This video might solve a problem I’ve been pulling my hair out about for DAYS !!! When I’m home I’m trying routing combinations and when I’m out running errands I’m looking at videos like this. I CANT WAIT TO GET HOME AND TRY THIS !
I've never really had a problem with accidentally creating folders since it's easy to see if the line is indented or not, but something that would make things a bit clearer for people who are new to Reaper would be if the tracks show up as child tracks, or not, when you are still holding on to them. Think of it like how the TH-cam video cue system works. If you have a bunch of videos in cue and want to rearrange them, you can just grab a video and drop it wherever you like. When you are still holding onto the video the other videos in the cue are switching places to give you a clear view of where the video you are holding onto will go when you let go of it. If the Reaper devs could do something similar with the tracks in Reaper it would be a bit more obvious if you are dropping the tracks into a folder or just placing them underneath another track.
I enjoy walking down to the studio on the weekend, pulling up youtube with a coffee, seeing a new video by Kenny and just chilling ans starting my day with these positive tips. Thx again, Kenny
When I was a beginner undoing folder mistakes was really frustrating. Accidentally dragging and making folders, then clicking the folder button twice to put them back at the same level, but that made the entire project under that move to the left. So recovering from folder mistakes would make a nice addition to this video.
@@REAPERMania well of course, but trying to think of that when you're in the middle of "oh cr*p now what did I do?" it's a panic. it takes discipline thought.
Bonus tip: If you grab the track at the very left (area of the track number) it avoids making folders no matter how far you drag. Took me a while to figure that out.
@@REAPERMania I've just tried this and DID get it to work: TLDR: it's all down to where you HOVER when you're moving tracks. If I drag the TRACK NUMBER strictly vertically (Staying within the Track Numbers) I cannot create a folder by dropping it on to another track (The line stays solid). If I drag the TRACK NUMBER to the MIDDLE of the Track Control Panel and move up and down, the normal folder-creating rules apply, If i drag a track by grabbing it in the MIDDLE of the Track Control Panel, then hover over the Track Numbers before releasing, I cannot create a folder.
@@REAPERMania There might be a reason it didn't work on your system: I re-tried on my other Reaper installation on another Mac and there I doesn't work either. Here it works as described in your video. On my Macbook however I even cannot creat folders with drag&drop no matter how hard I try. So I guess it wasn't a discovery on my side, rather a hidden Reaper function nobody knows how to turn on and off. :-) Damn, and I thought I finally knew something Kenny and Arya didn't know. Maybe in twenty years..:-)
Hey Kenny, could you possibly make a video on how to set up your own server in NINJAM? There are no good videos on this, and you always seem to make this stuff easy to grasp. Thanks for all your help over the years.
Really useful tutorial for beginners. I learned this through trial and error. The dividing line between tracks on my reaper is green so it's much easier to see. It must be the theme I'm using.
This happens quite a lot haha! I wish there was a preference to disable this behaviour and instead we could use a modifier when dragging tracks if we wanted to make it a folder/child.
Folder, not a folder. Folder, not a folder. Folder, not a folder. Folder, not a folder. Folder, not a folder. This video could last 3 min. Instead of 7
Hey Kenny this is very useful as I tend to have very "busy" of folders and subfolders for my drum covers projects and in general the folder usage in Reaper that act as a VCA is extremely useful ... you do the balance for a group of tracks and then simply use the folder to make it fit to the whole mix ... but accidentally creating folders is a pain in the ass I might say .... thanks for sharing this ..
I've always felt that the visual indicators that appear when dragging tracks around could be made a lot clearer. Sometimes my intention is to drag tracks into a folder but I can't see whether or not that tiny, faint grey line segment is there or not. I wish folders could be fully collapsed to the height of a single track while still being identifiable as folders. I wish I could could right-click on selected tracks and choose _add selected tracks to folder_ from the context menu. I guess a better place to voice these opinions would be a feature request on the forum but I so love to share 😁.
Wait... that was the whole video??? I thought there was gonna be a tip or a nee technique or something. I'm so used to Kenny's videos being super informative. This one was just about something super obvious that I've never heard anyone having problems with. Kenny, if you're stuck for ideas, can you do a video about how to make odd beat divisions? Like how do I make quintuplets or 7-tuplets, 11-tuplets, etc in MIDI/arrange view? Please and thank you
Never noticed that little bar changing before. I do love me some folders though. I came to Reaper from CoolEditPro. You can imagine how freaked out I was finding the folders.
