In the Box Music Production: Advanced Tools and Techniques for Pro Tools

Mike Collins

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781135074326
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Tecnologia e ingegneria
• Subtopic: Ingegneria acustica

Sure, you can import and mix a track in Pro Tools. You can work with MIDI and you know your way around the Edit window. The UI is as familiar as your most broken-in pair of jeans. We get it—you don't need another button-pushing guide starting from the ground floor.

Get uniquely in-depth coverage instead with In the Box Music Production: Advanced Tools and Techniques for Pro Tools. Author Mike Collins splits the book into three distinct sections covering how you use Pro Tools now—whether you're working with the synths and samplers or loops and beats of a dance or hip-hop project, the soaring vocals of the next pop sensation, or the lush layers of an instrumental world music track. Use Pro Tools to its full potential with advice on studio techniques and full exploration of its internal capabilities. Learn to leverage Pro Tools and make it work for you with this guide that is fully grounded in real-world applications and process.

This book assumes that the user has some music production experience and has worked through the basics in Pro Tools.

Part 1

Working with Loops and Beats in Pro Tools

Chapter 1—Bringing in Audio and Loops—covers how to bring in audio files and loops using the Workspace browser in Pro Tools, how to preview and audition files, how to search for files, how to relink missing files, how to import audio from CD, and how to work with REX and ACID files.

Chapter 2—Working with Clips—is about what happens after you have brought audio and loops into Pro Tools and need to move audio clips around in the Edit window so that these can be edited and corrected. So, for example, it covers how to select clips, how to make a timeline and edit selections, how to loop clips, and how to use Dynamic Transport mode.

Chapter 3—Beat Detective—is all about identifying the beats within an audio recording using either the basic ‘Identify Beat’ command or the more advanced Beat Detective feature in Pro Tools.

Chapter 4—Elastic Audio—explains how to apply Time Compression and Expansion (TCE) in real time to individual audio tracks. It also features beat and tempo analysis and TCE processing algorithms that allow you to quantize audio, to follow tempo variations in the audio, or to conform the tempo of the audio to that of Pro Tools.

Chapter 1

Bringing in Audio and Loops

in this chapter

How to Find Your Files

Workspace Browser Toolbar

Previewing Audio in the Browsers

Elastic Audio in the Workspace

The Audition Path

Preview in Context

Task Manager Window

Relink Window

Importing Files into Pro Tools Sessions

Importing Audio from Audio CDs

Importing Elastic Audio, REX, and ACID Files

Importing Elastic Audio Files

Importing Audio Files and Loops

Summary

How to Find Your Files

Using the Browsers

The first thing you need to do before bringing any audio or other media file (video, for example) into Pro Tools is to find the file—yes, I know this sounds obvious, but it is worth looking at the various ways you can do this. On the Mac you could use the appropriately named Finder for this and on Windows machines you could use Windows Explorer. You would look through the files and folders available on your system until you find what you are looking for and bring this into your session in some way.

But there is a better way! Pro Tools actually has its own file browser that you can use to work with your disk volumes, folders, and files as an alternative to using the Mac’s Finder or Windows Explorer. This so-called Workspace browser has specialized features to speed up this process and makes things much easier for you to access the various media files that Pro Tools uses. You can set up multiple browsers and customize and arrange these to suit the ways that you like to work.

Note

Previous versions of Pro Tools used multiple types of browsers for media management: Catalog browsers, the Project browser, and Workspace browsers. The new Workspace uses a single-pane grid view that provides easier navigation and combines the Catalog, Project, and Workspace browsers in one window.

To get started, just choose New Workspace from the Window menu or press Option-I (Mac) or Alt-I (Windows)—see Figure 1.1.

Tip

If multiple Workspace browsers are open, these key commands bring successive Workspace browsers to the foreground.

A Workspace browser, as its name suggests, lets you browse through all the available folders and files that form your ‘workspace’. Workspace browsers will display every type of computer file, even including unknown file types, as well as aliases and desktop folders. However, to protect vital system software components, Workspace browsers do not display the System folder on the Mac or the WU Temp or System Volume Information folders in Windows. This prevents these from being indexed, searched, sorted, or affected in any way when you are using the Workspace.

Files that you can search for, sort, audition, and import to your session include audio, MIDI, video, (.txf) plug-in settings, other session files, and Guitar Rig settings for the Eleven Rack if you have one of these. You can drag audio, video, or session files directly from browsers into your current Pro Tools session.

The Workspace browser window is divided into two sections—the Locations ‘pane’ at the left and the Workspace ‘pane’ to the right of this. In the Workspace browser, you can use the Locations pane to look through the ‘volumes’, that is, the local and networked drives, on your system or to look through the indexed catalogs of media or the system user directory. If you are looking for folders or files on your desktop, for instance, you can find these in the user directory’s desktop folder.

Figure 1.1 Choosing a new Workspace from the Windows menu

The Locations Pane

The default Workspace browser—see Figure 1.2—has a Locations pane (in the window) at the left that will contain a folder called Volumes, an icon representing the session file that you are currently working with, an item named Catalogs, and the User folder. If you click on the revealing arrows to the left of each of these items, their ‘contents’ will be revealed.

Note

The Locations pane is used to navigate the volumes (local and networked drives) on your system, the currently open session, indexed catalogs of media, and the system user directory.

The Volumes folder contains all the disk drives available in your system; the Session file opens to reveal the Session Audio Files folder, which can be opened in turn to reveal the audio files used during this session. No catalogs are shown here yet, but these can be set up later on. The User folder shows all the folders available in your computer’s user account.

Figure 1.2 A default Workspace browser

You can show or hide the Locations pane at the left of the Workspace browser window by clicking on the Show/Hide icon, see Figure 1.3, in the lower right corner of the left-hand pane.

Figure 1.3 Show/Hide the Locations pane

Note: Performance and Transfer Volumes

Workspace browsers let you view, manage, and import sessions and media from both performance and transfer volumes.

Performance volumes are storage volumes (hard drives) that are suitable for playback and have been designated in the Workspace browser as Record and Playback (R) or Playback Only (P) of media files in a Pro Tools session.

Transfer volumes are volumes that are not supported for media playback in Pro Tools (such as shared network volumes or CD-ROMs), or storage volumes (hard drives) that have been designated in the Workspace browser as Transfer (T) volumes. Transfer volumes cannot be used to record or play back media during a Pro Tools session. Designated Transfer (T) volumes can be useful for transferring session and media files between different Pro Tools systems.

Workspace Browser Pane

The main part of the Workspace browser window, the Browser pane, displays the contents of items selected in the Locations pane or displays search results.

The browser pane is subdivided into columns in which the volumes, folders, or file names are displayed along with metadata for file size and kind, duration, creation date, sample rate, and so forth.

Customizing t...