Click Track in REAPER: Metronome, Count-In, Click Source and the Split File for the Stage
· 6 min read
REAPER ships with a metronome that counts you in before recording and a second, less obvious thing: a click you can place on a track and render. The two are not the same, and the difference decides whether your click ever reaches a file. This page walks the route from the REAPER User Guide (version 7.81) and names the point where a song not recorded to a click turns into an afternoon of work.
Try it on your own track, free
The metronome, and what it is for
Turn it on with Options, Metronome enabled, or left-click the metronome button on the toolbar. Open its settings with Options, Metronome/pre-roll settings, or right-click the same button. The dialog has:
- Enable metronome, and an output button next to it that sends the click to any device you choose. If your headphones hang on outputs 7/8, send it there and the click stays out of the main mix.
- Run during playback and Run during recording. Most people tick recording only, so the click stops nagging while you listen back.
- Count-in before playback and Count-in before recording, with Count-in measures for the length. At the start of a project REAPER waits that many measures before it records; inside a project it starts the count that many measures before the point you record at. There is also Start count-in at start of measure, so the count lines up with the bar lines.
- A click grid sized by the time signature, with a pattern of 0.5x, 1x, 2x or 4x.
- Two faders: metronome volume, and the relative gain of clicks B, C and D against click A. That is your beat one accent.
- Up to four sound files, A to D. Sound A plays on beat one, sound B on the rest; anything left blank uses REAPER's own tone (sine, triangle, square or sine plus square).
- Pre-roll settings, which play the click for a number of measures before recording or playback begins.
This is a monitoring tool. It plays to your outputs and never becomes part of a track, so File, Render does not include it. For a stage file you need the second thing.
The click you can render: Insert, Click Source
Create a new track and choose Insert, Click Source. REAPER puts a media item on it that ticks like the metronome but behaves like audio: it has a length, a mute envelope, a fader and a pan. Right-click the item and choose Source Properties to set its BPM or load your own sample files for the beats. The User Guide files this under automating the metronome, which is the clue: this is the click as an item you can edit.
Stretch the item to cover the whole song. If you want the count-in in the file, start the click item a bar or two before the song and move the song's item so its first beat lands exactly on a click. At 120 BPM in 4/4 one bar is two seconds, so a two-bar count puts the song at 4.000 seconds. Zoom in on the first downbeat and check it against the click; a count-in that leads the band into the wrong place is worse than none. If you do not know the tempo, the free BPM finder reads it from the file.
Click left, music right
A click through the whole song only works where the audience cannot hear it, so the file bands use has the click on the left channel and the song in mono on the right. In REAPER:
- Right-click the pan knob on the song's track and set the pan law to Stereo balance / mono pan, so a stereo song can be collapsed and pushed to one side. Turn the pan fully right.
- On the click track, turn the pan fully left.
- File, Render, source Master mix, channels Stereo, WAV or MP3. The master output has the click on the left and the song on the right.
Left goes to the in-ears, right goes to the PA. How the split file works and how to wire it has the diagram. If you also need the song and the click as separate files, render Selected tracks (stems) instead and you get one file per track.
A song that was not recorded to a click
Here REAPER is more capable than Audacity and also more expensive in time. The User Guide spells out the case: a live performance that was not done to a click, which you tempo-map by hand. You select the first bar on the timeline, choose Create measure from time selection (detect tempo) from the timeline's context menu, or press Alt Shift C, and repeat, bar after bar, until the end of the performance. Where the time signature changes you use Create measure from time selection (new time signature) instead. The tempo map then shows up as the tempo envelope (View, Tempo envelope) and the metronome follows it while you play.
For a four-minute song that is roughly a hundred bars of selecting and confirming, and every bar you place a little off sends the click early or late from there on. It works, and people do it. It is also the moment where a click that follows the song stops being a REAPER task and becomes a measuring task.
The click track maker does that measuring for you: it reads the beats from the recording, places a click on every one with beat one tuned higher, adds the count-in and exports click left, music right, in about a minute. Step by step: how to make a click track from your own backing track. REAPER stays the right tool for everything you record to its metronome in the first place, and for the editing around it.
Frequently asked questions
Does REAPER render the metronome into the file?
No. The metronome is monitoring only. To get a click into a render, create a track and use Insert, Click Source; that item renders like any other audio.
How do I get a count-in in REAPER?
For recording and playback, tick Count-in before recording or Count-in before playback in the metronome settings and set Count-in measures. For a count-in inside the exported file, start the Click Source item one or two bars before the song and line the song's first beat up with a click.
Can REAPER make a click follow a song that was not recorded to one?
Yes, by building a tempo map by hand: Create measure from time selection (detect tempo), one bar at a time, through the whole song. It takes a while and every bar has to be placed by ear.
How do I put the click on one channel only?
Set the song track's pan law to Stereo balance / mono pan, pan the song fully right and the click track fully left, then render the master mix as a stereo file.
Try it on your own track, free
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