An Introduction to Pro Tools

Welcome to the first installment of LE Boot Camp, a monthly column dedicated to educating you on the basics of Pro Tools. In this column, we'll be using Pro Tools LE — the version of Pro Tools software that drives Mbox, Digi 001 and Digi ToolBox systems. While Pro Tools LE lacks some features of the Digidesign's high-end TDM systems, PT LE is nevertheless a deep program that lets you create massive tracks on modest budgets. Even Digidesign's freeware program, Pro Tools FREE, is powerful enough to wreak serious sonic havoc.

Pro Tools 101
In this month's column, we're going to create a sample song from scratch and learn some of the program's basic moves. Click the links below to download some practice .wav audio files I've created for this column, or use some of your own.

I'll assume you've already installed Pro Tools LE or Pro Tools FREE on your computer and connected any hardware as detailed in the documentation.

Making It Happen
Click on the Pro Tools icon, wait a few seconds, and voila! Nothing much happens. That's because you must first create a song file with the File menu's New Session command. Give this practice session a name, select a desktop destination, and click return. Don't worry about the other settings for now.

Now you're looking at one of the two Pro Tools work screens, the Edit Window and the Mixer Window. You can choose which is displayed via the pull-down Hide/Show commands in the pull-down Windows menu. Right now, there's mostly white space in Edit Window and gray space in the Mixer Window. Don't worry — they won't be empty for long. Bring the Edit Window (the one with the green numbers on top) to the front.

In Pro Tools, you must create blank tracks before you put sounds on them. Think of it like laying down roads before driving cars over them. Let's make a track using the File/New Track command.

Now Pro Tools asks you how many tracks you want and what kind. Just make one, but switch the Mono tab to Stereo, because the loops I've posted to accompany this workshop are stereo files. Don't touch the Audio Track setting for now — just hit Create.

Now you have a blank track titled "Audio 1." Rename it if you like by double-clicking on the track name. You may also see several columns to the right of the track name. The settings in the pull-down Display/Edit Window Shows menu determines which of these are visible. The only extra column you need to see for now is I/O Views. If it's not there, select it.

Now it's time to make some noise.

Here's how to load an audio file into a session: Go to the Regions List menu (the column at the far right of the Edit Window with the word "Audio" on top). If the column isn't visible, click the double arrowhead in the lower right-hand corner of the screen. Click-hold on the Audio bar and select Import Audio.

The Regions List displays the names of every file in your session. The corresponding column at the far left, meanwhile, lists all your tracks and specifies whether they are displayed in the Edit and Mixer Windows. Un-highlight the name "Audio 1" in the track list and poof! — it disappears. This isn't a big deal for now, but it will be when you're working on songs with many tracks.

Drag/click "Stoopidloop" onto the "Audio 1" track. Place it at bar 1 — as far to the left as you can slide it. It should occupy exactly four bars. Confirm this in the little window directly beneath the song's title bar. The start and end times should be 1|1|000 and 5|1|000, respectively. If they're not, it's probably because the song tempo isn't set to 120. Check the tempo reading in the lower left hand corner of the transport bar. [If the transport isn't visible, select Windows/Show Transport.] Double-click on the tempo indicator, make sure the little orchestra-conductor icon is deselected, and enter "120."

The transport controls operate like those on any tape machine. You can click directly on the controls, or use the spacebar to pause and play the loop. (If the song-position line moves and the counter rolls, but you don't hear anything, revisit your installation documentation and check for stuff like muted computer volume and unplugged headphones.) If the song plays from somewhere after the loop, enter the numbers 1|1|000 on the transport's position locator (the big green numbers) by double-clicking directly on the digits. To stop playback, just flick the space bar again.

Tools Rules
Now let's look at some of the main edit tools, all of which live in the upper left side of the Edit Window beneath the title bar.

The Shuffle/Spot/Slip/Grid buttons determine how the tools behave as you manipulate your regions. Select Slip for now.

The little arrows and waveform icons to the right of these buttons set the size of the edit-screen views. Check it out: Use the left and right arrow buttons to expand and contract the horizontal waveform view. Meanwhile, you can modify the horizontal display via the menu that appears when you click-hold on the ruler-patterned strip immediately to the left of the waveform graphic.
Your six editing tools live to the left of the start/end/length screen. For now, we'll be dealing only with the first four. Let's meet them.

