Chapter 1
IN THIS CHAPTER
Working with tracks
Understanding track views
Grouping tracks
Managing track voices
Before you can do any recording in Pro Tools, you need to create and configure some tracks — specific places to put the vocals, instrumental parts, pterodactyl screeches, whatever. This involves setting up new tracks, naming the tracks, and assigning inputs and outputs to your newly created and named tracks.
But that’s not all. When working with tracks in Pro Tools, you also need to know how to show and hide, activate and deactivate, solo, mute, and adjust your view of them, among other things. This chapter takes the mystery out of dealing with tracks and shows you how to work with them both efficiently and effectively.
Pro Tools has six types of tracks (Audio, Auxiliary Input, Master Fader, VCA Master, MIDI, and Instrument) as well as two track formats (mono and stereo). All possible permutations and combinations of these various types and formats are explained with subtlety and style in the following sections.
When you work with tracks in Pro Tools, you have to keep in mind that you’re sure to end up dealing with six distinct flavors of tracks. They are
Pro Tools offers a bit less variety when it comes to track formats. Unless you are using Pro Tools HD or HDX, you get two — count ’em, two — choices:
Setting up your recording project is a little like setting up a railroad: It’ll take you somewhere only if you first put the tracks in place. Getting that done is what this section is about.
To create a new track, choose Track ⇒ New from the main menu or press ⌘ +Shift+N (Mac) or Ctrl+Shift+N (PC). Either method opens the New Tracks dialog box (as shown in Figure 1-1), where you get to choose the following:
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.Make your selections and then click Create to create your new track. This track then appears in the Edit and Mix windows and in the Show/Hide list located on the right side of the Edit window. If the Show/Hide list isn’t visible, click the double arrow at the lower-left corner of the Edit window.
You can duplicate tracks — creating a new track that mirrors all the input, output, effects send settings, and insert settings of your original track — in two easy steps:
Click the name of the track in the Mix or the Edit windows.
To select more than one track to duplicate, hold the Shift key while you click each track’s name.
The name is highlighted.
Choose Track ⇒ Duplicate from the main menu.
The new track appears in the Mix and the Edit windows to the right of the track you’re duplicating and just below the duplicated track in the Show/Hide list.
When you open a new track (choose Track ⇒ New), Pro Tools creates a default name for the track — something really helpful, like Audio 1
— but you can change the name to anything you want. You do this by double-clicking the name of the track in either the Mix or the Edit windows. A dialog box similar to what you see in Figure 1-2 opens, from which you can use the fields to both change the name of the track and add any comments you want to include about the track. After you enter your track name and comments, click OK — you’re set!
To record with your new track, you need to assign an input to it so Pro Tools knows where your source sound is coming from. To hear the track play, you need to choose an output so Pro Tools can send the sound out to your monitors or to your headphone jack.
That makes sense, right? Now, to actually assign an input to your track, do the following:
Choose View ⇒ Edit Window Views ⇒ I/O from the main menu to open the I/O section of the Edit window.
The I/O section shows the inputs and outputs for each track.
Release the mouse button to select your choice from the Input contextual menu.
This menu closes, and the input you select appears in the Input selector.
Choosing your outputs requires pretty much the same procedure, although now you start things off by clicking the Output selector instead.
Click OK.
The window closes, and all your new tracks automatically receive your chosen output upon creation.
Pro Tools gives you lots of options to change how tracks look in the Mix and the Edit windows. You can change a track’s color, size, location, and even whether you can see it. The following sections get you up to speed on these options.
Both the Edit and the Mix windows have the option of including an audio tracks list in the window view (see Figure 1-4). In this list, the Tracks list, you can show or hide selected tracks or groups of tracks. This list is located on the left side of either window. If it’s not visible, click the double arrows at the bottom-left of either window to open the list in that window.
You can show and hide tracks in two ways:
Use the drop-down menu. Click and hold the title bar of the Show/Hide Tracks list until a menu opens up, as shown in Figure 1-5. Then just choose the option you want.
