Reaper Tutorial Series – An Interview with David Farmer

Tutorials. We all watch them, we all know that at some point in time, we will be reaching for that search bar when we are trying to overcome a particular hurdle, and you can guarantee that there is an answer to be found in the darkest corners of the Internet. Although the resulting content and indeed source of the result can be, let’s say, questionable at times.

So when you find a series of tutorials from Hollywood heavy weight of Sound Design and all round nice guy David Farmer, chances are that you’ve struck gold.

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David has put together a series of quick tutorials that allow sound professionals who are familiar with using Pro Tools, to get setup and running within a newer platform called Reaper by Cockos Incorporated.

For those of you who have not yet been introduced to Reaper, head over to this link to take a look for yourself. http://www.reaper.fm/

Reaper is a relatively new DAW and runs on both the Windows and Mac Platforms; it allows a large amount of functionality, similar to other major platforms. The cost of this software is also low, and makes it a very attractive platform for seasoned pros, alongside new starters.

According to the Reaper Blog, the list of Triple A game titles that have utilized Reaper as their DAW of choice is growing rapidly. Some titles include:
Far Cry 4, The Division, Mortal Kombat, Mass Effect: Andromeda, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered, Assassins Creed Syndicate and LawBreakers, and this is only to name a few. It is no secret that Reaper has become quite dominant in the game audio industry, and you can find many a conversation centered around this software on sites like Twitter. For post production professionals, be it Television or Feature Film, the use of Reaper is not as wide spread, due to the need to conform across multiple studios and Pro Tools being dominant here. However, learning and adopting new tools that may speed up or offer diverse processes for your workflow is something that we all appreciate, and learning new tools allows us to keep our skills current and honed.

Learning a new DAW can be no easy task, and indeed one that many may find, pointless. This is usually down to limited time whilst working or indeed breaking the familiarity barriers that we have become accustomed to within our current DAW of choice. We have all faced the learning curve at some point, and for people looking to either jump across to Reaper or simply learn it as an additional tool; David’s tutorial series is perfectly designed to allow a smooth transition from the Pro Tools environment.

We spoke to David about his ultra-handy tutorials and he talks about his reasoning behind the choice to use reaper, how it has affected his workflow and indeed why he decided to make these tutorials.

First off, are you affiliated in any way with Cockos Incorporated or Reaper? Are you sponsored by them at all? Or are you a general consumer and user of the software only?

DF: I’m just a user like everyone else.  I’m not sponsored by, or affiliated with the developers.
You explain in your tutorial that a friend recommended Reaper to you, but what were your main reasons for trying a new DAW?

You explain in your tutorial that a friend recommended Reaper to you, but what were your main reasons for trying a new DAW?

DF: I’ve been using the VST rack in Soundminer for many years to do most of my processing, direct into Pro Tools.  But I was missing the ability to do some editing, or combining of sounds, during this step.  I was also missing the ability to back-track to see what plugins and processing I had applied to certain sounds in the event I wanted to do more of the same thing.

Some attempts I had made to get around this was to have a set of “design-only tracks” in my edit sessions, which was just a workspace.  But to have all the design plugins in the same session I used to edit and mix in, was unnecessarily taxing on the system.  And I also had to generate a ton of new media that I didn’t want living in the same directory as my edit session.  So I abandoned this approach and started using a stand-alone Pro Tools design session.  But opening and closing the edit sessions, which can be quite large, in order to work in a design session, also became tedious and time-consuming.  I found I wasn’t doing as much design as I wanted.  It had become inhibitive to switch back and forth.

I was highly motivated to follow through and learn Reaper at that stage, due to the fact there were some plugins I had liked using that were only in VST or AU format.  I could only use those in Pro Tools using a cross-platform bridging plugin.  While those do work, I had mixed results, and was looking for a better native solution.

I was already heavily considering what platform to try when my friend just out-of-the-blue mentioned Reaper.

What methodology did you follow, when beginning to learn reaper for the first time? Did you find any tutorials online that assisted you in your learning? Or were there none – If this was the case, did these issues affect the planning and structure of your tutorials? (What were they lacking? you state in one tutorial that you wanted to keep the length down etc)

DF: There were lots of great tutorials already online for Reaper, and they were incredibly helpful.  However I couldn’t find any that directly helped a Pro Tools user trying Reaper for the first time.  The information I needed was spread out across lots of tutorials, and often only a tiny snippet embedded in a long video.  Quite a few times I wanted to go back and review what I’d seen, but couldn’t find the piece I wanted to review.  It was like trying to find a passage in a book with no table of contents.

