Downloading and Listening

Each deep-dive session on this page is a downloadable zip file. When you extract them, you’ll find each session has been divided into chapters for easy navigation. We also include a Links folder to connect you with useful resources, typically tools that have been mentioned during the session.
And now, on to the goodies. Grab whatever might be useful to you, study at your leisure. If you’re finding these resources useful, all we ask is that you take a second to visit our Supporters page. Every person who sends any amount of support helps us to make more training available. If you’re not in a position to contribute financially, no worries, another great way to help is spreading the word to anyone who might need these resources. Enjoy, we hope you learn loads!

Intro to Editing with Justin and Scott

If you’re new to editing or you’re switching to doing it in REAPER, Justin and Scott have got your back. Follow along, practice these techniques and you’ll be slicing and dicing like a chef. Here’s what is covered in this session:

• Examples of good and bad techniques when you’re recording yourself alongside a screen reader
• Editing a single track working with time selections (an easy way to remove parts you don’t need)
• Working with items (you’ll want to get familiar with manipulating these if you make multitrack projects)
• Learning about ripple and nudging (good illustrations of how flexible non-destructive editing is from Justin)
• Crossfading to make smooth transitions between your items
• Combining what we’ve learned about item-based editing and time selections, Scott tweaks the arrangement of a song using its stems, also introduces another way to scrub
• Q&A on fading and splitting

Download Intro to Editing with Justin and Scott

Getting Started with Audio Restoration

Learning about audio restoration can help you to clean up or salvage recordings that are less than optimal. Derek Lane joined us to cover:

• Defining audio restoration
• Clean recordings start at the source (tips to get the best results you can with whatever you’ve got when making a recording)
• Choosing a microphone to suit your recording environment (best heard on headphones)
• Q&A, optimizing recording spaces at home
• Free and cheap tools for quick and easy cleanup
• Q&A on restoration plug-ins used during this session, RNNoise, Supertone Clear etc
• Listen in as Derek restores audio from an old cassette tape
• Derek shows how using an expander can help lower noise floors
• We get a sneak preview of Derek’s homemade multi-band expander, showing how he can shape the noise floor of footage from some old tape to make it easier on the ear
• Discussion of iZotope RX, a commercial suite of plug-ins, we hear Derek’s restoration of an old, very rare NLS record
• How do we identify when we’ve done enough clean-up?
• Listen in as Derek uses two stock tools for clean-up and restoration, ReaEQ and ReaFir
• We hear a hack Derek found in action, fairly advanced, can add flexibility when reducing noise with stock tools
• Q&A on Azimuth correction and real-time noise reduction

Download Getting Started with Audio Restoration

Getting Started with EQ

Equalization (EQ for short) is a tool to shape the sounds in your project. You can make things brighter or darker, make them seem more present or set back, it can be useful to deemphasize undesirable frequencies or enhance the best aspects of a sound, you can make sounds more cohesive or make specific sounds stand out. Scott and JennyK are here to get you up and going. We hadn’t heard a walkthrough of the frequency spectrum like this anywhere else, so we made what we would’ve found useful 117 years ago, back when we were getting started. Here’s what we covered:

• Overview of what EQ is and why it’s useful, defining terminology
• Learning the frequency spectrum using a graphic EQ (best heard on headphones)
• Comparing results of additive and subtractive EQ
• Introducing parametric EQ (a little more complex than a graphic style EQ where we started, but a lot more flexible)
• Explanation of each band type in ReaEQ
• Sweeping with ReaEQ (a super useful technique to seek and destroy problematic frequencies)
• Making and saving a preset ready for sweeping, so you can work faster
• Moving through bands with ReaEQ
• Using subtractive EQ for more cohesion between elements of a mix
• The difference between Width and Q controls (this will be important to understand if you’re going to use third-party EQ plug-ins)
• When do we use stock versus third-party EQ
• Comparing Scott and Jen’s EQ styles
• Q&A
• Bonus, a wicked fast way to load ReaEQ in your projects (thanks to Chris Goodwin for the tip)

Download Getting Started with EQ
Shout out to Danielle H for letting us use one of her big pop bangers, check out the lyric video for ‘Problem’ on YouTube

Getting Started with Compression

Compressors can help you get more control over dynamic range, that’s the difference between the quietest and loudest parts of a recording. Join Scott, JennyK and Justin to learn about:

