these things that is like a halfday setup. So let me show you what this script does and how it kind of integrates. Okay, before I say this, this is going to seem like a lot to anybody watching. This is going to really seem like a lot, but this was all done like one step at a time. I did this during a playback uh a series of playbacks for which is like when when the composer and all the whole team goes to watch uh the the show or the film.

[00:05:57]So, I had four in a row. They were really really long days and I was only useful for about 20 minutes or so a day on these playbacks. the rest of the time of those 10 hours I was vibe coating this thing. So this is going to seem insane but I I will say to anybody interested in doing this I started gently and one step at a time. So back to this. So, where this starts is it's with a form and it's reminding me to start a local Python server that's going to connect and basically the internet to uh all the things on my computer and everything. And so, I won't go into the details here, but let's call it the Reaper Blog series. And it's going to ask me for an abbreviation. So, we'll call it the Reaper Blog. Okay. TRB S and then it's season number. So this will be our first season, John. And let's say there are five episodes.

[00:07:03]Okay. So do we need a Google calendar?

[00:07:05]Of course we do. We want a shared Google calendar. Do we want a nifty project?

[00:07:09]This is the project management software I use. So yes, let's do that. So we have a place to chat and work on all our things. This part is selecting team members. We'll leave this off for now.

[00:07:21]Okay. So, the first thing that comes up is this is from my local uh drive and it's asking me which scoring template to begin with. So, I will start with this one cuz I've removed all the plugins and it'll load quickly rather than like the 3minut load it usually is. And so, the thing that it creates now, this is on my local project. This is TRBS, the Reaper blog series 101. So that means we're episode season 1 episode 1 season 1 102 season 1 episode 2. And in this first folder there are two subfolders. One is my template. Basically before I start a project like this I'm going to spend some time getting the sound. Spend a lot of time getting the sound. So I'm going to do that in this template. The other folder is a video folder. So we'll get back to that. The things it creates now in the background. It created this Google Drive with uh the Reaper blog series and this spotting sheet. We'll get back to this here. It created our uh the Reaper blog series on Nifty. And then please blur this one out. This is my calendar. The Reaper blog series calendar. And the last thing it created is um the Dropbox.

[00:08:37]And the Dropbox has like for me I have you know very specific you know TRBS 101 it has very on each of these it has a bunch of very specific subfolders that I have to do every time and this takes a bunch of time. So I know we're a little outside of Reaper but point is here having this local Python server allows you to do all this. Okay so back to Reaper. Let's go into our template and open that up. Say we're done all our template and the aesthetic stuff. We're going to now connect this to where is it here. We're going to connect this to this spotting sheet. And I'll show you why in a second. So I'll copy this link.

[00:09:22]What happens here? I press a button on my stream deck set season sheet path. So it asks me for a Google sheet ID and I paste that in and it says okay great.

[00:09:31]We're connected. Do >> you want to show the the workflow in the the stream deck?

[00:09:36]>> Okay. If I press this one top right, set season sheet path.

[00:09:40]>> Okay. Oh, this all connected through OSC.

[00:09:42]>> That's right. And so it saves it as part of this specific to this project. It it is saving that path, that Google sheet path. So now when when we go to our you know, we have our spotting session. You know what? I have some I I have some temp data. I'll bring it in here. So, in a spotting session, you're you're going through with the director or the showrunner, uh, and they're going through and we're talking about all the places where music could exist, right? When you've gone through this process with with your showrunner, the first thing I want to do is bring all this information into my session so I can see it. So let me let me do that. So the next step is for me opening the video file.

[00:10:40]Here's another script that's really useful. I can bring up my stream deck thing again if that's helpful.

[00:10:53]So, I have this one script that imports a video and aligns it and and explodes the video the video from the audio. So, let me let me show you how that works.

[00:11:05]So, so I'm going to press the button here and I'm going to pick a random something random. So this is how we usually get video is with the left and right are mono channels of course and they the left side will contain dialogue and the right will be temp. And so what we need to do is separate those two things so we can have individual control over the volume of of dialogue and temp.

[00:11:32]And we need to align the video to 1 hour exactly to the frame. Right? So that's what this script does.

[00:11:40]So it's going to import the script into my video assembly and it's going to align it exactly based on the two beep which is present in which is what this script relies on is a two beep and it it is frame accurate. So the video I can I can show you now like I'm halfway through uh 1271903 and you can see that's where we're at here.

[00:12:08]So that's that's very useful. That's like a threeinut job, you know, where you just you have to do that every every single time. Um, so let me now connect I think I've already done this, but just to make sure on this this one I'm going to connect this um project to the spotting sheet and then I'm going to import the cues and then we we can go back and look at these scripts if it's if it's helpful.

[00:12:39]>> So I I'm now uh clicked a button. It's going to start this server, this local Python server which connects to Google Sheets, that exact sheet and down is going to download uh all the spotting data. There we go. Okay. So now we've downloaded all those cues that are in the spotting sheet and that can update easily.

[00:13:08]So that that is something I was previously doing by downloading a CSV or even before that manually creating these regions from the spotting sheet. That's like a lot of uh labor doing that.

