Pro Tools

I. SESSION BASICS Mix/Edit Window Toggle = Double Arrow at the bottom of the edit window toggles the column on each side. Save Session S

II. RECORDING AUDIO 48V on the MBox is 48 volt Phantom Power, used for certain mics. Clear the red light clipping indicator on the faders by clicking on it. Sessions are made of tracks, tracks contain playlists, and playlists are made up of regions.

III. VIEWING AND ZOOMING 2 kinds of rulers time based rulers (mins:sec, bars:beats, samples) and conductor rulers (tempo, meter, and markers) Big Counter 3 (numeric keypad only) Link Edit and Timeline / (also under the Operations menu) Start/Stop Playback Spacebar Rewind to Zero Enter Zooming left and right arrows control horizontal zoom and the 2 middle arrows are for vertical zoom (left for audio, right for midi) Horizontal Zoom In/Out [ or ] Zoomer Tool Hold Option and click to zoom out. Also, we can Click+Hold and drag with the Zoomer to zoom in or out. During playback, click anywhere on the timeline bar to move the playback bar to that point. If we click+drag to make a selection, playback will start at the beginning of the selection when you hit the spacebar. We can also key in a specific start point into the counter.

IV. NAMING, RECORDING, AND SELECTING FILES Destructive Record is under the Operations menu. To arm the transport + record, use F12 or Spacebar. The Audio Regions List shows all the regions (takes) of all the tracks, and any created regions as well. To A/B the audio files (takes) of a track, go to SLIP MODE and select the GRABBER. Grab the name of the take you want out of the ARL and bring it into another track. We can then solo each track. We can just double click w/ the SELECTOR to select the entire take and delete the one we dont want by using the BACKSPACE key. We can also record all the takes we need, hold +Click on the track, and a list will populate of all the takes that started at the same time (or any other tracks for that matter). This is called the Matching Start Times Takes List. Double-click on the name of the audio file you want in the ARL to change its name to Final.

V. NAVIGATION AND PLAYBACK The Flashing Line is the Edit Cursor and the Solid Line that moves w/ the playback is called the Playback Cursor. The playback cursor options are under the Operations menu.

VI. OPTIMIZING THE PLAYBACK ENGINE SetupsPlayback Engine = Low Buffer size when recording, High Buffer size when mixing. Lower CPU Usage when using Pro Tools w/ Reason.

VII. RECORDING WITH A CLICK Create a Mono Aux Track and insert the click on the track in the mix window. It is under the Instrument tab. Adjust the options and bring the fader to the desired level. When recording use bars:beats w/ the big counter and use GRID mode. Click on the Grid Value arrow under the Pencil Tool to adjust the grid sizes.

To adjust the tempo, unselect the conductor icon in the transport window. Then, enter the desired tempo. Hold Option+Click on any unneeded rulers to remove them. To add a tempo change, hold Control and Click on the conductor ruler where we want the tempo change to be. To remove it, just hold Option and Click on the event in the ruler.

VIII. MAKING SELECTIONS (EDITING) F1, F2, F3, F4 toggle the Edit Modes, F5, F6, F7, F8, F9, F10 toggle the edit tools. SLIP MODE + SELECTION TOOL make a selection and audition it by clicking the spacebar. Zoom into the selection. Adjust the selection by holding the SHIFT key and drag the ends of the selection also drag the blue arrows in the ruler. Left and Right arrow keys can be used to move to the front or back of a selection. The down arrow marks the down-point of a selection and the up arrow marks the up-point during playback. The SCRUBBER can be used to make selections. Check the box in the Setups Pref Operations menu and then Click+Drag to sample a selection. If we hold the Shift key, we will make a selection. To Fill the Screen With Selection Control+E with something selected. Again to go back. In GRID mode, the SELECTOR tool is confined to the grids that we set. Loop Playback Click on the Play Button on the Transport while holding Control To extend the selection to the other tracks, hold Shift while you click on the desired tracks. Click+Drag a name of a track in the Show/Hide List (left column in edit window) to move the arrangement of the tracks.

IX. CREATING REGIONS To create a region within an audio file (take), make a selection and Capture it. Capture Region R To audition these regions from the ARL, hold Option+Click+Hold on the region name.

Seperating regions creates new region names to the left and right of the selection you separated. Separate Region E This is great to create loops in GRID mode or piece together takes of a track (SHUFFLE mode is good here too). Dragging a region from the ARL in SPOT mode allows you to specifically choose a position for the region. SHUFFLE MODE regions behave like magnets. SLIP MODE allows us to freely move regions in time. SPOT MODE often used w/ movie, and allows for precise placement of sound (type in time or bar). GRID MODE constrains our selections and movements to the grid setting. Copy Selection C Paste Selection V Duplicate Selection or Region D Repeat Region or Selection Option+R (just like Duplicate, but allows you to enter the number of duplicates).

X. TRIMMING AND FADING The TRIMMER tool is used to trim long regions, or elongate a small region dragged into a new track. Hold Option to change the direction of the TRIMMER tool. The TAB key will move to the next region in a track and Option+TAB will move backward. To do this but select the regions as you go, use Shift+TAB for forward or Option+Shift+TAB for reverse. Tab To Transients is useful to make a loop selection because it progresses the selection by the peaks in the waveform. To insert a fade, make a selection over the sound you want faded and enter F Create Fades F

If our selection is over a few region boundaries, we will be given the Batch Fades box to do them all at once.

