Dr.midiK - Reaper - Pitched samples

REAPER

Ici, des infos, des astuces,... pour le logiciel de musique REAPER

Create pitched samples with REAPER

Open REAPER...

Open your samples folder and drag a sample.

My choice is a snare drum sample.
All new samples created here will be used in my next tutorial (coming soon...).

Reaper create an "Item" (object in REAPER) with the sample. Item can be a sample, a MIDI part, an envelope,...

Press [SPACE] key to play.

My sample is too long, there is a long silence at it end.
Put cursor (vertical green line) with your mouse where you want to split.

Right-click on selcted Item and choose "Split items at cursor".

You have now 2 Items, select and delete empty part of the sample with [Del] key.

We have now a shorter sample.

Select sample and place mouse cursor in top-right corner of the sample, mouse cursor change to curve, drag to left to create a volume fade-out on the sample.

You can do that too with the "Media Item Properties" (double-click on Item or default [F2] key).

It's time to duplicate your sample.
Select sample.
When you press [Ctrl] key and you mouse cursor is over your selected Item, a "+" Symbol appears on your cursor.
Left-click and drag down to duplicate on a new track.

Do that 5 times to have 6 samples.

Select Item on Track 2, and change pitch.

Default shortcuts to change pitch are :
[Shift] + 0 : pitch up by semitone
[Shift] + 9 : pitch down by semitone
[Shift] + 8 : pitch up by 0.01 semitone.
[Shift] + 7 : pitch down by 0.01 semitone
??? : pitch up by octave
??? : pitch down by octave

I choose to pitch up 0.25 semitone for my next tutorial.

REAPER adds information about pitch before name when it modified.

You can change pitch in the "Media Item Properties" too.

Continue for others samples, for me :

Track 3 : 0.50 semitone
Track 4 : 0.75 semitone
Track 5 : 1.00 semitone
Track 6 : 1.25 semitone

Open "Media Explorer..."

"Media Explorer" is the place where new samples will be created.

Media Explorer window is empty for me but you can have some files here.

What ?... Where are our samples ???

We'd created new samples but we hadn't save them. It's like when you create a new Office document and doesn't save it.

Right-click on sample of Track 2 and select "Render items as new take".

You have now 2 samples in your Item called "Takes" in Reaper.
You can have multiple Take in 1 Item.

Source sample up :

Render sample down, named with original name + " render001".

See Media Explorer, a new WAV file has been created with this name.
Click on file to listen it.

Rename file : right-click on file name sample Media Explorer, and "Rename".

I choose as new name, original sample name and add "+0.25" (for +0.25 semitone pitch up) to the name and "OK".

And... I don't know why, it doesn't work for me !!! Reaper bug or system problem ?
Does it work for you ?
I'll rename my samples later.

Do Render for audio Items on Track 3 to Track 6

It seems possible to select all audio Item to Render in one time.
I tried it. It seems to work, but I don't know why, I didn't see all WAV files in Media Explorer, sometimes 1 only, sometimes 2,... another bug on Media Explorer, or something on my computer ???
But no problem with one by one rendering.

Copy Media Explorer path, and paste it on file explorer, you can see samples files in "REAPER Media" folder.

In the same folder, you can see your samples files, and others files with file extension ".reapeaks". You can delete this files, only used by Reaper.
You can save Project if you want and close REAPER now.

Finished ? Yes and no !...

I moved my files in my work folder to organize my work.

In my "REAPER Documents" folder, I created "SFZ_Files" folder, it will be used in the next tutorial, inside this one another folder named "Samples", and inside this one, another one named as my original sample name "SN1_128".

Delete ".reapeaks" file.
I rename files that I couldn't do before in REAPER Media Explorer.

Original sample file seems to be bigger than new created samples (1112 Ko / 564 Ko)...
With Reaper, I splitted first audio Item on Track 1, not original sample file.
I didn't render it, and didn't create new file. We see here original file with original length.
I could rendering it in REAPER and rename it "SN1128+000.wav" before move in my REAPER work folder to not delete original file.

Liens :

Lien vers le site de REAPER : https://www.reaper.fm/

last update : 6 juillet 2025

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