[00:13:22]>> Yeah. Making I've I've had to do that once and making regions from a list it's not something you want to do twice.

[00:13:30]It's not something you want to do twice and like you imagine for one episode you can easily have you know 20 cues more and so you're creating all these regions right and that that is not fun to do when you just want to write music.

[00:13:47]>> Does the Reaper session then update the the spreadsheet if you made a change there?

[00:13:54]>> Exactly. So if we go to let's say we're done our template now and we want to do our first Q. So our first Q is 1 M1.

[00:14:03]Okay. So we're going to go 1 M1.

[00:14:08]Create a sub directory for this.

[00:14:12]And I'll create a region here. Let's say I don't know this is 3 minutes. Let's just say it's whatever is a little smaller. So I'm going to put my start and end markers here before I even render it or anything like that. Um, I can update the spotting sheet. It's going to ask me for the key, and this is for metadata. Let's say it's in F.

[00:14:37]There's actually no nothing on here right now. It's going to restart that uh, Python server.

[00:14:46]And we'll give it one moment. And it's updated 1 M1. So, we go back to Reaper and said, okay, the title has been updated to untitled project. the TC in and out has changed and the key is there and the it's grabbed the BPM >> and and so that untitled project is actually because it's not written into the project settings page.

[00:15:11]>> Yeah. Well, let's let's call it John's theme, right? And so if I if I update it again Oh, I think I have to hold on. I to shut this server down, I think. Let's see.

[00:15:31]I might need to do that one more time.

[00:15:34]>> But this isn't something you're doing every time you update. It's probably at the end of the day or >> Yeah, when you're done, like when you're about to render the queue, you know, then then that's when you that's when I do it. So, let's see. So, there is John's theme and that's yeah, that's been updated. So yeah, you're not doing this every two seconds, but when you do it is like this could easily be attached to a render script. For example, when I render this music, then that would be the time when I'd want and uploading to Dropbox. That's when I'd want to be uploading the spotting sheet.

[00:16:09]>> Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. And you can set that up easily. Just like um just link it just make a custom action with the render command plus that script. And I do the same thing for getting a sound effect when the render runs or render completes. So I'm >> Oh, yeah. Right. That's smart. Yeah.

[00:16:29]Right. It's essentially the same thing.

[00:16:30]Yeah. Exactly. So, and it, you know, having this like when you're in the midst of a show, you know, and having this updated with the correct meta data and the correct time code and versioning. So, let me show you that as well. So, this is a really simple thing.

[00:16:48]So I I when I go save as new version in Reaper controllalttshifts S for me on PC it's going to put a dot one here right >> and so when I when I do this update this body sheet again it will now update this column here in the version number so that our music editor is always, you know, it's just another confirmation that it's always going to have the correct version. So there it came in. And so if I re rendered it as, you know, I did a new version.2, then it would render or update here as well.

[00:17:33]>> I could imagine you just want to compose.

[00:17:36]>> Yes. And at the end of the day, you don't want to have to go through a list of all these things that you've you've changed and update a a spreadsheet like or or be distracted during during the day to to make those changes.

[00:17:51]>> It's very creative work, but it's also very precise work. And in particular, when you're working on a team, the precision and when you're working with a showrunner who has a demand instantly, you need to be precise with your work.

[00:18:04]So theoretically like this could be improved by you know when I render it I could change this compose the status to compose say or you know there's lots of ways that people smarter than me can expand something like this.

[00:18:19]>> Should we show the scripts first or >> Sure. Yeah. Let's see which one is it.

[00:18:24]Set plate path. Here it is. I don't know how this all works. Like really like I've like I am I'm looking at this and it's about it's Greek to I mean, somebody who knows coding will be able to understand this precisely what's happening. I'll show you this other one up the update the spotting sheet. Um, this one might be a little longer cuz it's more involved and it probably, if you don't mind blurring some of this stuff out cuz I think it has some keys and stuff. What this is smart in doing is it will grab the path of this one. So it's 1 M1 is the project name, but the local path uh it's in that TRB whatever the folder.

[00:19:06]So that's how it knows to go to this 101 folder. It's based on the local path that it's in.

[00:19:13]>> It's kind of clever uh that it's like, you know, it all has to work together, but that's how it picks this particular sheet say rather than this one, >> right? And I'm sure that like, you know, the next version of this is to update every five minutes automatically, >> right? That would be another Yeah, that I mean, that could, you know, I don't know. I kind of want I like to have the the the control a certain amount of control when it's too automated. You can get into trouble, right?

[00:19:42]>> Um, >> yeah, >> but I mean, ultimately, what is on the spotting sheet needs to reflect what's in Dropbox.

[00:19:50]>> So, maybe let's let's do that now. So, I have a script here, and I don't know if we've talked about it last time, but what it does is it outputs my stems with the exact kind of naming that I want, and it only renders the stems that have audio being sent to it. So, in this case, I just did this OB6 thing, and there's there's, you know, there's not there's nothing in it really, right? Um, there's no even plugin on it because I've removed it, but this is being sent to the C stem. So I just, you know, that's a stream deck command I have just send to send to C this this track. And so what this rendering script does is render all the within the time selection, it'll do the master and any stems here that have audio being sent to them. So in this case, it's only C. So if we open up the queue, we have it named exactly how I want the folder. And this is 1.1 C which is that stem John theme js is my initial and then the exact time code. So it's also a broadcast media file but it's useful to have the time code there in case somehow that gets stripped.

