This week’s Ask Joe question is an intriguing one. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the topic, so be sure to leave a comment!
Stephen wrote:Photo by rockmixer
Hey Joe,
I was wondering if it was worth the money to take the classes for Pro Tools Certification and if you did would that help out your chances to find work in this diminishing market? Thanks.
Stephen
If you’re new to Pro Tools and other DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations), you should definitely know how to use groups. I created a video showing you how I use groups in Pro Tools. They can be an invaluable tool and time-saver. Enjoy!
Other videos you may like:
Do you use playlists in Pro Tools? Do you know what they are?
Playlists are very cool and can be quite useful. Basically, each track in Pro Tools can have as many playlists as you want. These playlists are basically different “versions” of that track.
The most common use of playlists is keeping track of takes. Let’s say you’re recording a vocal and you want to record several different takes. You have two options, you can create a new audio track for each take, or you can use playlists.
The way it works is by clicking the drop-down menu on the left-hand side of the track in edit window and selecting “New…”
This week I have a few more reader-submitted questions. As always, if you have a question or two, you’re welcome to submit them via the Ask Joe form.
Photo by eleaf
Frank wrote:
Hey Joe. Looking to buy a wireless guitar system. I have never used one and don’t know much about them. I play alone most of the time. I play a Taylor and a Fender.
Frank.
Yesterday I went through the first four track types in Pro Tools – audio, MIDI, instrument, and aux tracks. Today I want to delve into the mysterious master track, or master fader track.
In a typical Pro Tools session, you’ve got a bunch of audio tracks, a few instrument/MIDI tracks, and a couple aux tracks. The outputs of all these tracks are typically set to “Analog 1-2,” the main stereo outputs of your interface.
Internally, Pro Tools takes all these individual audio signals and combines them into a single pair of outputs. This is called summing.
When all of these tracks are combined, it’s very easy to clip the mix bus. None of the tracks have to even be close to setting off the clip light, but when they’re all summed together, there’s a good chance that clipping is happening underneath the hood.
How do we monitor this? The answer is the master fader.
Quick quiz: How many track types are there in Pro Tools?
Anyone? The correct answer is five. Surprising, huh? For some reason I had this idea in my head that there were more, but as it turns out, you only need five types of tracks to do pretty much anything in Pro Tools - Audio, MIDI, Instrument, Aux, and Master.
I think it’s a good idea to go over each track type, since there tends to be confusion among newer Pro Tools users as to how each track type is to be utilized
If you’ve been around Pro Tools or any DAW for a while, you’ve probably come across the “Solo Safe” function. In this video I explain what it is and give a few examples of how to use it in a session.
What ways do you use solo safe?
Related Videos:
It’s that time again. I’ve got three new questions, all Pro Tools related. (If you have a question, please submit it via the Ask Joe form.) Let’s dive in.
Martin R. wrote:
I have just recently installed Pro Tools 7.3 LE on to my Mac and I have an Iomega hard drive that I was going to use for recording however when I try to change the audio settings from ‘T’ to ‘R’ I get an error message which reads “IOMEGA cannot be designated as an Audio Record volume because it is not a valid audio volume.” Could you tell me what this means and if there is any way to use this hard drive for recording.
Many Thanks
Martin
