pro tools op

In general, I’m not a huge fan of MIDI. A lot of musicians and analog minded engineers refuse to even utter the word (unless they’re muttering a few expletives with it). But these same engineers probably use a lot of analog gear while mixing and have to resort to writing down recall notes on pieces of paper or text files. In Pro Tools though, MIDI tracks can be a very useful friend. By converting them to “regions” you can create blocks of text that have no character limitations, can be easily resized, copied and moved around.

Until Pro Tools actually comes up with a “notes track” that would allow us to attach JPG’s, this is a pretty handy workaround.

Uses for MIDI tracks that have nothing to do with MIDI
- Recall notes for analog gear
- Lyrics to follow along the audio track
- Notes about playlists and how they were recorded
- Production notes about how a track was made in case you need to open it later and redo it
- Any place you might want a text file to notate something happening at a particular place in a song
- A divider line track to differentiate between groups of instruments in your track list

HOW TO USE IT
1. Create a MIDI Track
2. Change the view from “notes” to “Regions”
3. Arm the track for recording
4. Hit record and create a small region
5. Drag the region to whatever size you want using the Trim tool
6. Click in the region and type the text you need
7. Resize and copy to make more regions and rename as many as you need

BE CAREFUL
- if you copy a region to make a new one, you need to resize it in order to not overwrite the information you typed in the region you copied it from

TIPS & TRICKS

LYRICS

- Create a track called “LYRICS” directly above your vocal track. Type in the lyrics before you track vocals and you will have a much easier time communicating with the vocalist (they’ll think you’re a SO into the project for knowing all the lyrics). You’ll also have an easier time comping, tracking backing vocals and knowing what the song is about.

FORM

- Create a track called “FORM” and make a region block that is exactly as long as your chorus, verse, etc and label them as such. You can enable “All” group and then click on this region to select entire sections of a song without having to use markers or remembering where certain things are. This makes using shuffle mode a lot easier to slide sections of a song around without getting lost
RECALL

- Create a track at very top of the session and label it “RECALL” so that if you want to look at the outboard settings from a particular song you can easily import that track and read what you need. When you’ve finished working on a mix, copy down all the settingsyou’re your compressors, outboard effects and notes for any patching that you’ve done. It’s usually easiest to use one region for each piece of gear so that you can click on that region and see it’s settings very easily.

SPACER TRACKS

- Create any number of MIDI tracks labeled “ ——-“ and put them in between groups. You can hide these tracks so that when you look at your track list on the left side of the screen, it is very quick and easy to see where your groups begin and end. You can also show these tracks in your session, deactivate their outputs so they turn the track grey, and shrink them to the smallest size possible so that they work as group delineators in the Edit window. Unfortunately you can’t hide tracks in the mix window and keep them active in the edit window (yet). You can also use these tracks to write down notes about what mics, preamps and instruments were used on a particular track. You can never have too much documentation… and you never know if somebody wants to go back and redo something, if your song becomes a huge classic hit and people want to know everything about it…

NOTES
- Create a “NOTES” track. Use this for other engineers that might work on the session. Also enter producer, engineer, musician, assistant engineer credits here.