[00:21:05]So now I'll take this and we'll go to Reaper. We'll find that or sorry, Dropbox. And we'll find our TRDS.

[00:21:15]And I put this in incoming cues 101. I'm going to paste that in there.

[00:21:22]Okay. And so this was a question on the other one quite a bit. It's like, how do we then bring Q's into here? So I have an assembly script and what that does is we basically set a path for uh where the Dropbox is and you select select any I'm back in incoming cues 101 and I select any of these files and then it knows that that is that's our path for 101. So, it's now brought that in here >> and it brought in the master track.

[00:22:02]>> That's just brought in the master track.

[00:22:04]The like for this that's really all I need. So, from here I can easily send a video, you know, cuz it's all here.

[00:22:11]>> But I think you said um last time you don't you very rarely need to send a video of anything, right?

[00:22:18]>> Usually, so in my experience, usually the music editor is doing this work, but there are definitely times when I'll send a video, right? And it's it's so easy for me to you know you just say I'll select this region for example um and and you know this is does not correspond exactly but cuz I haven't updated this one so I I can do that actually um this one. So when I import these regions again from that Google spotting sheet, it if all goes according to plan here, it will update the the lengths of these regions to match. There you go. So it's it's matching this one.

[00:23:01]>> Oh, I see.

[00:23:02]>> Right. That's cool.

[00:23:03]>> I can then easily render that out. I'm being a little facicious here, but the beauty of when you get a system is it allows me to be like kind of dumb. I don't have to think about every single It's like when you're driving a car or, you know, like I don't need to know how everything in the car works. I just need to, you know, get to the school to pick up my kids or I just need to go grocery shopping and I don't need to know that, you know, how to do anything. And that's a little bit of my relationship with this. Um, other people will certainly have a different relationship than that, but as long as it works, I'm happy, >> right? I'm the same way for all the keyboard shortcuts and scripts that I build. Once I get them into the workflow, I forget what they're even called.

[00:23:46]>> I just press the button and and move on.

[00:23:49]>> So, like it it takes it takes a lot of mental load off once you have the system built and you can kind of rely on these things because you know they go step by step and they take care of each other.

[00:24:00]And so, like not having to manually trim the regions, not having to name things manually, it's like it all saves time.

[00:24:08]Yeah. And effort >> 100%. Some of these workflows are very directed for screen composing, right?

[00:24:14]And I think and and not only screen composing, but like I would say professional screen composing where you're using a spotting sheet and you're, you know, you're having to maybe work with a team and and and connect in that way. So it's not going to be for everyone, but I think some of the broad concepts of for people if they were interested in kind of creating their own system is the local Python connect is it it opens up huge possibilities for Reaper because then Reaper can now talk to your computer and it can talk to the internet and so that becomes >> scary and wonderful and powerful and all the things. But if I was coming into this without kind of the the background and experience in in doing this already, a lot of the details that you get into I would never have thought about and like you know just in terms of documenting everything metadata the standard way things are named and when they're versioned like I would I would ignore all of that >> to my detriment and like get kicked off the team.

[00:25:25]>> That's so true.

[00:25:26]>> But like there's there's so many like little details that are important when you're on a team in a professional environment where when it's two people making a film, it's a little different than 50.

[00:25:40]>> Sure. Sure. Or Yeah. I mean, not 50, but there's Yeah. There's post-production mixers. There's all these people and and also part of it I'll show you this next step here. I don't know if I've rendered this. I'll make another version here. I will update our spotting sheet.

[00:25:56]Okay. And I'm gonna render this new version. I'm going to show you something else that's cool with the assembly script. I'm asking Reaper to do a bunch of things here. Let's see what happens.

[00:26:06]Reaper didn't get mad at me. That's good. Okay, so we've rendered our latest version of the John theme.

[00:26:16]We'll bring it into Dropbox.

[00:26:22]So this I still do manually. I like doing it manually. Just there's some checks I like to do and this is one of them. So this is our previous queue, right? The uh.1 and this two is our latest. So I'm I bring one into the archive and I go back to my assembly and we see that this is offline because it's it's no longer talking to it on Dropbox, right? And I hit assembly.

[00:26:49]Yes, that's the that's the folder TRBS 101 and there's only one. Continue.

[00:26:56]Anyway, so what it's done now is it's taken taken this old version and put it down there into the archive. And so say I have four different versions of this queue. It will actually create a playlist or a like a that's not reaper terminology, sorry. uh it'll create the takes >> paste it in as a new take in the >> as a new take. So if I have four versions of this and for some reason the latest version that was approved is not working and I need to quickly go back and say hey you know I thought actually this version worked. We can be like oh yeah that version works great and and we can preview it. this whole archival process that's I think super valuable when you know when the you have a a metaphorical gun to your head and you know everybody's like Joel where is why isn't this working let's find something that works it's like well here's a ton of options >> because sometimes a queue will go through an evolution not always but sometimes >> it's much easier to go through the takes within the project than to dig through the file system to find that thing that you emailed or whatever, right?