I am in NO WAY saying this is the 'right' way to work, but the way I treat folders is to think of them as stems that I might eventually hand-off to a mixing engineer to work with without having to deal with the minutiae of everything underneath. Something that could be a single 'fader' during mixing. If I want to effect multiple tracks I do that with a buss.
Kenny I have done your "write a midi song in Reaper" and a few tutorials. I have dragged in my plugins RMX SpectraSonics Drums ( all 8 channels were read seamlessly for separate level pan and affects sends track control ) My Kush Audi plugins worked seamlessly. But I have around 100 old ideas songs demos from Label dev deals etc. ..and many new A B songs... Thing is as much as I love jamming on Ableton and using my APC40 and Push and M Audio KB ( 24 assigned tracks to mix no mouse and two Device controllers!) I can write beats on the Push while triggering finished loops on the APC4 while I write a few new parts on the Push... Here is the Kicker Ableton for me for ARRANGING A SONG... Sucks. It is nowhere near as good as what you give us on Reaper. Can you do a series on "Dragging all the old ideas from any DAW" such as Protools... Ableton... Logic etc into Reaper? I truly believe that Reaper is by far the best DAW on the planet, the most customizable...and most efficient code by miles. And all my plugins use in Reaper use A QUARTER or LESS of the memory on my CPU while in Ableton. I am ready to mix down a lot of tracks but a Workflow series from "Your DAW projects into Reaper for Mixing and Mastering and setting "DB LUFS Peaks RMS" for various Streaming Channels...Spotify ITunes TH-cam etc. I don't think anyone on You Tube could do this as well as you Kenny.
I also have this problem, coming from flstudio. I have many projects that i made in there but because i only use reaper atm its a headache to transfer all the midis from flstudio to reaper. I do it by copying midi data from each track one by one from flstudio to reaper and after it adding the needed plugins/drums. And thats a headache..I would like to know if there are other/easier ways to do this. Greetingss
I never like to use mouse cursor for folders, especially without proper mouse, just touchpad/trackpad... it's 100% more reliable to use actions instead: SWS: Make folder from selected tracks and Xenakios/SWS: Dismantle selected folder ;)
I’ve been using folders for years, but I always learn something new. Thanks for this. May I ask what software do you use for screen capturing? Looks great when zooming in. Have a good day!
I loved the video, very handy information. These are generally overlooked things, but they really help you to speed up your workflow and organizing the projects better!!!
very useful - thank you Kenny (Perhaps Reaper would consider giving us an option in preferences to stop the folder being made when moving tracks... as you say, it sometimes happens by accident and, in my work flow, rarley used.
Hi Kenny, and everyone. Is there any way to adjust/change the color of the grey bar that delineates the track position as well as the track folder state when dragging tracks up and down? I have found nothing in the Theme Tweaker action to control the color of this separator bar. Thank you.
Great as usual Kenny. 👍 I'm having a senior moment here...On your tracks I can't see an input selector, only volume, pan, and envelopes. How do you make that show on the standard Reaper theme?
Cheers Kenny, simple enough to avoid when you know what you're looking for, but also easy enough to overlook when one's attention is divided! haha When you mentioned a folder can act like a bus for the child tracks, I wonder what your preference and opinion would be between dedicating a regular track to act as a buss (and relying on naming & colour coding to differentiate it), or if using a folder track as a bus could be a viable option - if for no other reason than tidiness in larger mix projects?
@@REAPERMania Thanks muchly for the reply! That makes a lot of sense, and I reckon could really help my aesthetic-obsessed brain when it gets into the kind of distracting mood that demands more attention than the mixing brain 😅
@4:15 this happens to me very often. Its one of the small things that I wish Reaper did not do. Do you know if there is a way to completely remove this behaviour and only create folder tracks like I do, for example in Ableton Live where I select the track I want and just press Cmd+G?
