DAWs with multiple arrangement timelines

[humanboeing]

Btw just tried it out, turns out you can't make an onion with it (Reaper inside Reaper inside Reaper and so on), so only 1 rewire master and slaves to that master. Possible with Mulab 9

[machinesworking]

Btw just tried it out, turns out you can't make an onion with it (Reaper inside Reaper inside Reaper and so on), so only 1 rewire master and slaves to that master. Possible with Mulab 9

I tend to not rely on deprecated software. Rewire is dead development and upkeep wise, and it's always a crapshoot when it will break completely.

[padillac]

Thanks for the info everybody. It's interesting to see the different approaches to this. I started down this investigation by trying to make a DAW-based sketchpad. At the piano, I get a blank sheet of paper and start writing. DAWs have more friction: at the very least, I have to name the file and decide where to save it. So anyway, that's the context.

Another objective I have is building up a reusable library of sounds. Different DAWs support this kind of things to different degrees. For the most part I've just bounced everything to audio, since that's the universal format.

DP looks like a lot what I had in mind at first - each sequence chunk is essentially its own project. The v-rack thing to share instruments is cool. Since my intention is a sketchpad, the lack of automation is not that big of a deal.

Studio One scratch pads look like a super practical approach for organizing multiple ideas to use in a project. I'm surprised more DAWs don't have this exact feature. Putting scratch ideas at the far end of the timeline feels very antiquated in comparison.

FL Studio's patterns are really cool. I particularly liked how you can offset the start time, so you can compose a complex multi-instrument sequence and then chop it up - but the chops are in MIDI. Plus it has the multiple song timelines.

Reaper... well if you know, you know :) I happened to come across a recent API addition called `Main_SaveProjectEx` to save a project with a given path name from a script. It was easy for me to make a script that uses it. So I have the sketchpad aspect in place - it's as simple as pressing cmd-n to make a new project, and cmd-s to run my custom script and save it with an auto-generated name. With that in place, plus .RPP-PROX rendering and the Media Explorer, and I have a decent starting place for my personal sound library based on sketches. Also with this approach I don't have a formal distinction between sketches and projects (like I might with DP). Any project can continue to grow, or be reused in other projects.

For the time being, I'm going to stick it out with Reaper. I'm always a bit torn because it's such a rabbit hole. Any time I want to do something, I have a hunch that it's possible - just how much searching and forum reading will it take, and what scripts are involved? But the fact that I was able to put together a sketchpad process with minimal effort is very encouraging.

I suspect I will take a closer look at FL Studio down the road. Sequencing with pattern offset is very cool, I'm sure I can do a lot of neat stuff with it.

[padillac]

The only two DAWs I'm familiar with are Live and Reaper, and both of those are limited to a single arrangement (as far as I'm aware).

I'm using Reaper, fairly new to it admittedly, but I'm sure I read somewhere you can have multiple projects open with one as slave and one as master... might be worth asking on the reaper forum

It's possible to Rewire Reaper into Reaper, just make a track and add Rewire:Reaper to its fx chain.

Reaper has a pretty neat hidden feature called rearoute_loopback. It allows you to route audio between projects. It's like rewire, but without the timeline sync. Of course you can configure tabs to synchronize their timelines if you want.

One thing I've done in the past is use multiple project tabs, one for each kind of idea. So one for drums, one for bass lines, etc. This lets you loop a section from each project tab, kind of how you might loop a clip in Ableton session view - but you have the whole project editing available, rather than just a single clip.

With rearoute_loopback you can do the same thing, but route them to a separate recording / mixing project.

Another experiment I've done with it is make an instrument rack project, and route it into a different recording project. No MIDI sequencing, just recording the audio directly into a new timeline. Kinda neat.

[THE INTRANCER]

Studio One Pro has Scratchpad which gives you multiple arrangements besides the main one, but you can easily switch between any number of songs you have opened as well. How many other DAWs allow you to do that without having to close the one you are working on ? This simple ability to do this is invaluable when you are re-compositing song material where you are working with high track counts.

Using the Scratchpad feature can actually work in a way to off load the CPU load in the song you are working on which can prove useful.