Producing With Pro Tools

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.

One of things that I’ve witnessed so many times is Pro Tools users who upgrade to the latest operating system, only to find out that the upgrade is not compatible with Pro Tools. Then, they have to reinstall their previous operating system, often taking many hours to do so. Yes, the latest features of the most recent operating system may be attractive, but have patience young padawans!

We’ve all been looking forward to Pro Tools becoming compatible with Leopard (Apple’s OS 10.5), and Digidesign has released the first step… Pro Tools HD (not LE, M-powered, or Academic) is compatible with Leopard. But not just any Leopard. You can only use Pro Tools 7.4.1 with OS 10.5.1. Click here for more details on Digidesign’s site.

Please, please, please… save yourself some hassles. Turn off the automatic software update feature on your Mac. And, wait to upgrade your OS until its officially supported by Digidesign. You’ll avoid a lot of headaches and be much more productive.

Cheers!

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.)

And just when I thought Digidesign was going to “force” me to buy a D-Command mixing console… my patience has paid off. This past weekend at AES in NYC, Digidesign showed the new C|24, the replacement for the long-toothed Control|24. It looks pretty sharp and sleek, and brings tons of the D-Command style to the new design.

Here are a few of the features:
- 24 bankable channel strips with touch-sensitive, motorized faders
- 16 mic/line/DI preamps (we’ll see what they sound like)
- 8 x 2 stereo line mixer
- 5.1 surround analog monitor section (cool!)
- talkback mic and inputs for remote talkback and listenback
- tons and tons of buttons – mute, solo, select, input, record, EQ, dynamics, inserts, sends, and automation

It won’t be shipping for a few weeks, but I think I know what I’m getting for Christmas.

OK, Pro Tools 7.4 is just around the corner… looking like November release…and I’ll tell ya it’s got some cool new features for sure. Elastic Time. Nice. It’s pretty slick. And from what I could tell on the AES showroom floor, it sounds pretty good too.

Elastic Time is several time compression/expansion algorithms that enable real-time elasticity of audio regions. You can change the tempo and timing of any audio file… but that’s not new, except that you can do it in real-time now. You can audition audio files from Digibase and have them playback in sync with the session before importing them. When you do import them, they automatically conform to the session tempo.

But the coolest part is that you can apply quantization to the audio files VERY easily and you can use Warp track view and Warp markers to really mess up the timing/tempo of the audio files.

The Identify Beat command and Beat Detective will have MUCH less use now. Pro Tools has brought some of the best features of Ableton Live in and gave them their own Digi spin. I think it’ll be really powerful. I can’t wait to use it.

I’ve been using a ton of instrument plug-ins lately… and I feel like I have an addiction to them. I want to get all the ones that are available for Pro Tools. I’ve been very impressed with the stuff that Digidesign has put out under it’s A.I.R. division, including Xpand!, Hybrid, Velvet, Strike, and Structure. If you don’t have any of these, definitely get your hands on Xpand! It’s free and its really got some great sounds. There’s also a free version of Structure. Granted, Structure Free is pretty limited, but you’ll get a taste at least. If you’re an electric piano, Rhodes, or Wurli player, I highly recommend the Velvet plug. There’s something about that instrument that every time I play it, something cool comes out… either a new song idea, or a new part to the song I’m working on.

Digidesign is offering a boxed set of their A.I.R. virtual instruments - click here to check it out

What are you favorite instruments and why? One of my personal favs these days is Access Indigo. Although its been around for a while, its so robust, easy to use, and has so many cool presets that its hard to beat as my first call synth. For the music I make with my band, the arpeggiator on that plug-in rules. And, I CANNOT WAIT until Spectrasonics finally gets the Intel Mac updates for Atmosphere and Trilogy. I want to use those natively in Pro Tools without the VST wrapper. I’ve heard they’re close to releasing them. Go to http://www.spectrasonics.net/updates/index.php to check.

Talk to me about your favorite instrument plugs…

Who’s going to AES in New York? I will most likely be there, at least for Saturday and Sunday (Oct 6 & 7). I’ve been to AES many times over the past few years, and each time I go I have a blast. After spending the day learning about all the cool new stuff coming out, I usually end up at some crazy studio party. Man, there are some stories… the best one involves jello shots, but we won’t go there in this blog.

If you are going to AES and want to meet up, let me know. I usually spend a lot of time at… yeah, you guessed it… the Digidesign/M-Audio booth. Ask for me there, or if there’s enough interest, we can set up a specific meeting point. I’d love to meet up with other cool Pro Tools users and studio owners.

Welcome back to Producing with Pro Tools. Yesterday I got a call from my friends at Digidesign to do column for their next DigiZine (coming out in January). I wrote for them for several years and then took a short break, conveniently timed while I was working on the latest edition of my Pro Tools book. Anyway, now I’m back.

Who reads DigiZine? Anyone? Do you find it helpful? I’d love to know your opinions about it. Dusty DiMurcio, a good friend of mine at Digi, is the editor in chief and I think the latest version online is pretty rad. It’s even got page turning sound effects. Check it out here and let me know your opinion:

http://www.digidesign.com/index.cfm?navid=6&langid=100&

Cheers.

df

Hi Folks. Welcome to the Producing with Pro Tools blog! I’m David Franz and I’ve started this blog to discuss anything related to using Pro Tools for producing, recording, editing, mixing, and mastering in home, project, and commercial pro studios.

I’ve been using Pro Tools for quite some time now and, as you may have noticed from the links on this page, I’ve also been teaching about it through Berklee College of Music’s online school. I wrote the first book (besides the software manual J) in cahoots with Digidesign and Berklee back in 2000-2001, when the Digi 001 first appeared. My book is now in its third edition, updated for Pro Tools 7.3.

Anyway, this blog exists for you. I’m here to share some knowledge and discuss anything related to producing music with Pro Tools. Please feel free to post a comment, ask a question, or just follow along… and if you’re so inspired, check out the links to my books, online classes, and studio on the right. I’m glad you’re here and I hope you check back in regularly.

Cheers.

df