The Zoomer (the little magnifying glass) controls the size of the waveform view. Select it and click the "Stoopidloop" waveform and watch it get bigger. Now click/drag it across the loop. When you release the mouse, the selected area expands to fill the screen. Hold down the Opt key [Ctrl on PCs], and the little plus sign becomes a minus sign. Now the tool works in reverse, zooming out from the waveform graphic.

The Trimmer is your audio hedge clipper. You use it to shave down waveforms from the sides. Try it — chop off a bit of "Stoopidloop," then undo the surgery (Undo resides under the Edit menu).

The Selector tool chooses portions of a track for editing. A selection might consist of many regions, a tiny slice of one, or anything in between. Try grabbing a piece of "Stoopidloop." Then Opt - click (Ctrl - click on PCs) on the Zoomer's magnifying glass icon and watch your selection expand to fit the screen. Opt/Ctrl double-clicking on the same icon lets you view the entire session — a good panic button for when you lose your place on the waveform views. You can also double-click on any region to select it in its entirety.

The hand-looking tool is called the Grabber. Select it and grab the "Stoopidloop" region. Press play. It should now loop automatically. If it plays to the end of the region and continues rolling without looping, make sure Loop Playback is checked on the Operations menu.

More Basic Moves
Another way to make a region play repeatedly is to duplicate it. Select our loop and then make three additional copies using the Edit menu's Duplicate command. Adjust the view so that you can see them all. You should now have four regions stretching from location 1|1|000 to 17|1|000. Select any of them, and it will loop when you press play. You can select multiple regions by shift-clicking, or copy files with the standard Opt/Alt-click-drag move.

Now select one of the regions and mute it using the Edit menu's Mute/Unmute Audio command. Dig how the region takes on a transparent appearance. Repeat the key command to un-mute it. Now try splitting a region in two by clicking at a random spot within a region and then selecting the Edit/Separate Regions command. Note how Pro Tools automatically renames the two segments. Important point: Even though we've duplicated and chopped the loop, the original "Stoopidloop" file in the Audio Files folder hasn't been touched. We've merely instructed Pro Tools to play it back differently.

Let's return to those Shuffle/Spot/Slip/Grid boxes. In Slip mode, you can freely slide regions to the left and right within the track, or separate them at any point. But if you change the setting to Grid, you can only select, separate, and move regions according to the vertical grid lines. You set the resolution of the grid lines with the Grid control in the Edit Window's upper-right-hand corner. Select the coarsest setting, 1 Bar. Choose the Selector tool and repeat that Edit/Separate Regions move. You'll find that now you can only split the regions right on the bar lines. But if you change the Grid setting to half-note, you'll see that you can slice the regions mid-bar. Now rebuild any severed regions by shift-clicking the fragments and choosing the Edit/Heal Separation command.

Multitrack Mayhem
Let's assemble a little multitrack mix. Import my three other loops, or three cool snippets of your own. Retrace your previous steps: Click the Edit/New Track command, but this time specify three stereo audio tracks. Import my other three loops via the Regions List's Import Audio command. Drag each of the new files to the start of one of the new tracks. Shift-click to select all three new arrivals and duplicate them three times. You should now have a 16-measure, four-part arrangement.

Press play. Okay, it isn't very pretty. For starters, you'll probably want to lower the volume of that obnoxious "Debass" track. Do it by click-holding on the track's volume bar. You can also mute and solo tracks with the buttons beneath the individual track names.

Now is a good time to scope out the other Pro Tools workspace, the Mixer Window. Bring it to the foreground via the Windows menu. Here you'll find duplicate sets of mute and solo buttons, plus mixer-style faders. Try dragging them up and down. Go crazy.

As you've probably figured out by now, the Edit Window and Mixer Window controls are somewhat redundant. The main differences: the former lets you view waveform graphics, while the latter has those nifty virtual faders. Some Pro Tools users rarely leave the Edit Window. Others toggle back and forth constantly. And some use two monitors, one for each window.

Finally, return to the Edit Window and try constructing a little arrangement by dragging the sixteen regions around. Mute some, duplicate others, adjust their relative volumes, and so forth. The results might look something like this:

These may not be the most inspiring sounds you've ever heard. (If they are, I'm kind of worried about you.) But they should give you some idea of what it feels like to compose and arrange in the Edit Window.

Next time we'll take on some more advanced editing and arranging moves. Until then, happy zooming, trimming, selecting, and grabbing.