I don't use much if any plugins on the DAW's master buss. I don't compose into my analog 2-buss gear, but I do mix into it. Since I put a lot of thought into how instruments sound and work together during the tracking stage, mixing goes relatively quickly because it's mostly just setting levels and routing the appropriate bussing and auxes. For the sake of managing large projects, I try to keep my tracks sorted into logical Reaper folders right from the start - drums, guitars, basses, keys, percussion, rises/hits/falls, etc. Things like bussing and reverb sends I save for the mixing process. I track live instruments through hardware channel strips so I do track EQ and compression to 'tape'. Not trying for anything finished, just basic seating of the instruments in the broader composition. I do quite a bit of what some might consider 'mixing' (basic track EQ'ing and compression, sound design FX) during the writing process. I try to segregate the overall recording processes into tracking, mixing, and mastering. I do have a pretty large widescreen monitor as my projects run 60-120+ tracks on average. I don't own nor desire a control surface or analog mixing console, I'm perfectly fine with a mouse/trackpad and a DAW. I use Slate VXS as a secondary mix monitoring environment, and I find it to be pretty useful.Ī Behringer Control2 for handles monitoring routing and it's pretty rock solid.
The room has a decent amount treatment but it's not exceptional, but at my seated position, it translates well without much frequency bump or phase issues. A footswitch to remove the sub when I want sub-less monitoring. My monitoring setup is small, but it's perfect for my room. I use Loopmaster's tools occasionally for flying in samples into the DAW. Drums are all soft drums (Toontrack SD for real(ish) drums, mostly my own analog sound designs for EDM and hip hop drums (no samples). Guitars, bass, and FX reamping are done through AxeFXIII. Left side is interfaces (one for tracking, one for mastering) and inbound analog processing, right side of the desk is 2-buss analog. I have a large desk with 10 rack spaces on each side. In terms of the physical production, my setup is hybrid digital/analog with inbound analog hardware (pres/eqs/comps/etc.) > DAW > analog outboard 2-buss/mastering gear. Then I go about the tedious process of filling in all the rest of the instrumentation. I try to get as much of a finished arrangement as fast as possible and not to 'compose on the fly', because I don't find that creates all that great of a final result. I lay out the broader arrangement as quickly and using as few instruments as possible (drums and the key guitar parts in the case of rock or jazz kick, bass, and simple melody in the case of EDM or hiphop). Regardless of the songwriting approach, song production is pretty much always the same.
Create a beat from start to finish and write to that (this often produces some cool and unexpected results, especially if I'm doing something with odd rhythms or arrangements).
TIMESTAMP IN PORT STATUS DATA1 DATA2 CHAN NOTE EVENTĠ0010DD8 1 - B9 04 00 10 - CC: Foot ControllerĠ0011299 1 - A9 2E 7F 10 Bb 2 Key AftertouchĠ001129B 1 - A9 15 7F 10 A 0 Key AftertouchĠ001173C 1 - B9 04 72 10 - CC: Foot ControllerĠ0012490 1 - B9 04 00 10 - CC: Foot ControllerĪll I can interpret from the raw data is that the first and third step (which should be different) share the same response. This is what I got from MidiOx (I did exactly as you said, but MidiOx did not register the fourth step (releasing the pedal with no hit)):