choose the audio device and midi device in preferences . maybe you need to download drivers for both.
you also need to download some virtual instruments and insert them on a track.
you can make a new folder on the desktop and put your downloaded instruments there.
right click on the grey field to the left and choose insert virtual instrument. reaper comes with 3 VSTi .
the one you may want to use later on is reasamplomatic for drum sounds. its a bit of a learning curve, but if you read tutorials and watch videos on youtube you will get it soon enough. you can stack several reasamplomatics on the same fx channel, and play different drums sounds with your keyboard. there are videos on this on youtube.
also: go into preferences and scroll down to vst and add your custom folder (where you want to put your downloaded vst) and re scan
sometimes the vst is downloaded like a dll file, and sometimes with an installer. if there is an installer you have to choose the destination. otherwise reaper will not find it.
when you have a vst installed you can play things into the timeline. then you can cut and paste the midi or audio data and move it around. you can click on the midi information and press Q to quantize it.
this was maybe a bit rambling.
another thing you can do is to download samples, and simply drag them into the timeline. either from a folder on your desktop or via reapers media eplorer. this is a lot of fun. and you can see exactly what you are doing with the sounds. you can turn the grid of the sequencer on and off. you can press ctrl and drag to duplicate one sample. if the sample is looping, and you dont want that you can right click it and turn off loop sample source in item settings.
there are a lot of tweaking and settings and stuff in reaper. but you will probably not need all of them in the beginning. but later on they will come in handy many times. so you can just kind of ignore all the text to begin. i would suggest to try to get the VSTs working, and drag some samples into the timeline as a good start. when you made a drum pattern with samples, you can duplicate it and play synth lines on top.
hope this was of some help, and not to rambling.
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