• What compressors are and when we use them
• How Scott and Jen use compressors differently
• Scott explains and demonstrates the controls you’ll find on many compressors
• Q&A on limiting, choosing when to adjust threshold vs ratio, stacked compression
• The different designs of compressors, explained by a special guest
• Comparing two different compressors on a recording of a drum kit
• A simple way to get started with parallel compression (a popular technique to make instruments sound hyped when mixing modern genres)
• Listen as Scott compresses drums and bass in context
• Setting up side-chain compression with Justin (a side-chain is useful when you want to talk over music, think podcast intros, DJ-ing, or geting that rhythmical pumping feeling that’s widely used in dance music)
• Discussions on the pros and cons of gain reduction and level matching (when do we use them, and why don’t we rely on those numbers)
• Listen as Scott adds solidity and hype to a drab mix with multi-band compression on his master bus
• Scott shows a plug-in called Intensity from Zynaptiq, a handy tool that’s not quite a compressor, not quite a saturator
• Listen in as Justin uses compression and limiting to get a field recording of a fireworks display under control (taming a huge dynamic range)
• Justin shows how compression can influence psychoacoustics by making a foghorn seem louder and more intense (a useful sound design technique)

Be sure to check the Links and Extras folder, you’ll find some text contributed by Paul Warner, excellent descriptions of how he approaches compression.
Download Getting Started with Compression

Looping part 1 with Justin Macleod

In this session, Justin shows workflows for looping sound effects and music, as well as tricks that can help to spice up uninspiring loops. You’ll likely need some familiarity with editing in REAPER and its terminology to follow along. Here’s what is covered:

• Making rhythmical stutter edits by splitting and pasting items on transients
• Recovering content in items, looping short sounds to generate pitched samples, overview of subprojects versus gluing
• Exploring SFX loops (sound effects and environments)
• Extending items to build an arrangement while keeping a tidy timeline
• Using non-serialized SFX and musical loops that don’t seem like they’ll be good on first listen
• Working with musical loops
• Identifying the tempo of a musical loop if that information isn’t provided
• Spicing up sources, using Reaper’s nudge dialog to duplicate patterns, project BPM influencing SFX loops
• Looping a specific section of a longer item

Download Looping part 1 with Justin Macleod

Looping part 2 with Justin and Scott

Justin is going loopy again, this time with Scott along for the ride. Here’s what they covered in this session:

• Justin on identifying some common pitfalls when choosing SFX material for looping
• Justin shows Reaper preferences you might want to tweak when making or importing loops
• Justin explains and demos editing based on zero crossings
• Justin demos using super short chunks of sounds to make loops and stutters
• Justin demos looping a drone made from unexpected source material (no really, this has to be heard to be believed)
• Scott demos how REAPER’s “second pass render” feature helps to make seamless musical loops
• Scott demos how a rhythmical delay can add texture to musical loops
• Justin demos crossfading on more dynamic SFX loops
• Justin demos section Looping with a musical example

Download Looping part 2 with Justin and Scott

Getting Started with Surge XT, a free and wonderfully accessible open source synthesizer

On this stream, guest hosts Chris (Windows) and Piotr (Mac) joined us to provide an introduction to Surge XT. If you’d like to learn how to make and tweak synth sounds, this is a great place to start. Listen in and follow along as they cover:

• Intro and notes for Mac users
• Downloading and installing Surge XT
• Configuring Surge XT for best accessibility
• Browsing, searching, importing and organizing patches
• How to move through the main areas of the user interface productively
• Working with oscillators and the mixer to start building a bass patch
• Working with filters and envelopes to shape our bass patch
• Play modes, such as portamento
• Working with low frequency oscillators (LFOs) to introduce movement
• Working with Surge XT’s in-built effects
• Saving your patches
• Using Macros to assign knobs on a MIDI controller
• Q&A

Download Getting Started with Surge XT

Send Us Feedback

Feel free to get in touch using the contact form below. We’re keen to hear your feedback on the content you’ve heard, you can also throw in suggestions of what you’d like to hear us cover in the future.
If you have specific questions about the use of REAPER however, please send those to the
Reaper Without Peepers” mailing list instead.
And hey, if you’ve made it this far down the page but you haven’t checked out our Supporters page yet, now would be a good time to take a peek, you might be able to help us keep these goodies coming!