Using session templates in Pro Tools is a great way to speed up your workflow when creating a sessions.
Session templates let you get to creating music faster and less time setting up tracks and plugins. When you create a session through a session template, it will contain all the internal settings of the session its created from. This includes tracks layout, tempo, audio, midi, I/O settings, buss and insert settings, plugins, etc. This can have a lot of advantages when using vi's with aux output stems, various templates for songwriting, or even when live tracking with a band.
Pro Tools comes with a large amount of "pre made" templates. There are quite a few different groupings of templates to select from depending on your needs. The groups of templates vary in different topics based on music styles, different Avid interfaces, music types, and other topics. Many of the music types even have vi presets called up and midi data written for a head start!
We also go over the way to turn any existing session you may have into a template or create a templates from scratch. This is the most useful approach I find for my workflow. It lets me get different templates setup for my various song writing approaches when inspiration hits and I don't want to spend a large amount of time getting tracks, plugins, and vi's all configured. We also discuss the settings that you have to configure before launching a template to create a session that are selectable.
