Pro Tools for Music Production, Second Edition: Recording, Editing and Mixing

400 Pages·2004·5.45 MB·English

by  Mike Collins

Pro Tools for Music Production

Pro Tools for Music Production
Recording, Editing and Mixing
Second edition
Mike Collins
AMSTERDAM (cid:1) BOSTON (cid:1) HEIDELBERG (cid:1) LONDON (cid:1) NEWYORK (cid:1) OXFORD
PARIS (cid:1) SANDIEGO (cid:1) SANFRANCISCO (cid:1) SINGAPORE (cid:1) SYDNEY (cid:1) TOKYO
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First published 2002
Second edition 2004
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Contents
About the author xv
Acknowledgements xvii
1 Pro Tools – the World’s Leading Digital Audio Workstation 1
Introduction 1
Who this book will appeal to 3
What the book covers 4
2 The Evolution of Pro Tools – a Historical Perspective 6
Introduction 6
How Pro Tools came about – the move to digital 6
The road to Pro Tools 8
The beginnings of Pro Tools 9
Pro Tools III 10
The plug-ins 11
Cubase VST 12
The Yamaha 02R compact digital mixer 12
The ADAT Bridge 13
PCI expansion chassis 13
Twenty-four-bit digital audio 13
Pro Tools|24 14
Pro Tools MIX 14
Hardware controllers 15
Developments for 2000 16
Developments for 2001 16
Developments for 2002 16
Developments for 2003 17
Summary 17
3 Pro Tools TDM Systems 19
Introduction 19
The system 19
Native audio systems versus Pro Tools TDM systems 19
Pro Tools TDM hardware 20
v
vi Contents
Track counts 20
Pro Tools|HD core systems 21
Pro Tools|HD interfaces 21
192 I/O 21
192 Digital I/O 23
96 I/O 24
96i I/O 24
Peripherals 25
PRE 25
SYNC I/O 26
MIDI I/O 26
Legacy interfaces 26
Third-party interfaces 27
Expansion chassis 28
Pro Tools custom keyboard 28
DigiTranslator 2.0 option 28
MachineControl option 28
Avid picture options 29
Avid Mojo 29
Do you need to use a mixer with Pro Tools? 29
Pro Tools TDM software 30
Summary 32
4 The Computer System 33
Introduction 33
What computer should you choose? 33
The Power Mac G5 33
The PCs 34
Computer monitors 35
The Sony VAIO 35
The Apple PowerBook 36
Recommended additional software 36
Software updates 37
Leaving your computer ‘on’ permanently versus switching ‘off’ when you are
not using it 38
Hard drives for Pro Tools 39
Disk requirements and bandwidth 40
Analogue to digital conversion 40
Audio data transfer rates 41
Audio data storage sizes 41
Multichannel audio data transfer rates 41
Audio file size limit 42
Hard disk formatting 42
Disk failure 43
Disk maintenance and repair 43
SCSI interface cards 44
SCSI hard drives 44
IDE/ATA hard drives 45
Firewire hard drives 45
Hard drives summary 46
Contents vii
Backup systems 46
Storage drives 47
DVD-RAM 47
DVD-RW/þRW 48
CD-ROM/CD-R 48
CD-RW 48
Sony AIT 49
DLT 49
Super DLT 49
Exabyte 49
DAT 50
My backup strategy 50
Another backup strategy 50
Mac OSX installations 51
New for OSX 51
Upgrading from OS9 to OSX 51
Disk formatting/partitioning 52
Installing Mac OSX operating system 53
User accounts 53
The Internet connection 55
Software updates 56
Logging in 56
Forgot your password? 56
Pro Tools issues 57
Mac tips 58
Get info 60
Troubleshooting 60
Hardware problems 60
Mac software problems – freezes, foibles and crashes 60
Start-up problems 61
A hard drive problem 62
A true story 62
Repairing disk permissions and disk volumes 63
Battery-backed RAM 64
Zapping the PRAM 64
Unreadable CD 64
More help 65
Summary 65
5 Recording and Editing MIDI 66
MIDI features overview 66
Recording MIDI data 66
Configuring the Apple MIDI setup for Mac OSX 66
Setting up to record MIDI into Pro Tools 68
Recording onto a MIDI track 72
Loop recording MIDI 73
Playing back a recorded MIDI track 74
Assigning multiple destinations to a MIDI track 76
Recording Sysex into Pro Tools 76
How to record audio from an external synthesizer into Pro Tools 77
viii Contents
How to record virtual instruments into Pro Tools 77
How to use Groove Control with Stylus 78
How to record virtual instruments as Audio 81
Editing MIDI data 83
Editing issues 83
Graphic editing 85
Event List editing 87
The MIDI menu 87
Applying grooves 91
Drum patterns 91
Editing notes 93
Working with patterns 96
Summary 102
6 Recording 103
Introduction 103
Digitizing audio 103
Digital audio caveats 105
Practical considerations 106
Things you should know about before recording with Pro Tools 106
Monitoring 107
Drum punch-ins 109
The rulers 109
Edit window view options 110
Meter and tempo 111
Setting the default tempo 112
Manual Tempo mode 113
Recording to a click 113
Setting up a click 113
Destructive Record 115
Playlists 116
Punch-in and -out using pre- and post-roll 118
Voices, channels and tracks 118
Pro Tools|24 MIX systems 119
Pro Tools|HD and HD Accel systems 119
Voiceable tracks 122
QuickPunch 123
How QuickPunch affects the available voice count 124
Loop Recording audio 124
Half-speed recording and playback 125
Recording shortcuts 126
Markers 126
Time stamping 127
Importing tracks from CD into Pro Tools 128
Working on a real recording session 131
Opening a new session 131
AutoSave 134
Recording audio 135
Topping and tailing 136
Naming audio files 138
Contents ix
Importing audio 138
A quick edit 141
Setting up markers 142
Using Identify Beat to create a tempo map 144
Inserting Bar|Beat Markers 147
Dragging Bar|Beat Markers 150
Editing Bar|Beat Markers 150
Why not Beat Detective? 151
Pitch shifting to suit a particular vocalist 151
A basic synthesizer tracking session 152
Overdubbing piano, guitar, bass and vocals 154
Summary 157
7 Editing 158
Introduction 158
Edit window features 158
Edit window set-up 159
Markers window set-up 160
Scrolling options 162
Playback cursor locator 163
Zooming and navigation 164
Keyboard commands and shortcuts 165
The Edit tools 166
Zoom tool 166
Trim tool 166
Selector tool 167
Grabber tool 167
Smart tool 167
Scrub tool 167
Pencil tool 168
The Transport window 168
Crossfades 169
Auto fade-in and fade-out 169
Editing accuracy 170
Tab to transients 171
Editing regions 173
Grid modes 174
Time Compression/Expansion edits 175
Linked selections 177
Beat Detective 178
Beat Detective basic operation 180
Practical editing techniques 180
Fixing a note or chord played late 180
Editing vocals 183
Zero crossing edits 185
Editing before the downbeat 186
Arranging sections 189
Using playlists 190
Spot mode and time stamping 192
Summary 194