[00:28:08]>> Like like people who aren't techsavvy in a professional environment, they just want what they want and they want it right then. They have no patience for like, oh, you mean you got to open up a new Reaper project that's going to take like 5 minutes cuz the you have 300 tracks in your template and or you have to search through Dropbox and find it and but if you can answer the questions like right away, it's very valuable. So, part of this has been thinking through my entire creative process step by step.

[00:28:39]Again, on those like 12-hour days where I was doing very little, I was thinking, where is there creative friction for me?

[00:28:45]Anytime there's creative friction, I would note it and be like, can code solve this? Can is there something I can do to solve this? And again, like that is why Reaper is so incredibly incredibly powerful. And part of the series that I think I I really want to convey to the world, not just our Reaper community, is screen composers are the perfect candidate for using uh Reaper.

[00:29:16]And I just don't see a ton of information out there. There isn't a ton of people film composers who are using Reaper. And just considering a the nerdiness of a lot of film composers and I would say like the the workflow needs of a lot of film or are quite mighty.

[00:29:34]You have to do so many things in that you might not have to do if you're like a bedroom producer. Like when you're comparing DAWs, it's like okay, yeah, they all sound the same. Which one do you want? But when you're getting to this kind of level of advanced workflow stuff, like Reaper is on another level completely.

[00:29:54]>> Yeah. I think if you can convince someone that they don't need to manually edit a a CSV file ever in their their life, >> right, >> by use by switching to Reaper, >> right, >> that might be enough.

[00:30:07]>> That might be enough. One thing we were talking about too, John, that I think is really great in a very recent version of Reaper is these um the lanes for um markers.

[00:30:22]>> Yeah. Yeah. The multiple marker and region lanes.

[00:30:26]>> Yeah. I don't even have this set up for this project, but I could show it really easily. I'll just make a a new lane and let's say I'll call it um time and it'll just be based on time. And so there's a new lane here now and called time. And so this is we are in my um I'll bring up video. I think this episode has already aired so I'm going to say it's fine. Um okay. So, let's say we're at this point in the show, right? And I want So, I'm I I was flipping to the video tab there, >> right?

[00:31:09]>> This is usually on another huge monitor above my head. Um, >> so as we flip through again, I want to show this. I showed this on the last video, but these are connected through these uh this setting here. run projects, background projects, run, stop background projects, play stop background projects, synchronize, and display video from background. All those are enabled. So that allows me to see video from a different tab. And the two are just automatically connected. They play at the exact same rate.

[00:31:43]>> Yeah.

[00:31:43]>> There's no simp connect or anything. So if I if I say okay on this scene I want it to start exactly you know when it shows her face a bit of a see you a closeup on her face. So I'll drop a marker here right I'll say okay that is the that's the Am I in the time ruler?

[00:32:02]No I'm not.

[00:32:02]>> No just dragging >> the time. There you go. So let's say this is uh you know a new tempo here and let's say it's 120. Okay. And we want the downbeat to start exactly here. Then oops, I have to do a couple other settings here. Partial and the time signature.

[00:32:22]So I can go and drag this. So the the click is now starting right exactly here is I can be very granular to the frame if I want to.

[00:32:35]>> And then my click track is here. And then I have two bars count in for that to begin right there. Whether that's a good place to start, I don't know. This is I wouldn't that that this is irrespective of this actual scene. But um that's a handy this lane ruler um thing has been really awesome because then you can have other markers that are related to beats. Say so this would be more related to the music. Or I might actually just call this music.

[00:33:10]>> So this would be for musical markers.

[00:33:11]Then I could have a third for rendering stuff or, you know, I'd be curious what how you're using yours.

[00:33:17]>> Really cool new feature.

[00:33:19]>> Each one of those lanes can be selected to block. So you can't accidentally drag them to a different location or you can't edit, you can't insert.

[00:33:29]>> You can do that. You can lock a lane.

[00:33:30]Ruler manager.

[00:33:32]>> Yeah. And there's a just a lock column there beside the default.

[00:33:34]>> Oh, great. Yeah. So you we might for example if I had a render uh like say we just for fun oops say we called this one render right and we put our I'll lock it and we put our render paths here. Oops.

[00:33:55]>> If it's locked it will prevent you from making a a region.

[00:33:59]>> Oh I see. So now I can't even move these these guys up here. Right.

[00:34:04]>> They did fix that. You can now navigate to the markers. You're on 765, so that's not in there yet, but 7 71. You can click on a marker and it will move your cursor correctly. But a little bug there that in your current version, but >> Oh, I see. Okay. Well, I I mean, I usually wait a couple weeks anyways to update.

[00:34:23]>> So, what I what I imagined is like uh your start and end markers are probably not going to be moved too often for a queue once they're set. And you can lock that, but then you're free to mu move, you know, move things with ripple edits and things of the music without moving those markers. Um, or the insert time or insert and delete remove time leaving empty area. You know that that action, >> right? Yes. That's what I I use this all the time like so and we can talk a little bit more about this. So let's say this is where I've said I I think the queue should start. What did I say here?

