Importing session data in Pro Tools is quite valuable as a time saver. It also serves as the best way to keep continuity on song to song when working on a project or album. As the name suggests, it allows you to pull in data from one session into another. This can be audio/midi or this can be settings such as plugins, routing, pan, volume, etc. The exact method and process will depend on what you are after for your end results.
Here is part 2 of the series. Here we are going to look at even more ideas to keep in your production toolkit. This set will contain some tips that include videos in order to explain them more in depth. So lets have a look at 5 more simple and efficient methods to speed up your production.
There are a million different workflows that users can employ within Pro Tools. Knowing the most efficient ways to reach your end goal, or maybe even just having a few tricks in your bag can make a huge difference. In part 1 of this series, I wanted to have a look at some of some simple and efficient methods to speed up your production.
In this video we go over a rather fun and creative trick. We take a kick drum track and trigger a sine wave it to beef up the low end of the kick. Then we take a snare track and use it to trigger white noise that is used to supplement the snare.
To break it down to basic terms, Mid Side gives the ability to separate the middle of the signal from the unique stereo, left-right content of the signal. Nowadays we do have a few plugins that can do this for us, but here we are going to look at the manual way to do it and what is arguably still the most flexible. It is also a lesson in routing and patience
The Windows key (or Start key) is a bit of an odd key. It goes unused in our daily computing life for the most part. A lot of really useful shortcuts are attached to it though. I thought I would take a look at the Windows key and some of the shortcuts used with it. I am not looking to explain EVERY shortcut, just some of the ones that I find to be more unique or extremely helpful.
We reported on the release of Quadro (an ipad app to design your own shortcut macros to control your desktop applications) back in December 2015 (read about it here)
Now Music Producer/Sound Engineer and Quadro user developer Dario Messina has created some Pro Tools 12 specific pallets for use with Quadro and kicked off a blog about them.
Using the Pro Tools Tempo Ruler gives you a lot of creative ways to visually change your session tempo's. It gives you the ability to use multiple different tools and methods to change the tempo. In many ways, using the tempo ruler is similar to writing in track automation.
In this video we tackle a common task you may be asked to perform as an engineer (or for personal needs). We take an audio track and identify the session tempo from it. There are few different reasons of wanting to find the tempo. A grid to edit with, to sync time base effects such as delays, to program VI's to play along with the audio, are a few examples. In this video we go over how to identify a tempo in Pro Tools.
Pro Tools gives you many options in the Tempo Operations Window. They can be a simple and constant tempo change or a linear change. Linear will ramp the tempo faster or slower in a perfect slope in a selected area. There are more complex options as well to choose from. There is a parabolic option for instance that will let you set the curve of your ramp faster or slower in tempo among other options that can be quite helpful. I cover some of these different methods and what they do.
