# Easiest way to program drums in reaper?



## BlindingLight7 (Mar 30, 2010)

Simple question, is there anyway other than having to select EVERY beat in a section?


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## TreWatson (Mar 30, 2010)

if you hae a midi input device, you can map it out, play it, and then quantize it.


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## BlindingLight7 (Mar 30, 2010)

TreKita said:


> if you hae a midi input device, you can map it out, play it, and then quantize it.


would a keyboard connected via usb work?


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## TreWatson (Mar 30, 2010)

yes.

you'd just have to know how to work it. 

i'm not good at midi routing though, so i'm no help there.


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## Zami77 (Mar 31, 2010)

Yea, if you get a usb midi keyboard, usually you jsut plug it in and the computer instantly recognizes it. Also, What I do to make drum programming a whole lot easier, is to write out my songs in guitar pro, guitars,basses,leads etc.... and write the drum parts in there. So, Ill have my basic parts written out, then ill write fills and other small detail inside Reaper.


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## BlindingLight7 (Mar 31, 2010)

Zami77 said:


> Yea, if you get a usb midi keyboard, usually you jsut plug it in and the computer instantly recognizes it. Also, What I do to make drum programming a whole lot easier, is to write out my songs in guitar pro, guitars,basses,leads etc.... and write the drum parts in there. So, Ill have my basic parts written out, then ill write fills and other small detail inside Reaper.


Guitar pro confuses the shit out of me, completely.


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## Demeyes (Mar 31, 2010)

BlindingLight7 said:


> Simple question, is there anyway other than having to select EVERY beat in a section?


If you are using a program with presets, I try and find one that's close to what I want and then I edit that. Even if it's not that close you can make your beat way faster by moving, copying and pasting parts than by plugging in each hit.


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## the unbearable (Apr 1, 2010)

i isolate repeats, loop them, and build each beat by beat, drum by drum. then i glue them and loop them. i know it's tedious, but if you do one track per drum, it's a fucklot easier to insert fills and variations...


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## drenzium (Apr 1, 2010)

i would recommend programming the drums in Guitar Pro, exporting the midi and importing it into reaper. i found that incredibly easier, but that may just be me.


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## anne (Apr 2, 2010)

I can't really imagine any method being easier than mouse clicks and cut/paste.


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## Universe74 (Apr 2, 2010)

anne said:


> I can't really imagine any method being easier than mouse clicks and cut/paste.



Yes, this turned out quite fast for me as well and I'm a total beginner. I cut and paste till the song is arranged then edit the finer details later on.


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## Internection (Apr 2, 2010)

GP them first, change code, and save as MIDI then drag it in.


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## Triple7 (Apr 2, 2010)

I am a total noob, but I was pretty much just using the drum map. It's really easy, although it does take a while, I actually kind of enjoy it.


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## Anomality (Apr 2, 2010)

I started out doing the Guitar Pro method like others said. It works well but I find it to be a slow process and a lot of the drum hits in GP don't match up with SD2/Metal Foundry so you end up needing to shift them around anyways. 

Lately I've just been using the MIDI keyboard/piano roll/mouse methods.


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## Demeyes (Apr 2, 2010)

I can't really see much advantage of using guitar pro over the normal piano roll/drum map in a DAW. Sure if you have written your stuff in GP and it's tabbed along there then it would be easier but other than that I don't see why it would be easier, only more hassle.


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## Xanithon (Apr 3, 2010)

I just map out parts for specific riffs and do section by section - it gets easier after a while.

I used to use GP5 to map out stuff but it just got tiresome constantly putting in numbers.


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