Producing With Pro Tools

Let’s say you’re done working on a Pro Tools session and you want to archive it. That is, you want to put all of (and ONLY) the necessary files for the session all in one tightly-packed folder. Here are the steps to follow:

1. Delete Unused Playlists. Go to any audio track in your session and choose “Delete Unused…” from the playlist menu on the track. The Delete Unused Playlist dialog will open. Highlight all of the playlists in that list (as in Figure 1) and click Delete. This will eliminate any playlists that are not visible in the Edit window… any playlist that is shown on screen and is playing back will not be deleted.

Figure 1. Delete Unused Playlists. Select “Delete Unused” from the playlist menu, and a window with all of the unused playlists will open. Select them all and click “Delete.”

2. Remove Unused Regions. From the Regions list pop-up menu, choose Select > Unused. Any regions that are not referenced by any track or playlist in your session will become highlighted.

3. Clear Regions. From the Regions list pop-up, choose Clear. The Clear Regions window will open, as in Figure 2. Choose “Remove” to remove the unused regions from the session, or “Delete” to permanently erase the files from your hard drive. Whether you choose “”Remove” or “Delete” will not affect the size of your archived session, BUT choosing “Delete” will erase the unused audio files from your hard drive PERMANENTLY. Only choose “Delete” if you’re trying to clean up your hard drive.

Figure 2. Clear Regions. Removing unused regions from a session can make archiving a much faster process while also using up less hard drive space.

4. Compacting (this is an optional step). Compacting deletes unused portions of audio files to conserve disk space. Although it can save hard drive space, be warned. Compacting is a destructive command. It permanently changes the original audio file and cannot be undone. Thus, I would only use this step if you need the archived file to be as small as possible. Otherwise, skip this step.

5. Save Copy In. Choose File > Save Copy In and the dialog in Figure 3 will open. Check off all the items that you want to include in the archive (most importantly, All Audio Files). Be sure to check “Enforce Mac/PC Compatibility” if you’re archiving to a version of Pro Tools before version 7.X. The Save Copy In command is great because it creates a duplicate copy of everything that’s included in the session, including audio files, fade files, plug-in settings, and movie/video files. All of the copied files are put together in one folder. Thus, if you have files spread out all over different drives, this is the best option for bringing all of those files together for archiving. You can also save your session to be compatible with an earlier version of Pro Tools, if so desired. Since this command will copy everything involved with your session, it may take some time to process.

Figure 3. The Save Copy In Window. Always check the Enforce Mac/PC compatibility box if archiving the session to anything earlier than Pro Tools version 7.X.

You can now store this tightly-packed folder on a hard drive, DVD or other storage medium. I recommend making a couple of copies of that folder and saving the copies on different storage mediums (e.g., one copy on a hard drive, one copy on a DVD).

Happy Archiving!

As you know, I’m an avid Pro Tools user. Aside from teaching about it, writing about it, and using it daily in my studio, I also utilize it on stage with my band. Pro Tools happens to suit my band very well in fact. Here’s my setup and what we do…

Equipment List:
- PowerMac G4 laptop – OS 10.4.9, 1.5GB RAM
- M-audio Firewire 1814 interface with Pro Tools M-Powered 7.4 software
- Glyph GT050 hard drive, mounted in a road case
- Headphones and cables (2 firewire, 1 computer power, 1 hard drive power, and 1 instrument)
- iLok
- Power strip (plug the computer and hard drive power cables into this… note that the 1814 should NOT be plugged into power, as it gets enough power from the computer via the firewire cable)

The computer is connected to the Glyph drive via firewire, which is connected to the 1814, also via firewire. (You should always connect a firewire hard drive directly to the computer and connect the interface to the hard drive for optimal performance.) I run an instrument cable from output 4 on the 1814 to either a keyboard amp or a DI for the live sound engineer to mix (usually both).

In Pro Tools, we have various backing tracks for each song. This could include one or all of the following: drum loops, synths, strings, and extra guitars. And, before we added a bass player to the band lineup, I recorded the bass lines and sent them out a separate output to a bass amp on stage.

