Thanks
Hmmm, well, like I mentioned - I have roughly 2 weeks experience with Reaper so I wouldn't even be able to hazzard a guess at what's wrong, other than that I probably saved it wrong! However, you can re-create this template about as easily as you can download it, so I'll describe how.
I've since discovered that adding ReaComp to the cleaner track is good, but not a perfect solution. It attenutates the loud strumming but doesn't remove it completely (that's what a comp is designed to do, right?) So I read the JS docs and looked at Michael Gruhn's tutorial (man am I starting to love Reaper) and designed a "Reverse Gate" that cuts all volume when the signal goes above a given level. These instructions include setting it up with the JS Reverse Gate (which works even better).
Installing JS "Reverse Gate"
You should be able to save the attached file to your program files/reaper/effects directory and remove the .txt extension. It should then appear in your JS effects list next time you open Reaper.
Description of Reverse Gate controls:
Threshold:
How loud the signal has to be in dB before the plugin cuts all sound on this channel. Higher number means the signal has to be louder to get cut.
Release:
Once the signal drops below the threshold, the plugin starts to slowly turn the sound back up. Choose a lower number to turn it back up faster. If you set it too low, you may hear a distorted sound. 3 works well for me.
Release Before Unity Gain:
As it turns the sound back up, once it hits this number, it will restore full volume. Example: If the setting is 25, once it reaches 25% of full volume, it will no longer gradually turn the sound up, but restore full volume.
This is my first attempt with writing anything in JS, and it took several hours to figure out and get working on my system. If it doesn't work on yours, let me know what you experience and I'll try to fix it.
OK, onto the Picking Controlled Guitar Effect template.
To Make the Template
1. Open a new project
2. Insert two new tracks (Ctrl+T) x2
3. Name the first one 'guitar distorted', the second 'guitar clean'
TRACK 1
4. On the 'guitar distorted' track, enable input monitoring, and set the input to whatever input your guitar is connected to.
5. Add a new effects chain to 'guitar distorted' (press the FX button)
6. Add reaGate to the chain
7. Strum/pick the guitar as hard as you want to have to strum/pick it to switch to the distorted sound and watch the meter on ReaGate.
8. Move the Thresholder slider (the one by the meter) on ReaGate to where it matches the meter level you were hitting with the hard stumming/picking.
9. You should now be hearing guitar when you strum/pick hard enough and hearing nothing when you're picking more quietly.
10. Add your heaviest effect (distortion, heavy phase, etc) after ReaGate on this track.
TRACK 2
11. On the 'guitar clean' track, enable input monitoring, and set the input to whatever input your guitar is connected to.
12. Add a new effects chain to 'guitar clean' (press the FX button).
13. Add the Reverse Gate JS effect to the chain. (see above)
14. Strum/pick the quietly, and increase it until you're right around the level you were above.
15. Adjust the threshold until you hear the sound disappear.
16. Add your clean effect (chorus, delay, etc.) to this track after the JS Reverse Gate.
17. Tweak the other parameters on the reverse gate to adjust how quickly the volume returns to the clean sound, and how loud it must be before full volume is restored. On my system it works well at around -7dB, 3.0 release, and 25-30% signal before unity gain restore.
That's it!