[00:35:02]Right.

[00:35:03]>> Mhm.

[00:35:03]>> So, we'll just call this Oops. I'll say uh usually call this in internally. So, this is where the queue is coming in.

[00:35:13]Right. So, what I might do is uh if the showrunner is like, you know what, this is good, but I actually want to start it, you know, a little can we push that a little later? So what I would often do is before this time signature tempo marker here or the uh you know this this thing here I'll say okay yeah we can totally move this like five frames eight frame you know what 11 frames so I do the insert empty space and selection that's going to move everything to the right so now our Q is starting you know five five whatever I put in >> I recommend the insert key on your keyboard for that.

[00:35:54]>> Oh, yeah. I never use that.

[00:35:56]>> That's That's where I moved mine.

[00:35:58]>> Oh. Oh, before putting those in. This is like Yeah, it's it's set to something else. Okay.

[00:36:03]>> But that's good. Yeah, cuz you use it so often, I guess.

[00:36:06]>> And and control shift X for removing time. That's what I >> Oh, that's pretty good. Yeah, that's that's cool. So, yeah. And then same thing in reverse. If they're like, you are starting way too late, then I'll make a little selection and go remove contents of selection moving later items.

[00:36:22]>> Yeah. So again, and I think we've talked about there's sort of other workflows that you know might work differently here in new newer versions of Reaper, but having the music agnostic of the video just allows me to freely do this and it's not affecting video at all. So I can be in this queue and then bring up another queue and the video hasn't been affected. The video is still there.

[00:36:51]Yeah. really really incredible workflow stuff here. Then these some of these things some of these small things like the markers uh and the separating the video and the audio have been just huge improvements in in the last uh 6 months for me. And then you know the bigger thing which have which is having this Python server and like updating the spotting sheet and downloading from the spotting sheet is feels like holy like this is really next level. Nice. So we had a question about the reverb and delay sends and how you would assign those to groups A and B uh to create your stems or if you even do.

[00:37:39]>> Yeah. So for me, the way I score is I might have I I always have discrete reverb. So if you'll see like this is just the top of my project. So I have uh my acoustic guitars first. That's how I have it set up. So this is one AC space.

[00:37:56]Um so underneath here is my recording tracks, right? And then it's being sent to I usually have a bunch of plugins here. Well, a few plugins. And it's sent been being sent to a reverb and delay.

[00:38:08]And then this is the track that's being sent to the stem.

[00:38:11]>> So, okay. So, the the folder track of the sum of your dry plus wet guitars, that's the one that gets sent to let's say the uh >> steam. Yeah.

[00:38:24]>> Okay. And that's because like I might want um I might want a very different like three or four different acoustic guitar sounds that you know I don't want necessarily the mixer to have control over. Like if I send them like a stem and they bring it way down and it entirely changes the character of the the music, right? I don't want them they can turn it up and down and whatever, but uh I want the guitar to sound say how I want the guitar to sound. and often discreet. So you might have something that's really really verbed out and then something that's more forward. So I do discrete reverbs for everything and they're sent.

[00:39:05]>> Yeah. And I think that's where it differs from from kind of general m studio music production. like without a template.

[00:39:13]Um, or if you have a template, it's it's like you might have four or five reverbs that are shared across the entire project and you don't necessarily make stems or if you do make stems, you're you're soloing the tracks so that the reverbs come through individually. That makes sense. I've never really worked that way because I'm never when I'm recording I'm never or producing I'm never trying to create something that's like oh I want this to sound like it's a band playing in a hall and everybody to sound like cohesive in that way. It's like no >> guitar is like way out here and it has its own special reverb and like this is way out here and I I personally like them to be >> discreet just for me. The result is I have a ton of like reverb and delay plugins as you can see.

[00:40:03]>> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, not a big deal if they're not used. They're not really just being in the project. And it's this doesn't necessarily take up a lot more CPU, but but yeah, it is a different way of of setting up a template than let's say I showed in in my mixing videos where I've got, you know, my three favorite short, medium, long, reverb, two delays, one special effect verb that I will or effect that I will try from, you know, whatever needs to stand out. I might have a widener and all these things are >> um in parallel with the different groups, the drum group, the bass group, whatever.

[00:40:44]>> And so they they all meet together at the master track and I never make stems.

[00:40:48]It makes it makes sense the way that you have this set up. And yeah, there's just the overhead of having lots of reverb and delays for each group.

[00:40:57]>> As long as your computer can handle it, I guess. Yeah. you know, but you the way you're talking about really makes sense, too. It's funny like mixing uh for for film and TV is so different than music production mixing, right? Cuz music production there there is a bit of a like let's make this huge, right?

[00:41:15]>> Whereas in film TV, we want like tons of headroom and uh atmosphere and room for dialogue and you know, Foley and everything else. So, this the intention is really different. But I will say and that took me a while to get used to because my background is more in like as a music producer and mixer where I'm doing you know uh songs. So that took me a while to used to get used to where there's no like two bus and instead like on these stems I usually have there's like a mastering chain effectively on each of these stems. mastering chain, sort of mixing chain, right?