I often wondered why I accidentally created folders - thanks for that 🍻 Maybe Justin should make that little grey line indentation more obvious or maybe create a preference to 'turn off create folder when dragging tracks' - I can't imagine anyone wants this default feature if even the legend KG also accidentally does it :)
@@REAPERMania Yes I know, but I would like to have a folder only function with no way to introduce any bugs with Bus structure that messes up the audio engine/delay compensation somehow and what not. I know it should not be any problem when it works as it should but with all the PDC and multicore thread scheduling and what else is going on the introduction of weird random bugs increase. Also, I almost convinced myself that even if all tracks are routed somwhere else and not use send to parent (folder track) it still creates issue further in the track routings when it later becomes a more comples mess of sidechain in and outs. That is compared to not using folders at all, like it somehow affects core/threads distribution differently... however, my logic says that this makes no sense and is probably not the case...but then again, I have encountered alot of weird bugs and design choices in my days so who knows ... xD However, I'm pretty sure I have less crackle issues with the SOLO/MUTE when not using any folders. But perhaps I haven't made any project as complex yet as I did when I used folders.... You see this wall of text, well it would be a much smaller if there was a Folder only function that did nothing or even could do nothing more than the graphical GUI functions.
@@bbugl It just happen quite often that I create folders by accident or sometimes the one I created lose tracks! It is simply unreliable although it is quick to do. Buses are more reliable but they take long to make.
I really don't like the folder collapse cycle. It would be much better if that down arrow simply toggled between being completely hidden and normal size.
This video might solve a problem I’ve been pulling my hair out about for DAYS !!! When I’m home I’m trying routing combinations and when I’m out running errands I’m looking at videos like this. I CANT WAIT TO GET HOME AND TRY THIS !
I've never really had a problem with accidentally creating folders since it's easy to see if the line is indented or not, but something that would make things a bit clearer for people who are new to Reaper would be if the tracks show up as child tracks, or not, when you are still holding on to them. Think of it like how the TH-cam video cue system works. If you have a bunch of videos in cue and want to rearrange them, you can just grab a video and drop it wherever you like. When you are still holding onto the video the other videos in the cue are switching places to give you a clear view of where the video you are holding onto will go when you let go of it. If the Reaper devs could do something similar with the tracks in Reaper it would be a bit more obvious if you are dropping the tracks into a folder or just placing them underneath another track.
I enjoy walking down to the studio on the weekend, pulling up youtube with a coffee, seeing a new video by Kenny and just chilling ans starting my day with these positive tips. Thx again, Kenny
When I was a beginner undoing folder mistakes was really frustrating. Accidentally dragging and making folders, then clicking the folder button twice to put them back at the same level, but that made the entire project under that move to the left. So recovering from folder mistakes would make a nice addition to this video.
Undo?
@@REAPERMania well of course, but trying to think of that when you're in the middle of "oh cr*p now what did I do?" it's a panic. it takes discipline thought.
Had to figure this out the hard way when I started using REAPER. I wish I had seen this back then. Love your teaching style.
Very well explained, thanks Kenny.👍
Thanks, Kenny! I have not been using folders because I could never get them to behave properly, this helped a lot!
I thought this was going to be about the kind of folders on your hard drive, I think I need that one more 😂
Bonus tip: If you grab the track at the very left (area of the track number) it avoids making folders no matter how far you drag.
Took me a while to figure that out.
Now I learned something. :) - Didn't work for me. :(
@@REAPERMania I've just tried this and DID get it to work:
TLDR: it's all down to where you HOVER when you're moving tracks.
If I drag the TRACK NUMBER strictly vertically (Staying within the Track Numbers) I cannot create a folder by dropping it on to another track (The line stays solid).
If I drag the TRACK NUMBER to the MIDDLE of the Track Control Panel and move up and down, the normal folder-creating rules apply,
If i drag a track by grabbing it in the MIDDLE of the Track Control Panel, then hover over the Track Numbers before releasing, I cannot create a folder.
It works!! thanks 👏
Wow didn't know this! Coool!
@@REAPERMania There might be a reason it didn't work on your system: I re-tried on my other Reaper installation on another Mac and there I doesn't work either. Here it works as described in your video.
On my Macbook however I even cannot creat folders with drag&drop no matter how hard I try. So I guess it wasn't a discovery on my side, rather a hidden Reaper function nobody knows how to turn on and off. :-)
Damn, and I thought I finally knew something Kenny and Arya didn't know. Maybe in twenty years..:-)
I drag up or down while pulling hard left. That works for me too, coupled with what Kenny says.
Some of the simplest things can be the most helpful..
Hey Kenny, could you possibly make a video on how to set up your own server in NINJAM? There are no good videos on this, and you always seem to make this stuff easy to grasp. Thanks for all your help over the years.
Really useful tutorial for beginners.
I learned this through trial and error.
The dividing line between tracks on my reaper is green so it's much easier to see. It must be the theme I'm using.
Must be. I just figured it out while making this video.
