[kineticeon]

Hey guys,

Over the last couple years I have been playing keyboard/sampling/video fx for an industrial band. We began in ableton but ran into many glitches with forced video formats and heavy CPU just for the running software.
I have been using Reaper in my studio for production for about 8 years and love it!!!
The reason I am bringing this to top thread (hopefully) is reaper hidden gems for live is pretty hard to come by as the common questions are microphones and basic midi assigning. I have had a really hard time locating threads on HEAVY usage live sets.

Now I am not a programmer, so using the nitty gritty of reaper just does not work, both in workflow and time frame. BUT I did manage to make a template for our band that is useful for what we do (we did run into a problem as of yesterday).

here is what we have:

- The first channel has our backing track/video on it. (due to 60 minute set we used 13 separate videos for 13 tracks instead of one HD video).
- This channel has a couple video FX set up that worked pretty good for us and controlled on our Arturia keyboard.

- Each "song" has its own channel with a folder group of channels. For songs that I am sampling in, we simply add sounds to each resampler (located in one top channel in that song group called "sampler") has 6 resamplers titled fx/synth/drone etc, each resampler routed to the proper channel in it's group. This took a minute to figure out, but worked great.

- We have 4 songs using VSTi instruments like Alchemy, Zebra, SubboomBass. those channels we still group under the title channel for that song (for organization).

Now, this is where I think I went very different from forums or what I probably should have done, but it was really the only way I could get it to work right
I have EVERY channel muted, and use the solo buttons to turn them on over the other tracks. example. the backing track has mute and solo on all the time so it does play, the other channels by default have only the mute on and I trigger the solo with "toggle solo channel 3, 4, 5 etc.")This helped keep synth/fx/delay feedback from popping on every time you turned a solo off to go to the next track. is it right?? not sure, but it works...lol

My audio card ms delay is CRAZY BAD to get this all to work, right now to not get pops or crackles it is about 56/78 ms. which for any live person is a headache large amount of delay.. I practiced through it and managed to time myself close enough to be on.

Now with everything set up, every key located to midi, buttons located to markers to jump around if needed etc. etc. I am getting a synth issue that affects ALL synths, not just 1 type, or one brand. I will solo the instrument and it will show midi signal, but no sound. I have to reboot reaper to get it work. did it to all 3 of the synths listed above. rebooted 3 times.

This never occurred with our 30 minute set, but we also had a few reaper updates since then so am I missing something?? And how are you doing your electronic sets? DJ/Band or other? I have attached an example template from our old 30 minute set. just ignore all missing files. This version does not have any VSTi's but will give you the idea of what I did.

Sorry if I type a lot. sometimes I think using software like this we need a old school chatroom so we can talk piece at a time with larger or more in depth topics where I get SO LOST in threads..lol

NOTE: with instruments, I am horrible with the whole channel routing, I have always just gone to MIDI - All midi inputs on each channel. every time I try to route to specific channels I just seem to screw things up more.