How does one get a drum loop recorded from Montage into Reaper (or any DAW) without having to have military precision clicking on record in the DAW at the same time you trigger the drum loop (arp) on the Montage?

What you refer to as "military precision" unfortunately, only comes through practice.

Starting an arpeggio is the same musical gesture as playing a piano chord normally on the downbeat after the metronome counts you in. This is always and has always been the responsibility of the musician. That being said, it is extremely difficult, as a mere human being, to be absolutely precise. Most times when you are responsible for playing on the downbeat, you are a few milliseconds early or more often a few milliseconds late, this is normal.

Some musicians get overly worried about this (obsess over it). Thus the advent of *quantize*. While playing live is not (ever) "military precise", but when it comes to drum arpeggios, they do not adjust their timing as you would when playing "live"... In other words, say your playing a bass line to your DAW, you might hit that initial downbeat note several clock ticks late, but you can adjust your overall feel as you continue. If your drum arp is 25 clock ticks late, the entire groove will be shifted 25 clock ticks late. And that is where we are with this question.

It is understandable you want to have that (automated) drum part sitting properly on the clock tick bar lines...
The computer is not aware of exactly *when* you begin playing... There is no possible KEY ON START (at least in most DAWs I've ever encountered). So your options are record the data, making sure you are using MIDI SYNC (DAW as the master clock, Montage as the slave to MIDI clock), using your best effort to start the arp as close to that downbeat clock tick as possible.
Set your DAW to send standard MIDI CLOCK to the Montage via Montage port 1.
Set your Montage to MIDI SYNC = MIDI. This will lock the Montage Arps, tempo effects, tempo sync'd LFO, etc to your DAWs clock.

(sorry I don't know Reaper, but many DAWs do not sent MIDI Clock Out by default, so you may need to check the documentation of your DAW and activate it) once MIDI clock synchronization is established you will ensure that even if you start the arp a few ticks off, it will remain rock-solid off throughout the entire Recording... Making it extremely easy to "fix"... Post recording.

After the recording, view your data. If you're 25 clock ticks late simple shift the entire drum track 25 clock ticks early. The wonderful thing about the automated drum data, it will be *consistent*. I do not recommend Quantize in all cases because I can't know whether the arp data you are using has multiple timing things going on... Your mileage will vary.

But selecting the entire track of data and shifting it forward (or backward if you were early) is a method used more often than you would guess.
In Vubase, for example, this can be done in seconds (once you know how). You can go to the piano roll view drag the mouse to select all data, and drag it using the grid (snap to grid), done. Literally seconds.

Each DAW has some method of shifting timing. You will want to add this routine so it becomes second nature. The reason that every DAW has this function is because computers are devices we use to record music and it is the nature of the beast, and as musicians we all want the drums to be our timing anchor. So you are not alone. And why the answer to your "Short version" is: you don't, you find a workaround.

Workarounds are not a bad thing, you just have to recognize in your particular DAW how they provide a solution to this very common issue.

Hope that helps.

Hi BM, appreciate the thorough reply, straight forward, all makes sense.
By the way, LOVE the Montage.
I've only had it for a couple of weeks, and even though the possibilities of this thing are endless, sometimes it's nice to just sit in front of it, pick one of the awesome pads, and just immerse yourself in the sound.

Cheers from Australa
Daniel

Daniel, your topic, and Phils answer, leads me to a slightly different question
I want to Synchronise an arpeggio on my Montage to a Pattern of drums/bass on my Motif XS. Do I connect Midi-out of Montage to Midi-in of Motif and switch off the internal clock of the Motif? What else do I have to consider?
Or do I have to rely on being precise when I start one or the other?
Cheers
Peter

PS I just thought of another possibility - route an output from the Motif to the A/D input of the Montage, would this synch the arpeggio to the bass drum of the Motif pattern?

Hi Bad Mister,

I have a follow up question now, which I will start another thread titled "Hybrid MIDI/AUDIO and Doubling"

Thanks
Daniel

Just tried the above - connected Assignable Output of Motif set to [Ass L & R] to the A/D input of Montage. Regardless of which keyboard you start first the Montage arpeggio synchs to the bass drum of the Motif pattern - yippee! The only thing I found strange was that although the tempo of the arpeggio was 80 the tempo of the Motif pattern was double at 160
Peter