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Old 11-13-2009, 12:20 PM   #11
Curvespace
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Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Bristol, UK
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OK, I've tried to consolidate some of the stuff people have been talking about here. I think this kind of thing has been discussed elsewhere on the forums, but as I did it as an extrapolation of Nas's cool toggle buttons, I may as well put it here.

The following actions will allow you to:

- automatically colour tracks and assign them to a group as determined by their current name.
- switch views of groups and automatically resize them vertically to fill the view.
- switch views of groups and then solo your currently viewed group.
- combine group views on the fly i.e. look at all your beats and bass tracks, or perhaps your vox tracks and busses, whatever you like.
- switch back to viewing all tracks but maintain your solo selections.

Right, without further ado, here are some instructions. I hope they make sense!

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Auto name and colour tracks based on current track names (example given for 'beats'):

- add to reaconsole doc all the text-strings you want to consider as 'beats'. eg. s*kick*, s*snare*, s*hihat*, s*808*, s*percussion* etc. (the 's' stands for 'select' and the two '*'s mean that Reaper will select any tracks containing that string in the track name).

- add to reaconsole doc: s*[beats]*

- create the following custom action, call it 'auto-assign groups (beats'):
- - track:unselect all tracks
- - sws:run console command s*kick*
- - sws:run console command s*snare* and so on...
- - sws:save current track selection
- - sws:unselect children of selected folder track(s)
- - sws:run console command: z[beats]
- - track:unselect all tracks
- - sws:restore saved track selection
- - sws:set selected track(s) to custom color 1 (or whatever you want)
- - track:unselect all tracks

- now go through this same process for bass, synth, whatever you want to consider a group. First adding the requisite functions to the reaconsole text and then creating a custom action for them.

- consolidate all these groups to be called from a single custom action. Do this by creating the following action:
- - custom:auto-assign groups (beats)
- - custom:auto-assign groups (bass)
- - custom:auto-assign groups (synth)
- - etc. etc. until you've got all the groups you want.

- all that's left is to assign a hotkey and voila. So long as your track names have got the text strings you assigned to reaconsole then it should work nicely. Hit one key and Reaper will sort out all your tracks for you.


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Selectively assign selected tracks to a group (example given for 'beats' group):

- add to the reaconsole doc: z[beats]
- add to the reaconsole doc: s*/[beats]

- create a custom action:
- - sws:save current track selection
- - sws:unselect children of selected folder track(s)
- - sws:run console command: z[beats]
- - track:unselect all tracks
- - sws:run console command: s*/[beats]
- - sws:set selected item(s) to custom color 1 (or whatever you want)
- - track:unselect all tracks
- - sws:restore saved track selection

- add a hotkey and you're done.

- rinse and repeat for all the other groups you want.


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Show a single group (example given for 'beats' group):

- ensure that s*/[beats] is in your reaconsole doc, if not then add it to the bottom

- create custom action:
- - track:unselect all tracks
- - sws:run console command: s*/[beats]
- - sws:show selected track(s), hide others
- - sws: vertical zoom to selected track(s)
- - track:unselect all tracks

- add a hotkey and you're done.

- repeat for other groups.


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Show a single group AND solo it (example given for 'beats' group):

- ensure that s*/[beats] is in your reaconsole doc, if not then add it to the bottom

- create custom action:
- - track:unselect all tracks
- - track:unsolo all tracks
- - sws:run console command: s*/[beats]
- - sws:show selected track(s), hide others
- - track:solo selected tracks
- - sws: vertical zoom to selected track(s)
- - track:unselect all tracks

- add a hotkey.

- repeat for other groups.


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Add a group to your current view i.e. if you're looking at your 'bass' group, this will add the 'beats' group to it (example given for beats):

- ensure you have s*/[beats] in your reaconsole doc

- create a custom action:
- - sws:save current track selection
- - track: select all tracks
- - sws:show all tracks
- - sws:run console command:s*/[beats]
- - sws:show selected track(s),hide others
- - sws:vertical zoom to selected track(s)
- - track:unselect all tracks
- - sws:restore saved track selection

- add a hotkey.

- rinse and repeat for each of your groups.



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Obviously there's a LOT of actions that need to be created to get this all up and running, but it's can dramatically improve your workflow. One final thing to show you is my hotkey assignments, to give you an idea of how it's running (I wont type out all of them, but a few as an example):

NUMPAD 0 - show all tracks
NUMPAD 1 - show busses
NUMPAD 2 - show beats
NUMPAD 3 - show bass

Ctrl + Alt + NUMPAD 0 - auto-assign groups (top tutorial in this page)
Ctrl + Alt + NUMPAD 1 - Name and colour currently selected track(s) as [buss]
Ctrl + Alt + NUMPAD 2 - Name and colour currently selected track(s) as [beats]
Ctrl + Alt + NUMPAD 3 - Name and colour currently selected track(s) as [bass]

Alt + NUMPAD 1 - show [buss] tracks in addition to current view
Alt + NUMPAD 2 - show [beats] tracks in addition to current view
Alt + NUMPAD 3 - show [bass] tracks in addition to current view

Ctrl + NUMPAD 0 - show all tracks and keep current 'solo' selections
Ctrl + NUMPAD 1 - show busses and solo
Ctrl + NUMPAD 2 - show beats and solo
Ctrl + NUMPAD 3 - show bass and solo

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Well, that was a proper mission! Hope someone gets some use out of it. It's proven as a reminder to me why I love Reaper so much

Take it easy,
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