I run one Pro Tools session with all songs that we might play in the set all within that one session. Being the drummer, I play with a click track (and all the backing tracks) in my headphones. I must say that having the backing tracks in my headphones makes the love shows even more enjoyable as I’m always able to hear them, regardless of the onstage mix.

Although this setup doesn’t give us much flexibility in altering the song structure or improvising during a gig, it does afford us many other benefits, like having solid tempos that we know work well for the songs, being able to sync up delay pedals easily, and having intros, outros, and various parts within songs that we can’t reproduce otherwise. And, it makes for an even more full sound for the audience. Potentially, it could also enable us to run our own synchronized light show using MIDI, but we haven’t gotten into that… yet.

My band, formerly called “The Bleedin Bleedins,” is changing its name to “midatlantic” and will have a new record coming out in September. Check out www.midatlantictheband.com and www.myspace.com/midatlantictheband for music and band info if you’re interested.

I’m sold. I’m a fan of Transfuser. I took it for a test drive over the past few days. I listened to almost all of the sampled sounds and loops and played with a lot of the buttons and features. Personally, for the music that I’m making now, I don’t know that I’ll use all of the beat cutting tools, but I was digging on everything else.

I think what I liked best was how easy and intuitive it was for me to use. I was playing with it and making music within the first minute of putting it on a stereo instrument track in PT. That said, its also a deep instrument with loads of parameters to play with… many of which I haven’t even tried yet, but I know they’re there if I want them.

As is, the library of sounds in this preview version is pretty small (just over 200MB). But, the full release promises over 2GB of sounds and loops. I like what I’ve heard already, so I can’t wait to hear what else they give us. I think I will probably use this instrument in a LOT of tracks that I produce in the near future.

Here’s a portion of a downtempo track that I came up with using only Transfuser loops and sounds. Enjoy.

Franzfuser MP3

Hi Folks. Digidesign has announced a new virtual instrument that looks totally cool… Transfuser. It’s a “real-time loop, phrase, and groove creation workstation” and looks like an awesome tool for working on electronic, dance, and hiphop music. Digi’s got a free trial download of it with 200MB of sounds available now (the full product will have over 2GB of sounds/loops).

There are a couple of demo videos on Digi’s site… check them out here:

LINK TO TRANSFUSER

From the looks of it, Transfuser might be really easy to integrate into some of the M-audio MIDI instruments, such as the Axiom line, Trigger Finger, and even the Xponent with Torq because of its ability to map effects to knobs and samples to pads. As I’m on vacation at the moment, I have yet to download and play with it, but if any of you do, please feel free to post your comments here to this blog. I’d certainly be curious here what you think. And if you have some suggestions on things to fix, I can pass those along to Digidesign too.

NAMM – the winter wonderland of music gear. I’ve been going to NAMM for 5 years now and I must say that this year’s show was the most uneventful yet, in terms of being blown away by new gear offerings. However, there was one shining exception to the last sentence… Spectrasonic’s new Omnisphere synth module. That thing blew me away. I watched the demo 3 times. I was at the Spectrasonics booth so much that I ended up on their Omnisphere promo video several times. Check out that video here.

I also interviewed Diego Stocco, one of the developers for Omnisphere as well as a friend of mine from NAMM years past. I’ll post my interview with him and his demo of Omnisphere in a separate post here as soon as the video gets edited.

While at NAMM, I filmed interviews with several of my favorite manufacturers… and had some of their reps talk about their new gear.

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By the way, the background music to this video is a new song from my band… visit us on Myspace by clicking here.

Hi Folks! Hope you’re enjoying the new year so far.

I’m about to enjoy it even more than I already have been. I’ll be in Anaheim for the annual NAMM show this coming weekend. If you’re going to the show and want to meet up, email me at dfranz@berkleemusic.com and we’ll try to work it out. I should be there all day on Friday and Saturday.

If you don’t know what NAMM is, check out www.namm.org. NAMM is the National Association of Music Merchants and the show consists of every musical gear manufacturer showing off their wares. Its like a giant toy store for musicians. Plus, tons of famous artists make appearances there to hype the products that they endorse. And there are parties. But, mostly its about the gear… tons and tons of the latest coolest gadgets, instruments, and anything else music-related.