This happens quite a lot haha! I wish there was a preference to disable this behaviour and instead we could use a modifier when dragging tracks if we wanted to make it a folder/child.
brilliant
My plan was to make a video showing you how you can disable it. But I realized you can avoid if you look more carefully.
Hi Bro in Reaper there are many options actually to do anything that’s why I love ❤️ it. Thanks 🙏 for all .
Haha always posting them night owl tips with that App state hat! Thanks for the info
Thank you Kenny. 😎👍
Folder, not a folder. Folder, not a folder. Folder, not a folder. Folder, not a folder.
Folder, not a folder.
This video could last 3 min. Instead of 7
So?
Hey Kenny this is very useful as I tend to have very "busy" of folders and subfolders for my drum covers projects and in general the folder usage in Reaper that act as a VCA is extremely useful ... you do the balance for a group of tracks and then simply use the folder to make it fit to the whole mix ... but accidentally creating folders is a pain in the ass I might say .... thanks for sharing this ..
I've always felt that the visual indicators that appear when dragging tracks around could be made a lot clearer. Sometimes my intention is to drag tracks into a folder but I can't see whether or not that tiny, faint grey line segment is there or not.
I wish folders could be fully collapsed to the height of a single track while still being identifiable as folders.
I wish I could could right-click on selected tracks and choose _add selected tracks to folder_ from the context menu.
I guess a better place to voice these opinions would be a feature request on the forum but I so love to share 😁.
Wait... that was the whole video??? I thought there was gonna be a tip or a nee technique or something. I'm so used to Kenny's videos being super informative. This one was just about something super obvious that I've never heard anyone having problems with.
Kenny, if you're stuck for ideas, can you do a video about how to make odd beat divisions? Like how do I make quintuplets or 7-tuplets, 11-tuplets, etc in MIDI/arrange view?
Please and thank you
Never noticed that little bar changing before.
I do love me some folders though.
I came to Reaper from CoolEditPro. You can imagine how freaked out I was finding the folders.
I just learned it myself about a week ago.
Really handy whilst song writing ,turning down muliple tracks when doing a new instrument take 👍
Kenny is the greatest!
THANK YOU !! The folder system was doing my head in !
I like your new intro! I danced with the guy!
Thanks
I am in NO WAY saying this is the 'right' way to work, but the way I treat folders is to think of them as stems that I might eventually hand-off to a mixing engineer to work with without having to deal with the minutiae of everything underneath. Something that could be a single 'fader' during mixing. If I want to effect multiple tracks I do that with a buss.
Thanks Kenny .... 😉🎼👍🏽
Kenny I have done your "write a midi song in Reaper" and a few tutorials.
I have dragged in my plugins RMX SpectraSonics Drums ( all 8 channels were read seamlessly for separate level pan and affects sends track control ) My Kush Audi plugins worked seamlessly.
But I have around 100 old ideas songs demos from Label dev deals etc. ..and many new A B songs...
Thing is as much as I love jamming on Ableton and using my APC40 and Push and M Audio KB
( 24 assigned tracks to mix no mouse and two Device controllers!)
I can write beats on the Push while triggering finished loops on the APC4 while I write a few new parts on the Push...
Here is the Kicker Ableton for me for ARRANGING A SONG... Sucks.
It is nowhere near as good as what you give us on Reaper.
Can you do a series on "Dragging all the old ideas from any DAW" such as Protools... Ableton... Logic etc into Reaper?
I truly believe that Reaper is by far the best DAW on the planet, the most customizable...and most efficient code by miles.
And all my plugins use in Reaper use A QUARTER or LESS of the memory on my CPU while in Ableton.
I am ready to mix down a lot of tracks but a Workflow series from "Your DAW projects into Reaper for Mixing and Mastering and setting "DB LUFS Peaks RMS" for various Streaming Channels...Spotify ITunes TH-cam etc.
I don't think anyone on You Tube could do this as well as you Kenny.
I also have this problem, coming from flstudio. I have many projects that i made in there but because i only use reaper atm its a headache to transfer all the midis from flstudio to reaper. I do it by copying midi data from each track one by one from flstudio to reaper and after it adding the needed plugins/drums. And thats a headache..I would like to know if there are other/easier ways to do this. Greetingss
I never like to use mouse cursor for folders, especially without proper mouse, just touchpad/trackpad...
it's 100% more reliable to use actions instead:
SWS: Make folder from selected tracks
and
Xenakios/SWS: Dismantle selected folder
;)
Is there an advantage in workflow using this method over creating a new track and using that as a bus track by sending your tracks to that track?