[00:41:55]>> Mhm.

[00:41:55]>> Um, but I will say like that has really improved my mixes in mic production world because I still use a similarish setup where I have stems >> and I'm like, oh yeah, having like a little bit of saturation or compression or EQ on these, just a little bit on this kind of highle thing before it hits my music.

[00:42:20]This This is for me. This is my two bus, you know, I have nothing on my master track and reaper.

[00:42:26]>> So, everything hits here. And then, you know, when I'm producing, I might do something like this, too, is where I might have like a a music folder, say, and then a parallel channel here, parallel, and I might put like a decapitator on there, or put a like a harder uh comp, and it's coming in parallel before hitting here. M >> but I found, you know, the the two worlds have informed me and made me a better, cleaner mixer. I would say overall, it's kind of cool that way. It took me a while to get used to the film mixing to be honest cuz I was like, I want this to sound glued and, you know, in this particular way, >> right? And it's hard to produce stems for someone uh to else to mix while everything is glued and so delicately connected kind of.

[00:43:19]>> Yeah.

[00:43:20]>> So that makes sense. Um you did mention headroom and we did have a question about that. This is probably somewhat deferred to the actual >> dub mixer maybe it would be called. Um >> that's right.

[00:43:33]>> Yeah. So I would love to hear how you work to hit the desired LUFS levels. Do you set compressor limiter to hit minus 24 dB or minus 27 dB required or is there another way? So, this was maybe a question from like a post-production mixer or somebody who's aspiring to be um so it's a little bit out of scope for me, but my understanding is broadcasters such as, you know, Canadian broadcasters, CTV, CW in the States, and Netflix are the some of them some of the broadcasters I've worked a lot with. uh and I've been you know in the room when they're doing this and I like it is somewhere around that 24 but each broadcaster will have their own requirements right and I think they do their best to kind of find one thing that they're doing I think it is it is minus 24 lufs I don't do that for my score the answer to the question I don't know exactly I think it's minus 24 for a lot of these North American broadcasters >> and that's integrated across the entire episode.

[00:44:43]>> Yeah, there's going to be like a a chase scene or an action scene that's going to like blast through that, right? But we're going to as a general thing that's that's they have targets.

[00:44:53]>> Um, but it brings up an interesting thing that, you know, I don't know the answer to and I've talked to some friends about this, which is like, well, how loud should I deliver my cues? like, isn't more better? I have dialogue and I have like I showed this last time. I generally have quite a few um plugins on here to kind of clean it up. Like I have something that isolates the dialogue and you know some EQ fast compressor DS and a limiter. So my dialogue ends up being even though it's like shitty camera audio it ends up being pretty clean. So, I just compose to that being relatively just at zero. I don't change the volume. I try to compose my queue to that. Um, but I know there are some people who are like, "Okay, yeah, that's the that's where you've composed it to, but why not use the full resolution and the mixers can then just turn it down?" for my the stuff that I produce and compose. It's like that doesn't feel right to do when I'm like cranking these atmospheric intimate kind of scoring cues like really loud and then they're pulling it down. Doesn't feel right. But I I know some people are like let's use every bit that we can. This again this is get starts getting above my pay grade admittedly. I'm like I don't know. I just write it and mix it to make it sound good with dialogue and it seems to work.

[00:46:22]>> Yeah. I I I think the composer doesn't necessarily need to know how it's mixed in the end. Um as long as it can sound good, it's you're not delivering it clipped.

[00:46:33]>> Yeah.

[00:46:34]>> I've always found that having sort of a calibrated monitoring setup is very important. You want to have headroom at the end and mix it so it sounds loud.

[00:46:44]Basically, you take pick a low level like minus12 and make your speakers loud at minus12 dBFS and then you're never going to go exceed that because it will hurt your hurt you physically, >> right?

[00:46:57]>> So, that's an easy way to get a more dynamic mix because like those short transients may go above that, but like if you're compressed bass guitar is at minus 12, you're not going to significantly exceed that by every other instrument. So yeah, that's always helped for me. And before a day of mixing, I will put on a uh pink noise at minus12 and I will set my monitoring volume and I'll check on my iPhone just sort of the decibel level. I might say 75 dB equals minus12 in the DAW.

[00:47:36]>> That gives me lots of headroom. And you just although you have to worry about like, >> well, you got a Discord ping and that's that's that's really going to be loud. So >> that's true. I've had that. I know what you mean. Yeah. Right. Well, that that's that's great. That's like a really good tip and that's probably part of your mixing course, too. Yeah. That's >> Yeah. It's like you could pick any of the numbers, >> right?

[00:47:58]>> Just do it the same thing every time.

[00:48:01]>> Yeah.

[00:48:01]>> So, how you measure doesn't matter. What number you pick doesn't matter. just do it the same every time and you will make it.

[00:48:08]>> That's the part of like this is a scientific way like you know they say know your speakers, know your room is kind of the most valuable thing, right?

[00:48:16]And that that feels like a scientific way to kind of get there even faster.

