MIDI and Instrument Tracks

Here’s a little info on the menus at the top of pro tools. The FILE menu allows you to create new sessions or load new templates. You can save your sessions, copies of your session, and quitting the program. Importing files is another valuable selection under file. In EDIT you can copy and paste information but it is much better to learn the quick keys. The VIEW menu lets you select what control windows you want to see. You can also view the number of tracks displayed. The TRACKS menu lets you creak and edit tracks, click tracks, instrument tracks. In REGION you can loop, group, rename, use elastic audio properties. EVENT is for all MIDI editing and functions. AUDIOSUITE has all the dynamics and effects processing. OPTIONS lets you select play and record modes. Setup is for hardware and software settings, and the WINDOW menu allows you to bring up different editing windows with the use of key commands and edit the way your transport window looks. They are really important to ensure an efficient workflow. There are a few ways to get MIDI into protools, and have midi tracks as well as audio tracks that were recorded from MIDI. Create 3 tracks in a new session, a MIDI track, aux track, and audio track. On the inserts section of the aux track pick a drum machine instrument plug in. Aux tracks do not generate audio or midi. They are simply a way to route audio to any designation. Instead of setting up the 3 tracks, a single instrument track will do. It can send and receive audio on the same channel and has the ability to route like an audio channel with sends. Set the input on MIDI track to the appropriate instrument. Send the aux track via bus 1 to the audio track and change the audio track’s input to bus 1. Make another set of tracks and put a piano on this time. Record enable the drum track and find the sample you want to use. I recorded a beat earlier this week with just a simple kick snare and hi hat pattern. I could have used Step input, but I didn’t. That would have taken me a little longer, because when I hear beats in my head it is much easier for me to play them than to notate them. I am much more a performer than a composer, but I enjoy both. Its great to compose what I perform! The channel strips in proTools have 10 inserts, 10 sends, an input/output selector, and panning muting soloing, and a fader. On the transport there is a cool wait for note button that if engaged will start recording right as the controller has been pressed. Pro tools also has many templates for different styles of music already set up to save time when creating an ideal session. Ins outs and sends are set up. Name all your tracks when you set up a session to keep things clear and locatable. Quantizing after recording and during recording are both options. Quantize snaps the midi information to grid, and it produces a more perfect sonic rhythm. Looping playback while recording and enabling MIDI merge is good to do when you want to record single parts at a time and go back and record another layer. The key command Option3 allows you to Input Quantize, where you can enable quantize in record mode. Make sure you choose the correct destination track, because you don’t want to quantize on the wrong track in the wrong value. The first assignment of the week was to turn a notated drum groove and piano chord progression into a midi session. I used the same process as I did to make my own little piece of music while working in the lab. It was a 28 measure piece, with a repeat of measures 5-16. We decided to record the drum parts all at the same time and the piano after. We did quantize while we recorded and it pretty much came out locked in the first time around.