Total Comp Noob trying to blend vocals from multiple takes

Hey folks, I am new to Reaper and to DAW's overall. I just recorded 5 takes of vocals and want to go through phrase by phrase and pick the best ones (possibly word by word?) and have everything blended in together smoothly so it sounds as natural as possible. One important thing to mention is these takes were recorded outside of reaper and have been imported in as 5 seperate tracks so I'm not using the existing Takes system. What actions do I need to do in Reaper to make this happen smoothly? I apologize for my complete noobness! I keep reading about splitting and exploding and i'm just a bit confused :) Thanks! Justin

If all the tracks sound similar with similar volume levels than create a master track and just start splitting and dragging. If they don't sound similar then I would have multiple master tracks.

Hey, welcome to Reaper. One thing you could do is highlight all five items, right click and choose Take/Implode items across tracks onto takes. This will put them all on the same track and they you can use the advantages of the take system to comp them. I strongly suggest that you have a look at the take section in the manual, but a couple of quick examples. Now that all 5 takes are on one track, the one that you have highlighted will be the one that plays (so you don't have to deal with solo/mute). When you are ready to select a portion that you like of one of the takes, put your cursor at the beginning of that section and hit the 's' key to split (do the same thing at the end of the phrase). I usually turn on the Item Lock function to help from accidentally choosing a different piece once I have settled on one I like (or you can highlight a take you know you are not going to use, right click and choose take/delete active take. This should get you started. Remember that nothing you delete is really gone until you clean your project directory and empty your waste basket, so you can always go back if you need to.

Thanks much! I will start by moving them into one track and follow your advice and take a look at the Take section in the manual!

Highlight all five at once by either holding down control and clicking each or right click and drag over all 5, then right click one and do the "implode"

Make sure that you are choosing "Takes/Implode items across tracks into takes" and not the second option..... This should combine all 5 takes into the first track. You may have to resize the first track so it is tall enough to see all five takes (on the track control panel hover over the bottom edge of the 1st track until cursor changes to an up/down arrow and drag larger. Also under the Options menu, make sure that "Show all takes in lanes (when room)" is checked on.

Awesome tips guys! What I usually do with Adobe Audition is to record a "fix" take and then copy and paste the fixed section into the main vocal. One of the things I didn't like about Reaper is the lack of ability to do that within the program.. I never actually thought I could just split and drag the best parts into one master track, or do the Take/Implode option. D'oh!

A) Why can't you do that in Reaper? B) Why would you just punch in an overdub?

That sounds painful.

Sorry man, it works fine here (don't you hate it when people say that ;-). One trick might be that if you want to make sure that you have selected every item on a track you double click an empty area of the track header (or on the track number). Holding down ctrl while you do this will select multiple tracks. Then right click over one of the highlighted items and do your implode. Anyway, hang in there, keep trying stuff and digging Reaper.