Reaper – pro music app of the future.
April 5th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Well it isn’t free. And shouldn’t be. But it’s so close, as universal and open-source as it gets, and as of 04/04/11, 40$ for a personal license.
I think it’s the future.
I was at a bit of a loss when Laura Gow, new assistant in training, needed some software to start learning on. I just don’t do cracked software, and the thought of getting someone new into that kinda thing from the get-go was fundamentally as un-educational as it gets. I’m on a Mac 24/7 with occasional Parallels use, which also meant we’d be on different systems. I remembered a colleague of mine talking about an open-source program called Reaper, and said, “Hey try it out. I think it’s free.”
After mixing a new Kat Penfold single on it, I’m excited. Not so much about all the cool features, or how it has the secret to making great music simply by sneezing on the keyboard, (for that, tune in to MakeProMusic tba), but because of the category it’s in.
See, making music on phones and ipads is still pretty primitive, and, well, bad. The phone’s great for picking up a random sound and is the king of portability, and don’t get me wrong, the fact that Garageband is on iPad now is pretty dang cool, but we’ve actually lost a lot of freedom in the portability. We can’t record any sound, any synth, any way. One of those three, if not all, gets severely compromised and it just doesn’t beat the classic funky mic/funky interface/funky laptop/knapsack combo. It’s even easy programming piano tracks with your computer keyboard.
With Reaper, the barrier to entry is once again lowered dramatically. You end up having practically the most flexible pro app being the cheapest and most easily accessible. Now that’s exciting. That means that everyone that comes in the door to learn can start immediately for free, and after 30 days, a tiny fee to keep the software team eating and making the app better.
So no need for ipads n phones, or money. It’s all about learning and experimenting, and, well, creativity and style.
It ain’t the easiest program to learn, and because there’s about 8 different ways to do any one thing, and 4 of those are either buggy or don’t work, it reinforces the need for a personal workflow more than ever. I took a good 3 hours and recreated my custom mix console with it, and if I hadn’t, I never ever would have been able to stay creative for even a second while getting used to the controls.
But it’s the future.
