Pro Tools – The Beginner’s Guide

Pro Tools is a complex Digital Audio Workstation, which is commonly referred to as a DAW. There are many benefits to Pro Tools and this course is going to help you learn some of the basics. This course will get you more familiar with the program and get you up and running right away. All the features or Pro Tools allow you to customize the DAW for your particular type of workflow.

These are some of my fundamental skills that are used in sessions everyday. I just want to make sure you have a solid understanding of these fundamentals so that you can start working at a professional level with your software. Join me as I show you many of the features Pro Tools has to offer and how I like to set up my system for an efficient and streamlined workflow.

There are 3 versions of Pro Tools that you can download for use in your production. Visit the AVID.com website for more information and get the version that works the best for your studio setup.

Getting started can be somewhat confusing if you don't know what you are looking at on your screen. Not to worry, I'll walk you through some of the settings you should be aware of when starting a Pro Tools session. This is very simple and once you have it setup the way you want, it should be much easier for future sessions. Here we'll cover setting up the bid depth, sample rate, and location where you'll be saving your session.

Making sure your hard drives are properly setup will keep your Pro Tools sessions running smoothly. It's always a good idea to check the system compatibility on the Avid website.

Knowing the difference between 24 bit and 32 bit will really make a difference in your production workflow. You may already know a little or a lot about why these two bit depth settings are different, but this video will give you a visual reference point to actually see why they are different. After watching this video you will always want to record in 32 bit float.

Let's see if you have a good understanding of the very basic elements of Pro Tools

The Playback Engine is the heart of your DAW. This is where you will determine what device is routing your audio in and out of your computer. This is a very important part of working in Pro Tools and I recommend that you get very familiar with this window and knowing exactly what all of the setting here do to your system.

You've got to know how to create tracks if you want to do any recording in Pro Tools. Here is an example of setting up a session to do some vocal recording over a stereo music track. It's basic and simple, but it's good to know how to properly create tracks to optimize your workflow.

New to Pro Tools are the Folder Tracks. There are 2 types of folder tracks and I'll point out the main features and advantages of these 2 types of new tracks in Pro Tools.

Routing Folders give you a bit more control over your mix if you're looking to add sub-mix tracks. You can use these new folder tracks to keep your mix organized and easy to scale down when you get deeper into your mix. This does lean towards a more advanced approach to mixing, but it's good for you to know what they do and how you can use them as you progress in your knowledge of Pro Tools.

The Color Palette is sometimes an overlooked feature of Pro Tools. You can color up your tracks any way you like and make it easier to organize and visually see your tracks while mixing. This is just a short video on the ability to color the tracks, but this feature has many more capabilities to color up different sections and parts of the Pro Tools DAW.

The I/O or also called Input / Output and is crucial to how you are going to work in Pro Tools. Being able to understand how your audio will get in and out of the Pro Tools software will help you get a better grasp of how your audio will eventually be heard by the world. This is a little bit longer video, but all the area we will cover are very important to your understanding of how this software program works.

Groups allow you to do many different tasks to a collection of tracks. You can get more control over a selection of tracks when they are in a group. There are a few different types of groups and here we are going to look a how to set them up and use them to control certain parameters of the tracks.

Let's go over some of the key points from these videos to find out how much your remember.

The scroll feature can be your best friend or your worst enemy. It can save you hours of production time or increase your production time forcing you to waste time moving around on the screen and loosing your place. Let's get this feature under control and learn the different scroll options to enhance your production workflow.

You have more control over your solo settings than you may be aware. Let's look at the different settings and how you can have the solo features that work best for your production workflow.

Using the Smart tool will be your cornerstone for editing and working within the Pro Tools DAW software. Let me share some tips and techniques that are used everyday by professional engineers.

Creating track presets can save you lots of time and allow you to customize your tracks exactly the way that you want them. We'll look at setting up some single and group track presets so that you can save yourself lots of time and worry.

Join our audio community and get more feedback, insight, and advice on all things audio. This is a great networking opportunity for you to connect with like-minded professionals that are working in the audio industry. You'll be able to ask questions and get answers from the whole community. There will be contests that you can join and win audio gear, plugins, or 1 on 1 mix reviews with one of the engineers that works here at the studio. This is just another perk for signing up and joining this course.