Just the ability to change the sizes of the child tracks.
@@REAPERMania thanks!
I had been doing that a lot also
Grande Kenny😄🕺👌👏👏
I’ve been using folders for years, but I always learn something new. Thanks for this. May I ask what software do you use for screen capturing? Looks great when zooming in. Have a good day!
Screenflow. Thanks.
@@REAPERMania Thanks for taking your time to reply. Really appreciated.
I loved the video, very handy information. These are generally overlooked things, but they really help you to speed up your workflow and organizing the projects better!!!
Ah, this explains a lot! Thanks!
very useful - thank you Kenny
(Perhaps Reaper would consider giving us an option in preferences to stop the folder being made when moving tracks... as you say, it sometimes happens by accident and, in my work flow, rarley used.
Great video, as usual. I REALLY need help with routing my Abbey Road Drum Collection to Individual Tracks, in Reaper.
Hi Kenny, and everyone. Is there any way to adjust/change the color of the grey bar that delineates the track position as well as the track folder state when dragging tracks up and down? I have found nothing in the Theme Tweaker action to control the color of this separator bar. Thank you.
I love what you do, but I finally had to figure out what the note was that you hit a lot. It's a G. :) You're tuned to G. :)
Don't put that evil on me. LOL.. :)
Great as usual Kenny. 👍 I'm having a senior moment here...On your tracks I can't see an input selector, only volume, pan, and envelopes. How do you make that show on the standard Reaper theme?
When you go into record, they show up.
@@REAPERMania Cheers Kenny I have been using Commala 5 theme for so long. I had forgotten how the standard theme looked and operated.. 😂
Howbdo i get my vocal to spund this good. What mic and processor do yoi use
Cheers Kenny, simple enough to avoid when you know what you're looking for, but also easy enough to overlook when one's attention is divided! haha
When you mentioned a folder can act like a bus for the child tracks, I wonder what your preference and opinion would be between dedicating a regular track to act as a buss (and relying on naming & colour coding to differentiate it), or if using a folder track as a bus could be a viable option - if for no other reason than tidiness in larger mix projects?
I use folders unless I want to move the buss track around the project and not before the child tracks.
@@REAPERMania Thanks muchly for the reply!
That makes a lot of sense, and I reckon could really help my aesthetic-obsessed brain when it gets into the kind of distracting mood that demands more attention than the mixing brain 😅
@4:15 this happens to me very often. Its one of the small things that I wish Reaper did not do. Do you know if there is a way to completely remove this behaviour and only create folder tracks like I do, for example in Ableton Live where I select the track I want and just press Cmd+G?
nice
👍👍👏👏
I often wondered why I accidentally created folders - thanks for that 🍻
Maybe Justin should make that little grey line indentation more obvious or maybe create a preference to 'turn off create folder when dragging tracks' - I can't imagine anyone wants this default feature if even the legend KG also accidentally does it :)
or rather a mouse modifier so folder is only created when the modifier is engaged
I really wish Reaper had folders for ONLY organize tracks... nothing more.
You can do that.
@@REAPERMania Yes I know, but I would like to have a folder only function with no way to introduce any bugs with Bus structure that messes up the audio engine/delay compensation somehow and what not.
I know it should not be any problem when it works as it should but with all the PDC and multicore thread scheduling and what else is going on the introduction of weird random bugs increase.
Also, I almost convinced myself that even if all tracks are routed somwhere else and not use send to parent (folder track) it still creates issue further in the track routings when it later becomes a more comples mess of sidechain in and outs. That is compared to not using folders at all, like it somehow affects core/threads distribution differently... however, my logic says that this makes no sense and is probably not the case...but then again, I have encountered alot of weird bugs and design choices in my days so who knows ... xD
However, I'm pretty sure I have less crackle issues with the SOLO/MUTE when not using any folders. But perhaps I haven't made any project as complex yet as I did when I used folders....
You see this wall of text, well it would be a much smaller if there was a Folder only function that did nothing or even could do nothing more than the graphical GUI functions.
Finally I decided to no more use folders! I just route tracks with routing matrix
Can I ask why?
@@bbugl It just happen quite often that I create folders by accident or sometimes the one I created lose tracks! It is simply unreliable although it is quick to do. Buses are more reliable but they take long to make.
I really don't like the folder collapse cycle. It would be much better if that down arrow simply toggled between being completely hidden and normal size.
The folders are by far the most annoying thing on Reaper.