[00:48:21]Like I do feel like after all these years in the studio, I >> I know what to expect from these monitors, >> but the the what you're advocating for sounds really smart and something I should probably integrate.

[00:48:33]>> If you don't have a monitor controller that has clicks for each decel, >> right? Right.

[00:48:39]>> Find that level. Like I've had this audio interface for one day. I've already put a pencil mark of where where I would like the volume to stay.

[00:48:47]>> Oh yeah.

[00:48:47]>> And then and I keep it at that. and I will just turn down like a YouTube video to like less than half >> and I almost never need to turn something up all the way.

[00:48:58]>> And so I'm I'm trying to go for like 75 dB or whatever the iPhone says is like 75 dB.

[00:49:05]>> Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense.

[00:49:07]>> And it's it's loud enough, but it's not going to disturb my neighbors and uh it's not going to hurt my ears.

[00:49:13]>> Yeah, that's really cool.

[00:49:14]>> I want to ask you about articulation managing systems if you use any of those. Well, I know there's like re reticulate.

[00:49:23]>> Is that what it's called? Reiculate.

[00:49:26]>> I think that's been usurped by another >> Oh, yeah.

[00:49:31]>> which I can't even remember. Uh, from Yesper commented on the last video, but I don't have all the details for that.

[00:49:40]So, I have done a ton of string writing, like a ton and ton and ton, but this is an area of growth for me where I need to have a bit of a better system. I don't have one of these giant orchestral templates with like every articulation parsed out because I usually am using strings in a pretty particular way. I am right now at this point and subject to change, but I am not like doing like orchestral scores where it's like that's the full brunt of I'm I'm usually often more guitar forward or there's synth or there's you know other elements. um only use strings a lot, but I'm not like, "Okay, I'm gonna make this classical orchestral score, >> right?"

[00:50:24]>> So, if I did, I'd be like one of those guys with a Vienna Pro on, you know, server and that whole thing. I haven't got there. So, when I'm, you know, doing articulations, if I need something, I'm going into, you know, going in and selecting it.

[00:50:38]>> You're using a key switch or are you using a separate instance of the plugin?

[00:50:41]>> A separate instance of the plugins. It's like I would all want all my shorts say on one and I would have my legato on another and that's how I do it because I don't want to be like switching on the same you know I might mix them differently like there's a million reasons why I'd want them >> on on separate things.

[00:51:02]>> I don't think there's a wrong answer and Reaper has a lot of different articulation management scripts >> these days and they all have pros and cons. they all have a lot of setup for for the user to uh to build a system.

[00:51:17]Those are basically your two options.

[00:51:18]Like one separate instance of of the plugin for each articulation you want to use could be a little wasteful cuz each plugin unless you purge all the old samples uh all the other articulation samples that aren't being used, it's there's quite a bit of overhead with that. And then there's the one instance of the plugin used articulation manager to manage the key switches because it's annoying to put in a MIDI note at the lowest octave every time you want to change.

[00:51:48]>> So just having a button you can click or MIDI controller or stream deck or whatever to change articulations for the currently selected instrument and you know just write the music.

[00:52:01]>> It totally makes sense. That is a big setup process though, isn't it? Like doing all the Yeah. And I'm into it.

[00:52:07]Like it's it's like Let me ask you, John, like, have you ever set up Reaper with two computers? So like it's like a It's like a faux Vienna Ensemble. You know what I'm talking about when you say Vienna Ensemble Pro? It's like you have a server for your, you know, massive library and you're connected via Ethernet. I've dabbled with Reaper's thing. Um, re remote maybe. No. Yeah, >> I think that's right.

[00:52:35]>> Just as a tech demo of like how you set it up, but I never have a need for it.

[00:52:40]So, I almost never max out my a project >> or CPU and and RAM.

[00:52:46]>> Well, that's the thing like because Reaper is so efficient, it is it takes all, you know, and with modern computers, but it would be cool. Like that would be something that I'd be interested in trying someday is uh you know having say a large orchestral template on another machine if it was easy to set up like kind of Alla Vienna Pro ensemble but with two reaper instances and I don't know how exactly they're synced is if it's through >> I just assume it sends it sends MIDI >> like you send send it MIDI and it spits that audio. That's how I always assumed that it works with an interface that that manages your your library. There is some plugin and I'm not going to remember what it's called. You could use plugins that are installed on a different computer and control the interface in real time. The whole gimmick is that it's actually like an OBS instance.

[00:53:44]>> It's like a screen capture. Uh, so you could you can directly move the mouse on the other computer, but if you like drag it, it will like show a different part of the screen.

[00:53:54]>> I remember testing it on a live stream and I >> accidentally moved it, it just blew my mind like, oh wait, it was like OBS the whole time. It was like it was just a screen recording that I was playing with, right?

[00:54:08]>> But the audio like the audio routing was was instant. I just I cannot remember the name of the plugin, but it was like a neat workound.

[00:54:16]and like such a novel approach to that problem >> is just like yeah do a screen share with with remote control and it worked.