XI. PUNCHING-IN AND OVERDUBBING Input-Only Monitoring monitors the input to the track, all the time. This is needed when rehearsing, otherwise, PT monitors whats coming off the hard drive, not the input to the track. Auto Input Monitor is when PT monitors whats coming off the hard drive and automatically switches to input when were recording. Toggle the Input Monitoring Option+K Discard a Take . To Punch-In, make a selection over the sound you want to change, switch to autoinput monitoring, and set the pre and post-roll on the transport window. Loop Record Option+L We can sample different punches and different punch combos easily. First, go to Setups Preferences Editing Tab and check all 3 boxes under the MST Takes List. Then, we can +Click on the track to see all the punches. Also, we can make a separation in the region to give us lots of options to mix up the composition (usually would do this with guitar solos and sample different riffs or shreds).

XII. SETTING UP MIDI AND PERIPHERALS On a Mac, we enable any MIDI device through an external MIDI setup on OSX, outside of Pro Tools. Windows is all done within. This is all handled under SetupsPeripherals/MIDI Controls.

XIII. RECORDING AND EDITING MIDI MIDI should always use BARS:BEATS and GRID MODE. There are 16 channels for every MIDI connection. You can check these connections under MIDIInput Devices. Also, MIDI Thru should be enabled as well (located right under Input Devices). The guy created a mono and stereo Aux Track with the MIDI Tracks. The mono is for the click and the stereo is for the plug-in, which in our case would be Reason, although Ive always used Instrument Tracks.

TAP TEMPO GREAT feature that allows you to tap out your desired tempo. Just turn off the auto-conductor, have the tempo value highlighted, and tap the T key to the beat you want. The number will start changing and balance out on the correct tempo. For drumming, use the Wait for Note Feature during recording, so the recording starts at the first drum beat. The editing features in MIDI are basically the same as those for regular audio. The default view is on Notes, but another view that is good for editing is the Velocity view. Each stalk represents how hard we hit the key on the keyboard. We can insert notes with the PENCIL TOOL. We can also Click+Hold on the tool and select the line feature, which is perfect for adding a hi-hat or shaker sound. We just find the right note in the MIDI track and Click=Drag across that track to add as much as we want. QUANTIZE Option+0. Make sure to make a selection over the notes you want quantized first. Selection Copy Hold Shift+Click to select the bass and drum regions (or just drums) and hold OPTION+CLICK+DRAG to the next bar to make copies. Transpose Option+T allows you to change the pitch of a selected region. Just enter how many semitones you want (2 semitones = one full step/note).

XIV. DIGIBASE AND IMPORTING AUDIO Show Workspace Option + ; This brings up the Digibase loops and samples.

To find loops or samples, select the hard drive where the audio is, click the magnifying glass icon to input a certain BPM and set the Kind field to Audio File. Sample Loops Option + Spacebar SetupsPreferencesOperations tab and select Automatically Copy Files on Import to copy the sound file to your session. Otherwise, if the original sound file is moved or deleted, the sound on your song will be gone also. We can Click+Drag the loop name into a track in the edit window or the ARL to bring it into the song. We can also select a bunch of loops and bring them in altogether to create a full drum sound for example (send them to the ARL when doing more than one at a time). Import Audio Shift I

When we import audio, we select the sounds we want from the different audio folders and choose all of them. We then select Copy Files instead of Add Files. Choose the default folder and click OK. The triangles next to the names in the ARL are for the stereo loops. They show the L and R individual mono audio files for each one when clicked on.

XV. WORKING WITH LOOPS AND GRID MODE We will use the audio that we imported from the chapter above to create full loops for a song, mostly for drums and bass. After we have a list of drum loops we like in the ARL, its time to make a beat. We can use MIDI or Audio Tracks for these, depending on the type. Once we sample the sounds, we Click+Drag the loops from the ARL into the tracks and use the Duplicate and Repeat features to build our beat, with each piece of the drums in its own track. Make sure to match the BPM of the beat to the BPM of the project. If the loop is a little off, we can use the TCE TRIMMER tool, which is the other part of the TRIMMER tool. This allows us to easily adjust a loop to fit within the constraints of the grid and song BPM. We can thin out some percussion by using SLIP mode and deleting pieces of the selection. A good example is a tambourine that you would only want to hear on the 1st and 3rd counts. After we slice up the loop by deleting the pieces we dont want, we first set our fades and then we consolidate the selection. We can then repeat if we want. Consolidate the Selection SHIFT+OPTION+3. We can drag drum fills into the loops and it will take over at the point where we leave it. Mute Region Toggle M Mono tracks work with mono loops, or one half of a stereo loop.

XVI. AUDIOSUITE PLUG-INS Use in Playlist should be selected when using AudioSuite plug-ins.

XVII. USING MARKERS To create a new marker, just place the mouse where you want it to be and press the ENTER key on the NUMERIC KEYPAD. We can show all the marker locations by typing 5 We can also have memory selections in addition to markers. These can hold other settings as well like track height and zooming.

XVIII. MORE WITH MIDI When working with MIDI tracks we always want to create a Stereo Aux Track in case we need to copy MIDI over to audio. We can change a virtual instrument (like something on Reason) to an audio track to free up computer power by first creating a mono audio track next to the MIDI one you want to copy. We set the output of the MIDI track to Bus 1-2 and the input of the audio track to Bus 1-2. Then we solo the Stereo Aux Track, the MIDI track, and the new audio track. We also want to record-enable the audio track. Finally we hit play and watch as the audio is recorded onto our new track. If you want to make the original MIDI track inactive, we can do so under the File menu.

XIX. TRACKING AND SESSION ORGAINIZATION