I used video tutorials and also the user forums to “Frankenstein” the bits I needed to get up and running.

But again, I was motivated to follow through.  If I hadn’t been, and was more casual about it, I might have given up on it.  But I had certain tasks I couldn’t do in Pro Tools, that Reaper could do, and I really wanted that result!

Did you follow any particular plan, when making your quick tips? For example, how did you decide what to include and what to exclude?

DF: I know for myself and lots of my peers, we don’t have a lot of extra time.  The job itself is demanding and we get good enough results with the tools and tricks we already know.  So when something comes along, no matter how good it sounds, if its too time consuming to get up and running, more often than not, it doesn’t get its fair shake.

My intention with the first dozen or so is just to get to those basic questions and get people up and running if they’re interested.

Part of the motivation was to also save myself some time.  I’ve been talking about this enough amongst the designers I know, and several of them wanted to give Reaper a try.  So rather than answer the same questions over and over via email, the info is there and reviewable in video form.

There’s plenty more tutorials I want to make about Reaper, which I hope to find time to do soon, but the day job has kept me too occupied in the recent months.

You have several Pro Tools tips on your YouTube channel also, each one offering very useful and specific advice and it seems that all the tips you have included in your Reaper tutorials are a stepping-stone for people coming from the pro tools environment. Were these the main stumbling blocks that hindered you initially? Coming from that software.

DF: Absolutely yes.  I work predominantly in Pro Tools still.  While both are audio DAWs and at the core do similar things, there are some key differences in using each.  There are some things we do in Pro Tools, that we expect other DAWs to do.  And since time is of the essence, I know some Pro Tools users will fire up Reaper, and within 5 minutes give up on it since its not doing what they expect.  I mostly want to get people over that initial hump so the software gets a fair trial.  After that it’s up to the individual to see if it’s worthwhile for them to pursue.

How has learning Reaper and integrating it, affected your workflow?

DF: Well first of all I do much more design than before, since my edit session can stay open while I’m designing in Reaper.  Any time I feel like making something new, I don’t have to stop and consider if I want to bother with it, I just do it.

But even when I’m design-mode only (not editing to picture), Reaper’s flexibility with file and sample rate formats also make things easy to work with.  Reaper can reference things like a 192k FLAC, alongside a 44.1k WAVE file, in the same session, without having to generate any new media.  All this means the workspace can take up very little disk space, and that’s very liberating when you want to try things.  For example, a few years ago I spent a few months digitizing all my old DAT tapes, and there were over 600.  I didn’t have time to split them out by ID, so each DAT is just one long file.  To save disk space I converted those files to FLAC.  So if I want to pull out a train coupling sound from one of those long files, I can just pull it into Reaper, find the bit I want, work with it, and export it with the only media being generated being my new designed sound.

Reaper also has a feature that allows you to save a copy of the session alongside files rendered (exported), which makes it easier to re-create, or check what process was applied to make a certain sound just by re-opening the session that was used to create that sound.

Just like Pro Tools, where I’m constantly learning new things it can do, Reaper is certainly the same.  At first I only wanted some basic abilities, but am constantly discovering new possibilities.  That’s not really surprising, but is a road I’m certainly happy to be on.

Is there any advice you would give to people looking to create tutorials in the future?

Lots of people have videos that are much better produced than mine I think.  I haven’t gotten around to any fancy lead-ins, or anything like that.  Mine are pretty “nuts and bolts”.  For me I think of tutorials as references that I expect to visit more than once, and when videos have too many topics in the same video, it’s often hard to find what you’re looking for.  My goal is to keep them as short and concise as possible.

One final point I want to be clear on.  My interest in Reaper is not a bashing of Pro Tools.  Every studio I work with expects me to work on Pro Tools and I’m perfectly happy to have a standard.  Lets be clear that Pro Tools does some things that Reaper doesn’t.  Both are tools to get the job done and I enjoy using them both.

A big thank you to David for taking the time to answer our questions and indeed for creating and sharing these tutorials.

I would like to stress David’s point once again to close. This article is intended to shine a light on David’s tutorials and offer some insight into his personal workflow and how he utilizes multiple tools to achieve his goals. There is no one perfect tool, and having the ability to work across many platforms allows us greater scope to concentrate on the things that are important. Creating content.

So if you are currently on the fence about giving Reaper a try, then head over to David’s YouTube channel and get started with his videos.

Happy learning.