The Show Only Selected Tracks option and the Hide Selected Tracks option require that you first highlight your desired tracks in the main part of the Edit or the Mix windows. To select one track, just click the track’s name. To select more than one track, hold down the Shift key while clicking each track you want. When you then use the Show Only Selected option, for example, all non-highlighted tracks are hidden.
Click the track name in the Show/Hide Tracks list. Clicking directly on the track name located in the Show/Hide Tracks list toggles between hiding and showing the track. You can even move a track around by clicking and dragging it to where you want it in relation to the others.
If the Show/Hide Tracks list isn’t showing, click the double arrow at the bottom-left corner of the window to open it (see Figure 1-6).
To make all your tracks easier to keep track of when you’re working, you can assign color groups to the waveform display for each track in the Edit window. To do this, choose Setup ⇒ Preferences from the main menu and then click the Display tab in the Preferences dialog box. This opens the Preferences dialog box, as shown in Figure 1-8.
On the right side of this dialog box is the Default Track Color Coding section. Here you can choose from several radio buttons:
You can alter the viewed size of tracks in the Edit or the Mix windows. This can be a godsend, for example, when you have a ton of tracks in a session, and you want to see them all onscreen (pick a small size) or if you have a track that you want to edit (choose a giant-size one). Here are your options:
Edit window: The Edit window allows you to choose from several different-size track views. Your options include Micro, Mini, Small, Medium, Large, Jumbo, Extreme, Fit to Window, and Expanded Track Display. You access these options by clicking the Track Height Selector (the little arrow to the left of the track name) or the ruler bar at the far-left side of the waveform display of the track, as shown in Figure 1-9.
To make track size adjustments even easier, you can simply drag your track larger or smaller by clicking and dragging your mouse up or down at the bottom of your track.
You can move tracks around and arrange them in your Mix or Edit windows as you want them. This feature is handy if you have a group of tracks that you want to have next to each other, such as percussion and drums. I place any submixed tracks together to help me keep track (sorry, I can’t help myself) of them all without having to move all over the Edit or Mix windows. The following steps show you one way to do this:
Release the mouse button.
The track stays put where you dragged it.
To delete a track, follow these steps:
In Pro Tools, creating and managing groups of tracks is a snap. I strongly recommend taking advantage of Pro Tools grouping features because they let you perform lots of different tasks — edits, for example — on more than one track at a time.
When you group tracks, you can choose whether the grouped functions include edit, mix, or both windows.
Edit groups include the following functions:
Mix groups include the following functions:
You can create groups by choosing Track ⇒ Group from the main menu, or New Group from the Group drop-down menu (the menu you open by clicking and holding the Group title in the Groups list section of the Edit or the Mix window). The Create group dialog box appears (see Figure 1-12); here, you can choose the following parameters for your group:
Tracks: You can choose the tracks for your group by clicking the track in the available list and clicking the Add button.
As an alternative you can choose the tracks for your group from within the Mix or Edit windows by Shift-clicking the tracks you want in your group.
Before you can work with grouped tracks, you need to enable the group, which you do by clicking the group name in the Groups list. (You’ll find the Edit Groups list in the lower-left side of the Edit window; the Mix Groups list is in the lower-left side of the Mix window. If they aren’t visible, click the double arrow at the bottom-left corner of the Mix or the Edit window, respectively.) Highlighting in blue means the group is enabled. Click the group again to disable it. The blue highlight will disappear.
You can also enable and disable groups using a keystroke on your keyboard in the Mix window by simply pressing the key for the group ID. To do the same thing in the Edit window, you need to first make sure that the Keyboard Focus (A-Z) button to the right of the Edit Groups name is highlighted, as shown in Figure 1-13. (How will you know that it’s highlighted? That’s easy. In its highlighted state, a yellow border surrounds the box.)
After you set up some groups, you don’t have to treat them as if they were set in stone. You can add — or subtract — group members, change the group name, or just delete the group altogether. These options are covered in the following sections.
Follow these steps to rename a group:
Double-click the area to the left of the group name in the Groups list.
The Modify Groups dialog box appears.
