A Noob looking for some help.

[Triple7]

Hey dudes, I recently purchased Reaper so that I could start recording my own material. I am recording my guitars DI using a Line 6 UX2 and Pod Farm. About a week ago I purchased Superior Drummer 2.0. I am new to recording in general, and getting SD2.0 to work and using it seem to be a little difficult.

Reaper does recognize it, so I open a new track with a virtual instrument and click on Superior Drummer and it pops up in the fx window, I can hit the drums sounds but it doesn't record them. I just don't know how to record the drums I guess? Do i need to make a drum map? If so how do i do that? Thank you for your help in advance I am a total noob when it comes to this stuff.

[plgrmsprgrs]

Welcome to Reaper World!

Is your track armed to record?

[Triple7]

Thanks dude, yes it is armed to record.

I already have 4 guitar tracks recorded, I just want to add the drums. I have never programmed drums before so I don't even know if I have it set up right to do so.

[mrelwood]

For the recording track, you have to select recording source as midi, or track output. The source defaults to track input (audio), which is not present in your drum track.

Right click the rec arm button, or the track control panel meter area.

I suggest you download the Reaper manual. I assure you, it will become very handy for you, several times. It also answers a lot faster than a web forum...

[Triple7]

Thank you very much, I have glanced at it a bunch and will continue to.

I figured some people on here might also use Superior, and could explain it a little easier or give some helpful tips.

[gofer]

If you can see SD2's gui and hear the hits when you click on the drumkit picture you actually are almost there.
Hitting the picture does not output MIDI to Reaper, so you can't record your "mouse-drumming" on those pics. That's normal in any vst host.

If you want to program grooves from scratch with nothing but the mouse you insert an empty MIDI item, open the MIDI editor for that item and click-insert notes in the editor like you would with any other MIDI instrument.
Different pitches stand for different parts of the kit with MIDI drum instruments, so you benefit a lot from downloading a note name file to load into the MIDI editor, then you can see by name which key sounds which instrument. Go to the MIDI drum map page of the Reaper Stash to find one fitting to your drumkit. I think SD2's standard kit would be the one called Superior 20 drum map.txt.


Of course you can also input grooves with a MIDI keyboard or better some drumpad controller. Or use the MIDI groove loops that come with SD2.

As of the latter, I think SD2 comes with EZPlayer as an extra plugin which you can load into a slot before (upstream) SD2 in the same track's FX chain. You need to click on the "MIDI" button on EZPlayer's window header and set MIDI Output to "Merges with MIDI input" to make the two work together on one track. Save that FX chain, so you don't have to set it up again in the future.

[Triple7]

Thank you so much, I will mess around with it this afternoon and see what I can come up with.

This forum is awesome, thank you to everyone who has responded!