Hey guys, in this video we’re going to cover the various plugins available in Pro Tools
First, as well as how to use the mixer view and setup sends so we can mix a song with
this program.
Before continuing, just make sure you’ve checked out the previous videos in this series
so you’re all caught up on what you need to know.
The first thing we need to do is pull up the mixer view.
To do this, press Control and the = keys on your keyboard.
Then use the button to expand the view of the mixer.
On the left side, we have the track view options.
The cloud indicates that this track is deleted from our project, but it’s still saved on
the cloud if we need to retrieve it.
These tracks are greyed out to indicate they aren’t currently in the project.
The circle icon means that the track is displayed.
If we click the circle, that track will become greyed out and hidden from the mixer view,
but it’s still in our project.
This is what we can use to hide a track we want to keep but get it out of the way if
it’s something we won’t really need to work with much.
The colored rectangle is just a color label for the track grouping.
The next icon tells us what kind of track we have.
The green arrow is for an aux track, which also includes click tracks.
The piano is an instrument track, the waveform is an audio track, and the circle logo is
a MIDI cable, so that’s the MIDI track.
Lastly, we have all the track names.
Moving on to the mixer, we first have to choose which controls are displayed.
We can do this with the menu is the bottom left corner.
Things can be checked off to display them, just like we did from the editor view.
You could choose to just show everything, but you’ll likely have to scroll up and
down.
Instead, I usually hide the second bank of inserts, send, and the EQ curve since I just
use an EQ plugin.
The problem with the mixer view is it’s missing the transport to navigate the song.
Of course, you can switch back and forth from the edit view to use this, or you can display
it over the mixer in its own window by pressing the control key and 1 on the numpad, or by
opening it from the Window menu at the top.
To setup a send, the first thing we need to add is an auxiliary track.
We need to make sure this is a stereo track.
This track doesn’t record audio.
It takes an input from audio recorded on different tracks and processes it with some sort of
effect.
This is usually done with reverb.
The audio doesn’t only go to the send though, instead it is split between the send and the
normal Master output.
The advantage of working this way is that the send groups all the tracks together and
processes it with one plugin.
Then you can adjust the balance between all the individual instruments based on the level
that goes to the send, and finally the effect volume by adjusting the fader on the send.
On the send, we need to set the input to a stereo pair bus.
In this case, that will be Bus1-2.
Then on our original track, we click one of the blank slots under sends to add a new send
and select Bus1-2.
After we do that, we can click the send slot we just created to get a few more options.
First we have some buttons at the top.
The SAFE button if for automation safe, and prevents us from writing automation settings
to the send when enabled.
Next is for whether the send is pre or post fader.
By default, the send is post fader, which means that if we lower the fader it also decreases
how much of that track goes to the send.
If we set it to pre fader, it won’t be affected by the fader.
Both of these are useful options, but you need to be aware of what you’re using when
adjusting the levels.
FMP is to link the pan knobs in the send to the channel.
In that case, the knobs in the send are disabled and are controlled by the main panning knob.
Link is used to link the two pan pots together.
When this is enabled, the changes to one pan knob also affect the other, as shown.
When you have the inverse pan button pressed with the pan knobs linked, they move together
but in opposite directions.
Below these buttons, we have the pan knobs, which of course can each be adjusted manually
if we disable the link button.
This panning doesn’t affect the panning of the overall track, just what’s going
to the send.
The panning for the send can be set differently than what goes directly to the master channel.
Last is the fader, which we use to adjust the level going to the send, that way we can
adjust the balance between tracks going to the same send.
Below the sends control we have the inputs and outputs for all our tracks.
We can change the input, just like we did when we were recording.
This also gives us the opportunity to setup a bus instead of a send.
This starts off the same as creating a send.
We go to the Track menu at the top, select New, and add a stereo Aux Input.
On that track, we set the input to Bus 3-4.
This can be any of the pairs here, just choose one that’s not in use on either another
bus or a send.
The difference between a bus and a send is how we configure the original track.
As I said with a send, the signal goes to both the aux tracks to be processed by an
effect, and master channel without the send effects applied.
With a bus, all the signal is going through the bus, and then the master channel, so it’s
one path instead of a split like the send.
