A few more things to know about ProTools LE: Markers and Crash Course Automation Tips, and MIDI control assignments.

Markers make your work flow more efficient and help keep your sessions visually organized. Where it says Markers at the top of your tracks in the edit window, click the triangle “∇” icon to make the ruler appear across the screen. This way you can see the markers that you place down for the different scenes in your movie scoring project. Markers make it easy so see where certain actions or sound effects need to happen. They are also for other editing notes or reminders. You can enter these while your movie plays by pressing ENTER+ENTER …not return+return!!! If you are fast, you can type the name for the marker as the movie plays. By using the key command “decimal point + the marker # on the numeric pad + decimal point“ it brings up the Memory Locations window where you can view all of your markers in a column list. By pressing Command + numeric #5 it brings up the window for the counter options on your markers. You can select to view Bars/Beats, Min/Sec, or Samples. There is a sub-counter as well that lets you view a secondary view with any of those previous 3 options. There is a comments section for typing notes, and a sort by time option that sorts the markers in the list by time. Automation is a fantastic but slippery slope when it comes to mixing. It should really be one of the last things you do with mixing to avoid many issues the main being that it could result in a huge waste of time. Automation is a really cool way to change/manipulate/affect every single available parameter on the inserts/sends, and dynamics and effects plug-ins. Say we have a delay on a track and we want it in one part of a project but not in another. First, in the mix window, you have to click on the processor you want to automate. There’s an AUTO button at the top of the window. Clicking that brings up a list of all of the parameters on one side. If you have multiple inserts and sends, they will appear in the middle and you can select which one you want to enable. Select the parameter you want to automate and click add. This way is good for learning the names of the parameters on the plug-ins you are automating. Once you get to know the names, there is a quicker way to get these parameters enabled. Holding down all three of the modifier keys (control+option+command) and clicking directly on the little green light (dim when automation disabled) by the parameter enables it for automation. Also, control click shows a menu where you can choose “plug in automation enable”. In the edit window, go to where the flashing fader is on the track you want to affect. Click on the bar that ProTools defaults as WAVEFORM. There will be options for volume, pan, mute, and any of the things you enabled. A fader is static, and doesn’t move by itself in a mix. If we want a part turned down every time play a song, automate the volume of the track. Be in smart tool mode to manipulate automation. When you press control, the pencil tool allows you to draw lines and different shapes that are user definable. There’s a drop down menu by the pencil tool that lets you choose from freehand, triangle, square, or random shapes. Parabolic and s-curve are two shapes that I believe only ProTools HD will let you do. By using automation, you can change countless parameters, and it can create some really cool effects without having to use to many tracks. The downside is once you write automation, you are stuck with it until you manually delete it from the automation section. This can make things really complicated, and you want to be sure you are committed to the effect. Press and hold command and you can click to draw in nodes. Drag the node up and down for the effect that you want. Set up a drum track with an EQ in the insert, and follow those steps. Boost the gain on one of the 7 bands and make sure the Q is more of a notch shape. Automate the frequency parameter up and down in Hz on that same band. The resulting effect is a frequency sweep. This is a cool swishing effect that sweeps through, while gaining the frequency range you selected in a linear fashion up and down the frequency spectrum. Very cool!! In drum machine plug-ins, you can automate the envelope of a sound. Attack, Decay, Sustain and Release. These are cool ways for drums to add odd, and rather awesome effects to mixes. Any patch from any synthesizer can be assigned to take place on certain ranges of the keyboard, and wherever you want them to. For this purpose I will talk about Xpand2 in Pro Tools LE. In the mix window of this synthesizer, there are 4 slots called A, B, C, and D. In each of these slots you can have patch of your choice loaded. Each slot can store up to 500 parts or presets in its bank. Each slot has an individual mix, MIDI, arpeggiator, modulation, and effects settings. You can load any four parts in to create a patch. A patch is a multi-layered, complex synth. It is possible to save the combinations you create as patches, and they will be stored in the presets menu. What is cool about this is you can load the patches on the same instrument plug-in on a different Pro Tools system. When assigning parameters to MIDI controllers and the MOD wheel, control-click and select “Learn MIDI CC”. Turning the MODulation wheel that is next to the pitch shift wheel on the controller will manipulate the parameter you have selected to learn MIDI CC. To un-learn the control, control-click again and select the “forget” option. You can use the MOD wheel for the fader, the panoramic potentiometer, FX1, FX2, and the Master volume on the insert. There are smart knobs on the top row that functions for all 4 slots at once (globally), or you can choose individual slots and edit their own smart knob parameters to really blend sounds together. Both FX columns at the bottom have equal options, each containing 3 different categories of effects. There are a handful of reverbs, delays, and modulation effects with choruses, phasers, and flangers. Each slot can have 2 effects at the same time, or just one. Enabling the Learn MIDI CC will put these effects to the MOD wheel for manual use. What is cool is you can record the MOD wheel. This is basically live automation, and you are now using the MOD wheel as its own instrument! For modulation of the slot itself, click on MOD on the right, and you can now change wave types, and where the range of the slot is on the controller. By using the HI/LO function, you can set the slots to being and end on certain keys, or overlap on certain keys. In the arpeggiator, you need to power it on for it to work. You can edit the rate/mode of it by different note values: 8th,, 8th triplets, 16th, 16th triplets just to name a few. The Latch mode endlessly loops the notes that you press until other keys are pressed.