REAPER 101: Making Selections

REAPER 101 is a series of short articles to help beginners get started with REAPER quickly.

This tutorial will demonstrate how to make track, time, item and MIDI selections. This is one of the fundamentals of working in REAPER.

Track Selection

Tracks are selected simply by clicking on any space in the track control panel (TCP) or mixer control panel. See panel 2 of the image below.
Select or deselect multiple tracks by clicking one, holding shift and clicking another. All tracks between will be selected. See panel 3 of the image below.
Select or deselect non-adjacent tracks with ctrl+click (Windows) / command+click (OSX). See panel 4 of the image below.
Select all tracks with the keyboard shortcut ctrl+A (Windows)/command+A (OSX)
Deselect all tracks with a click in the empty space below the tracks in the TCP, or empty right-side area of the mixer.

Track Selections

Note- selecting an item on the track, or clicking on an empty area of a track will also highlight that track, but any editing action will follow the item selection.

Time Selection

You can make a time selection in the timeline ruler with a left-click and drag.
If snap is enabled, time selection will follow the grid setting.
This can also be done in an empty area of the timeline.
The esc (escape) key will clear your time selection.

Time Selection in ruler

Item Selection

Items are selected by a single click.
Multiple items can be selected following the same rules as track selection: shift for adjacent items, ctrl for non-adjacent items.
Items can be selected across multiple tracks.
Deselect items with esc (escape) key or ctrl/command key.
Select all items on a track by double-clicking on it’s track control panel. (just like making a selection but with a double-click)

Item + Time Selection

Select items and time by right-click and dragging anywhere in the timeline over multiple items, in one track or multiple.

selecting items and time simultaneously

MIDI Note Selection

Selecting a MIDI notes is very much like selecting items but slightly different rules.
Click a single note to select it.
Shift or Ctrl/Cmd click will add to your selection
Ctrl/Cmd click will deselect a note
Right click and drag to lasso select a range of notes (but not time).
Right click on a piano key on the left side to select all of these notes in the item. (click C2 to select all C2′s in the MIDI item). Select more with ctrl/cmd right click.
Selecting notes also selects corresponding Velocity and CC values.
CC data can be selected separately from notes.
Ctrl/Cmd A selects all notes, velocity and CC data.