Producing With Pro Tools

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.