In the previous example, the project you opened was already set up and ready to go. Now you will set up a project from scratch with the recordings provided.
The song we shall mix this time is Glorious Christ. The band is the same (except for a change of singer) and you will find 8 tracks in the Projects folder.
Start by opening a new project in Reaper “File - New Project“ or “Ctrl - N”. With a blank project open, you can use "Insert - Media File" and select the audio files to import or find the tracks in the projects folder outside of Reaper and drag and drop them into Reaper. Select the option to import them to separate tracks if asked.
At this point it is a good idea to save the project so press “Ctrl - S”, navigate to the Projects folder, give your project a name and check that the boxes for “Create subdirectory for project” and “Move all media into project directory” are ticked. From this point on you can keep typing “Ctrl - S”, as you progress to ensure that the saved version is kept up to date.
The next few steps are to lay out the project in a clear and helpful way before we start mixing. This is optional but I find it helpful so that I can always find the track I want easily.
First, I want to make all the tracks appear smaller in the timeline view so that I can see them all at once. To do this, you can bring your mouse over one of the tracks to the left, hold “Ctrl” and scroll down with the mousewheel. Alternatively you can place the mouse at the bottom of each track and click and drag to set the height for that track.
To ensure the whole project fits into the timeline, place your mouse over one of the audio files on the timeline and scroll the mouse wheel down to zoom out.
If you are editing particular tracks it may be helpful to make them taller or zoom in on the timeline while you work on them but I generally like to see the whole project while I am mixing.
Next I rename the tracks if needed. In this case it is helpful to remove the “GloriousChrist-” from the start of each track name so that you can more easily see what each track is. To edit this, double click on the track name.
I also find it helpful to reorder the tracks in a way that makes sense to me. I personally like to have instruments first, then voices and I tend to start with percussion then go from lowest to highest. In this case I have Drums, Bass, Keys, Guitar, Trumpet, V1, V2, V3. To move a track to a different place, click and drag it to the place you want it.
At this point everything should be laid out clearly and you can save the project and begin mixing as we did with the previous example.
You may want to set up extra tracks for subgroups, reverb or delay.
To make things more pretty, you can right click on the tracks and find the track colour and track icon options as shown below.
To mix the song think about: volumes, panning, Eq, and other effects (reverb or delay)