The Edit Groups list is located in the lower-left side of the Edit window; the Mix Groups list is in the lower-left side of the Mix window. If they aren’t visible, click the double arrow at the bottom-left corner of the Mix or the Edit window, respectively.
Click OK.
Your group gets a spanking new name.
You can add a track to an existing group by doing the following:
Double-click the area to the left of the group name in the Groups list.
The Modify Groups dialog box appears.
Click the Add button.
The selected tracks instantly appear in the Currently in Group window.
Click OK.
The selected tracks are added to the group selected in Step 1.
You can delete unwanted groups by doing the following:
Click the name of the group in the Groups list.
Again, you find the Edit Groups list in the lower left of the Edit window, and the Mix Groups list in the lower left of the Mix window. If they aren’t visible, click the double arrow at the bottom-left corner of the Mix or Edit the window, respectively.
Click the Groups drop-down menu (opened by clicking and holding the Group title in the Groups list section of the Edit or Mix window) and choose Delete Active Group.
You’ll be asked whether you’re sure you want to do this because after you do, there’s no changing your mind. Proceed if you’re sure you don’t ever want to use that group again.
Your group is history.
Soloing and muting tracks is a big part of the mix process. By being able to hear only those tracks you want to hear at a given time, you can find unwanted sounds lurking in your tracks by soloing the suspected track, or you can turn off the lead vocal when you tweak the backup vocals. You can solo and mute each track in the Edit window by clicking the Solo or the Mute button (respectively), located underneath the track name, as shown on the left side of Figure 1-14. You can do the same thing in the Mix window by clicking the Solo and Mute buttons located above the volume fader, as shown on the right side of Figure 1-14. Check out Book 1, Chapter 4 for more on these windows and the location of the Solo and Mute buttons.
Soloing a track turns the mute function on for the rest of the tracks. You can solo and mute more than one track at a time. Choose the appropriate button for each track.
Pro Tools offers a limited number of voices. The number of voices available to you depends on the version of Pro Tools you have. Here’s a list of total voices available in the various Pro Tools systems:
Even though some of these track counts are really high, it’s not unlikely that you’ll have more than the number of available tracks in a session. Given this probability, Pro Tools offers you ways to manage your voices so you can hear all your tracks (or at least the important ones). This can be done one of two ways: setting voice assignments for each track, and setting voice priority. The next two sections give you the skinny on each method.
In Pro Tools, the controls for each track let you choose between Off and Dyn for voice assignments. Figure 1-15 shows the Voice Assignment menu in the Edit (left) and the Mix (right) windows. With a tracks voice assignment set to Off, the track won’t play. If you have the track’s voice set to Dyn, Pro Tools automatically turns that track on and off according to how many voices are available for playback and where this particular track sits in the Voice Priority listing. (See the next section for more on voice priorities.)
For example, if you have a session containing more tracks than you can have, only your Pro Tools version’s allotted amount will play at any one time. Now, if you have one track (rhythm guitar) that plays only during the verse and another track (lead guitar) that plays only during the chorus, you can get these two tracks to trade off so that only one at a time uses the available voice — and everybody’s happy because every note recorded will get heard.
Imagine, though, that both guitar parts have to play in the bridge section of the song. In this game of musical chairs, one part won’t find one of the available “slots” — and won’t play. Which part ends up being silenced is determined by how high up the part sits in the list of tracks. You can choose how high by setting the voice priority of each track, something I cover in the next section.
Because Pro Tools lets you have more tracks in your session than the total number of voices available in your version of the software, you might need to do some finagling among the available voices if you want every track (or at least the most important ones) to be heard throughout the song. To pull off this trick, you have to set the voice priority of each track.
Voice priority is determined by the track’s position in the tracks list in the Edit and the Mix windows: The higher its place in the list, the higher its priority for voice assignment. You can increase the voice priority of a track in the following ways:
Because you can’t make every track the highest priority, here are other ways to free up (or at least control) how your available voices get used. If you can identify a voice that’s less crucial at a given moment, you can free that voice from a track by doing one of the following: