Basic plugins

Hey I was wondering if you guys could provide me with some very basic plugins for an absolute beginner (I literally started using Reaper yesterday). I read some other threads on here and found it rather overwhelming so if someone could give me links to plugins that I can start using while learning that would be awesome! Thanks!

Then look no further than the native plugins in Reaper.

Agree. You have all of the basic plugins you need already. What's cool about the Reaper plugs is that the gui is functional rather than fancy so you will learn faster what all the settings do. Things like comp threshold, gate hold, reverb pre delay etc.

thanks guys! Do I see all the Reaper native plugins when I press "virtual instrument on new track" under "insert" or am I missing anything?

Are you looking for virtual instruments or effects? If you are looking for effects Reaper has plenty included. If you click on the track insert and select cockos you will see the "Rea" effects listed. If you want to sort through really good free instruments(and effects) like synths and the like head over to here:

I'm looking for instruments at the moment and what I'm mostly looking for is a drum machine to get started

Hello gaui11 and welcome to these forums. You'll find many helpful people here and a lot of useful information. Make sure that you get the excellent User Guide too: That method will show the 3 plug-in instruments supplied with Reaper. To see the effects, insert a track and click on the grey [FX] button in the Track Control Panel (TCP). That will open the FX Browser and show you all the plug-ins. Drag any of them onto the TCP and their GUI will be displayed. Reaper itself does not include tens (or hundreds) of plug-ins. There are many compatible third-party ones available, some free some hundreds of $. That way, users can choose the whichever ones they want.

Not really a drum machine, but im thinking maybe you just meant a drum instrument. Hard to beat this one for free

Thanks to everybody, this really is the great reaper forum I have read about!

Another decent free drum instrument is DrumCore3 Free. Sounds pretty good. I've actually used it for a few years to avoid buying one.. Although I just yesterday bought Steven Slate Drums 4 Platinum to replace it..