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Macros

Keyboard shortcuts, macros, are arguably the fastest, most efficient and most productive way of working with REAPER. This is especially the case for frequently repeated activities that might otherwise involve a lot of time fiddling around with the mouse. Macros are an important feature of REAPER; there are many actions that can be assigned to Macros, including hundreds that do not appear on any menus.

Some Starter Examples

Here are some examples of how you can create useful macros, these should make your life (somewhat) easier when you are editing by chaining sequences of three or four commands together. Keep in mind that they are intended primarily to serve as examples to help you learn how to create your own macros rather than actually change your life.

Mute selected area

For example, you will likely find that there will be numerous occasions when you will wish to mute a time selection for a specific track, or perhaps a number of specific tracks. In this next example, you will learn how to be able to achieve this each time with just a single keystroke. Example

• Open the Actions window, either from the Actions menu or by pressing the ? key. Make sure the Main section is selected and displayed.
• Click on the New … button and name your new action "Mute selected area".
• Find the four actions shown below and drag them across to the right hand window (or double-click on the action). You can find and select these in any order you wish, then drag and drop them up or down the list to change the order.

• Item: Select item under mouse cursor
• Item: Split item(s) at time selection
• Item Properties: Toggle items mute
• Items: Unselect all items

• You should select Consolidate undo points if you wish the macro to appear as a single event in your undo history. Because this macro uses the mouse cursor position, however, you probably won’t want to add it to the actions menu.
• Click on OK to close the Create Custom Action window.
• Click on Add to select a shortcut key.
• Type K and click OK.
• Click on Import/export and save your work, as before.
• Click on Close to close the Actions window.

You should now find that you can make any time selection, then hover your mouse over any track and press K to mute the selected area for that track. You can repeat this, hovering your mouse and pressing K for as many tracks as you wish.

See Also

• Main Page > REAPER Documentation, going further
  
• Action List - The action-dialog and complete reference of actions