I’ll post some more blog updates after the show about the cool new gear I saw.

Just wanted to let everyone know that the new Berkleemusic.com online semester starts today, Jan 7th. You can still sign up for classes. I’ll be teaching sections of three different courses:

1. ‘Producing with Pro Tools’ - a class based on my new book (Producing in the Home Studio with Pro Tools, 3rd Edition) where we focus on recording, editing, and MIDI production techniques, for novices to intermediate Pro Tools users. Here, we do many real-world projects using Pro Tools for music creation and creative editing using audio and MIDI.

2. ‘Recording and Producing in the Home Studio’ - a class where you start with a demo song (your own or a clients) and over 12 weeks we take that song and produce it… in pre-production, we examine the song structure, lyrics, etc and rework anything that should be reworked… in the production phase, we re-record the tracks… and in the post-production phase, we edit, mix, and master the song. By the 12th week, we will have taken your demo and turned it into a fully produced and mastered recording.

3. ‘Pro Tools 101′ - the Pro Tools beginners class, designed by Digidesign. A guided start to learning the basics.

Get the most out of your studio equipment and new holiday toys. Go to www.berkleemusic.com to check out these courses and sign up to join me in class.

Want to help Pro Tools and your MIDI controller interact really smoothly when using a MIDI Learn-enabled virtual instrument? For example, want to use a knob on your M-Audio Axiom to adjust a frequency filter on an XPand! synth patch? Use the MIDI Learn function.

In all A.I.R. products from Digidesign (Xpand!, Hybrid, Strike, Velvet, and Structure) and a few third-party virtual instruments like Stylus RMX, you can use the MIDI Learn function to map the knobs and sliders on your MIDI controller to the parameter knobs and sliders in a virtual instrument.

Check it out. First, open up a virtual instrument, e.g., Digidesign’s free XPand! plug-in. Then, right-click or Control-click on a parameter that you’d like to have control over and choose “Learn” from the menu, as in the screen shot. Turn the knob, slider, etc. on your MIDI controller and the parameter in the virtual instrument will follow your movements. The continuous controller number that you assign to the parameter (e.g., CC25) is displayed in the menu. You can change the assignment using the “Assign” menu item or delete the assignment by choosing the “Forget” menu item.

Pro Tools will remember and enable you to use that knob, slider, etc, on the controller to adjust the parameter until you change the instrument’s patch, take that virtual instrument off of the track, or close the session without saving. If you save the session, Pro Tools will remember the controller/parameter map for the next time you open the session. However, if you change the instrument’s patch, you’ll lose the map. So, I recommend saving the patch once you’ve got the controller/parameter map assignment, using the “Save Settings” or “Save Settings As” commands from the plug-in menu, as in the screen shot below.

As of now, I don’t think there’s a way to copy a controller/parameter map from one patch in an instrument to another (which would be totally awesome), but if I’m wrong, maybe one of you can tell me how… I’d be much obliged.

OK, so I admit that I don’t use DigiBase (Digidesign’s built-in database browser in Pro Tools) all that much. Seems like I’m not alone in this fact. However, I did just learn about a couple of features that will make reaching for DigiBase a lot more frequent for me.

1. Unmounting Firewire drives. It always bothered me that I couldn’t unmount/eject a hard drive using my operating system as long as Pro Tools was running. Well, there’s a way around that. From within Pro Tools, choose Window > Workspace to open the Workspace browser window. Click once on the hard drive that you want to unmount/eject so that the name of the drive is selected. Click the little toolbox button in the upper left corner of the Workspace browser window, and you’ll get the menu shown in the figure below. Choose “Unmount” and there you go! That’s weird, wild schtuff.

So many people have complained about how Pro Tools requires you to use an interface with the software. Well, that still is the case, but the Mbox2 Micro makes it a lot less bulky to carry one with you.

Throw this in your pocket with your iLok key. Take your laptop with Pro Tools LE anywhere. Edit drums on the plane or mix on your roofdeck while looking at the stars. This is smallest interface I’ve seen… so minimal it only has an 1/8 inch jack on it for headphones and a volume wheel. No inputs on this thing. When I get one, I’ll post another update. (It’ll be out mid-November.)