Naming and colour‑coding your buses will help you identify signal paths at a glance.
Organising your Pro Tools sessions will help you work faster and more efficiently.
Many of us put a lot of effort into learning how to get around our DAW of choice quickly. Encyclopaedic knowledge of keyboard shortcuts, EuCon control surfaces and Stream Decks with custom SoundFlow macros all help propel us towards power user status, but the biggest gains in productivity are made before we hit Play, by making each session a comfortable and familiar place to be. In this month’s column we’ll look at some standard advice, and also at how some of the newer features introduced to Pro Tools can help with session navigation.
What’s In A Name?
We can’t discuss any of this without first talking about naming everything. If you are organised when you create your Pro Tools sessions, this will probably have already been done, but if you’re in the creative flow during a writing session you might not want to interrupt things with housekeeping. If you are recording your own material you’re probably naming tracks as you go; and because the files and subsequent clips inherit their names from the track on which the were recorded, the link between audio file, clip and track is consistent by default. However, if you drag a clip from the clips list onto an existing track, you’ll break the link between track name, clip name and file name.
If you’re importing audio that hasn’t been helpfully named, the Import Audio window lets you audition files before bringing them into your session.
A common way you can end up with unhelpfully named tracks is by using the (otherwise very useful) double‑click track‑creation method. If you don’t know it, here’s how it works: double‑click some clear space below the bottom track in the Edit window, or to the right in the Mix window, and you’ll create an new track of the same type and width as the last created track. You can create audio, aux, instrument and master tracks using modifiers, and if you use combinations of modifiers you can create multiple tracks of different types simultaneously. For example, hold Command, Control, Option or Shift while double‑clicking to create, respectively, an audio, aux instrument or master track.
Returning to the link, or lack thereof, between track, clip and file names in your session, giving clips custom names can be very useful: just right‑click in the timeline or clips list to rename. It doesn’t matter what name you choose as long as it’s descriptive, but the most common issue we face around naming of tracks and clips is when we’re faced with multiple tracks and clips all called some variation of ‘Audio’. This is a laborious problem to fix — and one I’d really like to see some clever AI help with. Scanning a folder of audio files and having a first pass at naming the contents ‘Bass’, ‘Kick’, ‘Female Vocals’ and so on would really speed this process up. Unless someone has already invented this AI tool and I just haven’t yet come across it, the only alternative at present is to manually check the contents and name things yourself, either before you bring files into Pro Tools, or when you have them in your session.
On The Way In
I’m of the opinion that organising at ingest is the best way. If you only have a few files to deal with, the Import Audio dialogue has a useful Play button, allowing a file’s contents to be verified. If you have more files to manage, the Workspace Browser allows rapid auditioning of files by using the space bar to start and stop playback and the up and down arrows to jump from file to file. There’s even a waveform display (once the files have been indexed), which is invaluable when you have many files that start with significant portions of silence.
If you need to import multiple audio files, the Workspace Browser lets you audition them quickly using the arrow keys and space bar, and even shows you a waveform overview of the audio file.
If you prefer to import first, or you are tidying up an existing session, the X‑OR Solo mode (Options / Solo Mode) is very useful for scanning through multiple audio files. Soloing a new track in this mode cancels the previous solo, so you can audition one at a time. It’s also useful to know that you can audition audio directly from the clips list without bringing the clip onto the timeline, by Option/Alt‑clicking and holding the clip in the list. The problem with this technique is that the clip plays from the beginning without any waveform overview, so if you have a clip that starts with silence, you can be left waiting to find out what you have.
Path Finding
It’s not just clips and files that benefit from being logically named: naming your inputs, outputs and (most importantly) buses is essential. You might well remember that Bus 1 is headphones and Bus 3 is a stereo delay when you set it up, but when you return to the session after several months, all bets are off. Luckily it’s quick and easy to rename paths from the I/O Setup window, or alternatively from the Mix or Edit windows. Just right‑click.
The ability to use colour to identify paths in the I/O Setup window is a relatively new addition to Pro Tools and one of the most useful day‑to‑day UI tweaks I can remember. Being able to identify paths and to quickly pick out internal routing within a session using colour, and then garner specifics from custom labels, takes much of the guesswork out of navigating an unfamiliar session. Definitely worth investigating.
Most people develop a system for colouring related groups of tracks, and it really doesn’t matter what colours you choose as long as they make sense to you and you keep things consistent between sessions.
Colour is, of course, also invaluable in identifying tracks. Most people develop a system for colouring related groups of tracks, and it really doesn’t matter what colours you choose as long as they make sense to you and you keep things consistent between sessions. My preferences are to leave masters, auxiliary returns and folders with their default colours, and use colour to denote instruments. The specifics in my case are based on often silly but memorable associations, like drums in brown because drums are made of wood (lots of instruments are, but I chose drums), bass is deep blue because it makes deep sounds, lead vocal is shocking pink because it’s the most attention‑seeking colour... you get the idea!
Track order is even more important for navigation. For band recordings, tracks typically start with drums, through bass, guitar and keys to vocals and effects, but you can do whatever works for you. For sessions that are more electronic in nature, do what works for you, but create a default layout and you’ll always know where you are.
On Your Marks
With tracks in order, named and coloured, are there any other tips for a user‑friendly session?
I’d say an essential one is making useful markers. Until recently, marking out the sections of the song using Memory Locations, and keeping a consistent approach between sessions, was the way forward. I’ve always reserved the first 20 Memory Locations for marking out the song, so marker 1 is the beginning of the song and sections are marked out from there. Markers from 20 upwards would be for track show/hides.
Things have changed a lot thanks to recent updates to the markers system, with the introduction of up to five independent marker rulers and a separate system of track markers making things much more flexible. The use of colour has been introduced to markers as well, which makes things easier to take in at a glance, but the big change for me is the ability to have a dedicated marker ruler for marking out sections and an additional ruler for comments. The filtering in the marker rulers makes management and navigation much more flexible than before. Do check out what’s changed.
Rather than navigating using a personalised system of marker numbers accessed using ‘period‑number‑period’ shortcuts on the number pad, these days I rely more and more on hitting Tab to advance from marker to marker (with Option+Tab to move backwards), and Cmd+Opt+Ctrl+P or ; to move the insertion point from the timeline up into the marker rulers. Once the insertion point is in the marker rulers, I can then simply move between the marker rulers. It’s simpler, faster and for all but the most complex sessions, it’s enough.
The way to take the work out of getting familiar with Pro Tools sessions is to make them as similar as possible to each other. By labelling, colouring and naming everything you’re not only making life easier for yourself today, but also for next time you come back to that session, and for anyone you share that session with in the future.