[00:54:26]>> That's that is neat. Yeah. I like I'm just wondering like given that Reaper is able to like have these two tabs stay in sync >> like wouldn't it be awesome if you could somehow have like a remote third tab that is running off a remote computer somehow and it's like okay this is where you're like you'd see it just like this.

[00:54:51]So you could it's not just audio. I could, you know, mess with the plugin and say, >> "Yeah."

[00:54:55]>> Um, and it like lives within, you know, I Reaper somehow. And it's, you know, I don't know if what I'm asking is at all reasonable, but >> if I was in that situation, it would be se like a separate computer or a like workstation synth and I'm just sending it 16 channels of MIDI, you know, or more or whatever whatever it's capable of. And then I have MIDI tracks in Reaper and then um tracks set to probably monitor only >> right >> on the on the template.

[00:55:30]>> Um but then that would require rendering in real time. There's lots of times I would I would think of setting up uh like VCV rack for modular synth stuff, >> right?

[00:55:41]>> And and have all that hooked up to Reaper and and lots of people have done it. you that's sort of a thing where like this plugin is or this app is really heavy and it requires to to get all these different um signals through to actually mix it in a music production sense.

[00:56:00]>> You need like you need lots and lots of virtual cables to do that, >> right? And so running that on a separate computer and you're just sort of maybe a network protocol to get everything through or or just I don't know eight channels of audio would work too. That's how I would approach it.

[00:56:19]>> That's cool. Yeah. There's two other scripts that I use pretty regularly that I thought just as we close here I'd mentioned just as concepts and I can't really demo them really really easily but I can explain them really simply and I think I showed one of them in the previous briefly in the previous uh video but what I have been doing is um so composers receive notes in a variety of ways sometimes it's email often it's frame.io io. There's other platforms where you'll receive a timestamp and uh a note and typically it's frame.io for me. And so I I asked chatbt to create this script that basically I copy I was I was just looking on frame to see if the project is still open but it's not.

[00:57:08]I was going to demo it, but basically I copy all the timestamp notes and it creates creates note items for each of the comet on this timeline. So rather than flipping back and forth between frame.io and I could see, you know, I can see exactly where the note is and what it is and it just shows up like as a, you know, a note file on my timeline like like this. This is amazing, right?

[00:57:35]And you know, so I'll see, you know, a ton of notes that are on one line here.

[00:57:41]So it's pretty useful to see, have I addressed everything? You know, if once I address it, I can do that. For example, >> was that muting or >> Yeah, I just mute it. Alt M. I have it set to. So it just it's like, okay, that's been done, you know. Got it. It's amazing. Um, the other one, which this is an important part of being a composer, is you create Q sheets. Um and Q sheets are similar to spotting sheets.

[00:58:09]So it's kind of this type of information but it's what we give to the pro which is like in Canada it's SOCAN. In the states there's BMI, Seesac, ASCAP for example. And in order to get paid you need to um uh you need to submit Q sheets or the music editor does. So, um I have a script that imports the CSV of what the uh usually you get sent a PDF or you can request a CSV as well. And it takes the CSV and creates regions with where the music editor is saying the music is in and out. So then I can compare it to the uh the the output like usually you get an MX which is the music output and you can say okay there's let's say let's just say this is this is the uh the Q sheet uh region that's been created.

[00:59:06]It's like okay this is this is about right on the start but we're missing a few seconds here. So I can drag it to there and then you know do that for all the cues say and make it make sure that these all line up correctly with the assembly with the and then say actually music editor there's a few small changes and then it outputs as a CSV and I say here's what I found or you got it exactly right because you can visually see if it's right or wrong. So, usually it's all right other than there. It's like there might be something like this that has happened. You know, it's like, oh, you went you went a little long there. So, it's in the composer's favor.

[00:59:48]Let's back that one off so it's accurate, you know, to hear. So, just as a concept, I'm sorry I can't demo that very well right now because it's I don't know. I'd have to find a CSV Q sheet.

[00:59:59]It's somewhere. I don't want to waste your time, John. But as a concept, that's like, you know, that's probably 10 minutes of uh vibe coding to get you there.

[01:00:10]>> And super super useful cuz otherwise you're look like you're literally looking at a spreadsheet and going like, "Okay, this is what it says. It goes here." Then you flip back to Reaper.

[01:00:20]You're like, "Okay, is that right? Let's put the cursor here. Okay, that's right." At the beginning, you know, you're doing this all manually, which what ends up happening is you just don't do it. You're and you get paid less, >> right?

[01:00:37]Cool.

[01:00:38]Well, I'll say in closing, John, like I I just again appreciate so much what you do for the community and I think it's an incredibly exciting time for Reaper and um I hope this video helps people like just see some expansion opportunities cuz there there's so much you can do with this Vibe coding stuff if people are you know into you know changing their workflows particularly with this Python server. doing local stuff and uh with the net. It's crazy powerful. So, thanks for having me b on board and letting me have uh the nerdy rant and I hope people dig it. Awesome. Thank you all for watching. Please subscribe to the channel if you haven't already.

[01:01:25]Follow me on Facebook and Blue Sky. Uh support the Reaper blog through Patreon and visit reaper.blog for more tutorials.