You might use a bus like this to group all your drum tracks, so you’ll have the overheads,
snare, kick, and whatever other tracks you have all going to a bus so you can adjust
all their levels together, after you’ve made the kit itself sound balanced.
To get this to work, we change the output of the track we want going to the Bus to the
stereo bus pair that we chose for the input of the aux track.
So now we have our tracks going to that bus and we can edit and control them as a group.
After that, we have some automation tools, but we’ll look at automation in more detail
in the next video.
Then there’s the pan knob to adjust the position in stereo.
The I button turns on input monitoring so that we can hear out track with the effects
applied.
The S is the solo, which makes it so only soloed tracks are heard.
The M is the mute so we can turn off the track.
Then we have the fader to adjust the track level.
At the bottom we have our track name, which we can double click to change.
Below that there is a comments section if we want to add more detailed information.
Lastly, we have the track color label, which helps us to keep things organized.
We can double click that color panel to open it and change it.
I like to color label similar instruments with the same color, so I’ll keep all the
drum tracks the same color, and all the guitars the same color.
The last thing we need to cover is how to apply effects to our track through the mixer.
In Pro Tools, effects are applied using the inserts section.
To apply a plugin, click on one of the blank slots and choose a plugin from the menu.
If we want to change the plugin or remove it, we have to click the left section of the
slot where the dot is.
Clicking the main section brings up or hides this plugin.
Right clicking the main section gives us options to bypass the plugin.
Since there are a lot of plugins that can be used with Pro Tools First, we’ll cover
the most important ones for this video.
We’ll go over you to use equalization, compression and reverb.
Equalization is found under the EQ section.
We’ll be using the EQ3 7-band plugin.
The first thing we need to know about working with plugins in Pro Tools First is a lot of
them have built-in presets that we can use to make specific changes to our sound.
These can be accessed with the drop down menu under the Preset section where it says factory
default.
These presets are a good starting point before we start fine tuning these plugins.
With the equalization, we start with input and output gain controls at the top.
Then we have high and low pass filters.
They each have a frequency they can be set at and a Q for the shape.
Both of these are disabled by default but they can be turned on with the IN button.
The high and low pass filters can also be switched to notch out certain frequencies,
with the Q adjusting the width.
The high and low frequency bands have a Q control for the width, frequency, and gain
knob for reducing or boosting the frequencies.
By default, these both work as a high and low shelf, but they can be changed to a standard
peak.
The low-mid frequencies, mid frequencies, and high mid frequencies all have Q controls,
frequency, and gain just like on any other EQ we would use.
As with many EQ plugins, we can click and drag the various points on the graph to cut
and boost frequencies.
The nice thing about this plugin is it shows the overall EQ applied using the white line,
but there are also colored in sections that show the contribution of the individual frequency
bands.
The next plugin we’ll cover is the compressor.
Once again, there are a few presets we can choose from.
The far left side shows our input, output, and gain reduction meters, with a slider on
the input meter that we can drag up and down to set the threshold at which the compression
is applied.
The first control at the bottoms is for the knee, which sets how gradually the ratio changes
around the threshold.
Increase it for a gradual change, or drop it all the way down for a hard knee compressor
which fully applies the ratio as soon as the level exceeds the threshold.
The attack sets how fast the compressor activates after the threshold is reached and the release
sets how long it takes to deactivate after the level drops back down below the threshold.
The ratio adjusts the amount of compression.
A low ratio only applies a slight amount of gain reduction when past the threshold, but
a high ratio acts as a limiter so everything above the threshold comes down to the threshold.
The gain knob is for output makeup gain and the threshold knob is just another control
for the threshold we saw on the input meter.
In the center we can see the shape on the level response with the input gain on the
bottom and the respective output gain on the side.
The last plugin we’ll cover for this tutorial is D-Verb found under the reverb section.
This plugin allows us to choose between hall, church, plate, room 1, room 2, ambient, and
non-linear for our different types of reverb.
Below that, we switch between small, medium and large reverb sounds, which can further
be adjusted with the pre-delay and decay settings.
The high frequency cut and low pass filter allow us to adjust the frequency response
between a bright and dark reverb.
Finally, the diffusion can change between an echoey and smoother reverb sound.
Thanks for checking out this video on the mixer and plugins available in Pro Tools First.
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