First Lecture
Setting up your audio interface and MIDI controller in Reaper
What is an audio interface?
An audio interface is a sound card that can be either external (connected through a cable to your computer) or internal (fitted into your computer). It lets you record audio signals of instruments and voice into your DAW (digital audio workstation) in that case being Reaper.
What is a MIDI controller?
A MIDI controller is any hardware (Ex: MIDI keyboard) that will let you control virtual instruments (VSTi) inside your DAW (digital audio workstation) by transmitting MIDI data to your VSTi and thus generating a sound.
NB: MIDI controller do not generate sound by themselves, they need to be hooked to a virtual instrument, typically inside your DAW.
Setting up your audio interface (sound card) in Reaper
In order to setup our audio interface (sound card) in Reaper we first need to hook it up to our computer and install its drivers. Then we need to set it up inside our DAW. We do so by going to our preferences section and selecting it.
After opening Reaper we need to click on the Options button in the top menu and go to Preferences, then in the Preferences window we will select Devices in the left menu under Audio. In the Audio device setting menu we will select our audio interface by clicking on Input device and then selecting the ASIO driver (in this case it is a Focusrite Scarlet solo, you should be able to see the name of your sound card) and after we press Ok.
Setting up your MIDI controller in Reaper
In order to setup our MIDI controller (MIDI keyboard in this case) in Reaper we first need to hook it up to our computer and install its drivers. Then we need to set it up inside our DAW. We do so by going to our preferences section and selecting it.
After opening Reaper we need to click on the Options button in the top menu and go to Preferences, then in the Preferences window we will select MIDI Devices in the left menu under Audio.
After doing so we need to enable the MIDI Device by finding it in the MIDI outputs to make available section on the right, right clicking it and pressing Enable output. Then we go to find our MIDI device in the section right above witch is MIDI inputs to make available, we double click our devices name and check the two boxes that say: Enable input from this device and Enable input for control messages after that we press Ok.