Reaper Users - The Essential Addons

WiresDreamDisasters

Okay so maybe not everyone knows that Reaper is fully extensible in so many ways, and the good news is a lot of people have done it for you.

The first thing to grab is SWS: https://sws-extension.org/

This is an addon that adds a lot of extra functionality to Reaper. Things like auto-colouring tracks based on names, auto-colouring items, label processing for items, tons of extra actions that you can assign to mouse-clicks and keyboard shortcuts. It's a very useful package and a lot of the other packages out there rely on the existence of this.

The next thing to grab is Reapack: https://reapack.com/

This is a package manager for Reaper which allows quick and easy installation of addon scripts and actions, as well as themes and icon sets I believe. Although I mostly use it for the extra actions. If you use all of the available repositories, there are something like an extra 3000 actions you can add to Reaper!

The next essential one for me would be Quick Adder: https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=232928
This is an excellent utility for quick adding effects, effects chains, and templates to your tracks. It can also search and launch actions. I've got it installed and bound to the F10 key, so any time I press 10 I get this search box pop up where I can immediately begin typing to find a plugin. This is similar behaviour to other DAWs like Studio One and Cubase.

Legionreturns

Thank you! *yoink* 

thomasw88

Splendid thread squire.  Have a well deserved wis.

I've just started using Reaper on the evaluation licence, so stuff like this is excellent to know.

JAYJO

Chees Mate. grabbed the 3 of them. One day i will hopefully know what to do with them .

LastMantra

Good to know. Cheers, big ears.

Fez

Thanks for posting that, I will have a look at these though finding the time to get to grips with all of them might be a challenge. Reaper really is a great DAW it is just a shame I have to spend most of my day with my head buried in CAD. 

PolarityMan

I use SWS, not tried reapack yet though 

Do you use quick adder instead of track templates? what the pros and cons?

I've been trying out screensets recently, currently one for drum writing and one for general purpose tracking. Not an add-onn its built in but a cool little workflow thing.

andy_k

There's so much to play with in Reaper, it's hard to comprehend the amount of add ons that are available / possible with SWS and Reapack. I have both installed and haven't got used to using any of them in my work flow. It is good to have them there, just to be familiar with them, and I guess if you are doing a repetitive kind of thing, the actions and custom stuff is great.
I am happy to plod along slowly picking up stuff from Kenny's vids, and am using a few track templates I have made, basically busses that can be dropped in to a project, and if I spend any length of time setting anything up-I save it as a template.

pintspiller

I have SWS and ReaPack installed. Can't remember what for exactly, but I assume it was for some of those chord injection things like Chordgun, Ex Machina or KawaChord. There's also a thing that I think I installed that will create a chord or arpeggio when you right-click on a note in MidiEditor.

WiresDreamDisasters

PolarityMan said:

I use SWS, not tried reapack yet though 

Do you use quick adder instead of track templates? what the pros and cons?

I've been trying out screensets recently, currently one for drum writing and one for general purpose tracking. Not an add-onn its built in but a cool little workflow thing.

Quick adder I use for adding effects to tracks. That could be individual or effects chains. You can use it for track templates but I haven't needed to personally. Also you can use it to launch actions. So you could assign Quick Adder to F10 so when you press F10 and start typing "set track colo..." it's going to narrow down to any action relating to setting a tracks colour ... or colon.... if it exists.

PolarityMan

I set my tracks colons all the time.

I designed a horribly complex template for passing round the band, everything was bussed together so people could put their own plugins on the tracks and just had to solo their set of buses. 

In practice thought the lazy fuckers didnt use it but anyway, the best part of the whole template was this:

https://i.imgur.com/1d9Urn9.jpg

That bus contains this track:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JTosu08C-I

stratman3142

PolarityMan said:

I set my tracks colons all the time.

 I'm not familiar with that feature. I suppose it saves some arsing about.

WiresDreamDisasters

PolarityMan said:

I set my tracks colons all the time.

I designed a horribly complex template for passing round the band, everything was bussed together so people could put their own plugins on the tracks and just had to solo their set of buses. 

In practice thought the lazy fuckers didnt use it but anyway, the best part of the whole template was this:

https://i.imgur.com/1d9Urn9.jpg

That bus contains this track:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JTosu08C-I

I can't tell you how much I hate that.

PolarityMan

WiresDreamDisasters said:

PolarityMan said:

I set my tracks colons all the time.

I designed a horribly complex template for passing round the band, everything was bussed together so people could put their own plugins on the tracks and just had to solo their set of buses. 

In practice thought the lazy fuckers didnt use it but anyway, the best part of the whole template was this:

https://i.imgur.com/1d9Urn9.jpg

That bus contains this track:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JTosu08C-I

I can't tell you how much I hate that.

Ok so I guess that's on the "not essential" list