Hi Todd, I was pulled away for the weekend, but I'm back at this now. With your direction, I was able to get REAPER to use MIDI to play music assigned to a PAD on the Akai MPX8. It plays for 5 minutes and stops, which is exactly what I wanted. The outstanding need I have to to trigger REAPER to play a specific project from the DOS command line. You indicated earlier that the command line is not your forte. Maybe I should post a new thread? Thanks again for all your help. You got me most of the way there. Phil