Creating breaks in loops / updating multiple MIDI items

[hannesmenzel]

Dear community,

I am searching for a solution for having same MIDI items for different parts of a song. First, I'm more in the acoustic/folk world rather than in EDM, which might be important for my solution.

Let's say, I have a song which has choruses and verses for which I'd like to create MIDI drum loops suitable for these parts, using virtual drum instruments. When I record things I tend to loop a drum pattern on full songs length. What I try to achieve is to insert the verses drum pattern on verse 1 and the choruses drum pattern on chorus one and then expanding that loop onto the other parts of the song. If I simply copy the patterns, they wouldn't update, if I edit one. So, the goal would be, that chorus 3 would change, if I'd edit chorus one.

If there's no function to solve that, I would be very greatful for suitable workarounds. What I thought about is having different MIDI subfolders sending to the VI and muting the parts that don't fit. But I find that a bit difficult. Maybe this free item positioning feature can help, but I don't know.

And, because it fits into that topic: How to you create drum parts including breaks and intros/outros in Reaper, if you want to have something like a looped standard song rhythm? Would be appreciate good ideas here as well.

--EDIT: So, to round things up, i'm searching for a solution building drum arrangements, which has one or two standard patterns, looped over the complete song and inserting fills and pattern modifications without breaking the loops in order to being able to alter the standard pattern for the whole song in one step.

Kind regards,
Johannes

[DarkStar]

Hello hannesmenzel and welcome to these forums. You'll find many helpful people here and a lot of useful information. Make sure that you:

• get the excellent User Guide by Nicholas too: http://www.cockos.com/reaper/userguide.php,
• check out Kenny Gioia's great video series: http://www.reaper.fm/videos.php,
• and the Groove 3 video series: https://www.groove3.com/reaper-training-video-tutorials.

Have a look at "pooled" items in the User Guide.

[hannesmenzel]

Originally Posted by DarkStar

Hello hannesmenzel and welcome to these forums. You'll find many helpful people here and a lot of useful information. Make sure that you:

• get the excellent User Guide by Nicholas too: http://www.cockos.com/reaper/userguide.php,
• check out Kenny Gioia's great video series: http://www.reaper.fm/videos.php,
• and the Groove 3 video series: https://www.groove3.com/reaper-training-video-tutorials.

Have a look at "pooled" items in the User Guide.

Thanks, DarkStar,

thanks for these Resources! Meanwhile I think I watched half of Kenny's tutorials and found, that these videos existing could be just one single reason to chose Reaper as DAW. I'm using Reaper for a year now, but I must confess that I made a huge bow around the Media Pool. So thanks, this should be the keyword.

Kind regards,
Johannes