hey guys today's Pro Tools day more specifically Pro Tools controlled a
Pro Tools control it's a really powerful iOS app that allows you control over Pro
Tools and other you can aware media apps all over Wi-Fi you can use it by itself
or with other Yukon hardware such as the s3 the artist transport the artist mix
controllers or with the artist color today I'm going to be using one artist
mix controller and an iPad air running the Pro Tools control app now for me I'm
right-handed so I'm going to keep my iPad on the right flat on its back and
close to the surface I want both of these things to feel like one unit so
that I can do things quickly without having to go to the keyboard and mouse
quite as often now there's definitely a lot of iPad apps out there for
controlling your audio software Pro Tools control does some things that the
other ones can't because it's running on the Yukon protocol all of the other iOS
apps are running on the huy protocol now while there's definitely some out there
with some amazing feature sets Pro Tools Control shines in its own light even if
the thought of mixing on a glass surface makes you lose sleep at night there's a
lot of features in this app that are great for things other than just pushing
around faders let's dig in there's going to be a couple things that you need
before we get going the first one is a qualified iPad there's an up-to-date
list of qualified iPads on Avid's website that said I tested it out on an
old iPad 2 and it worked fine you should be good to go with anything newer than
that the next one is a Wi-Fi network avid recommends running the app on a 5
gigahertz Wi-Fi network because I'm curious I tried it out on a 2.4
gigahertz and I still found the app to be incredibly responsive with low
latency now that being said if you're running on a 2.4 gigahertz network and
you're having problems try a 5 before you give up on the app once you have the
iPad and a Wi-Fi network going you're going to need to downloads the first one
is the yukon software that's available for download on Abbott's website the
next one is the Pro Tools control app which is available on the App Store and
I'm happy to say the price is right it's free just go to the App Store and hit
download over time changes to iOS and the app
could change those requirements so keep an eye on Abbott's website and the
revision notes before you hit download whenever the ipad tells you to before we
get started we're going to want to turn off the multitasking gestures feature in
the settings of the iPad if we don't do this every time that we swipe left or
right to Bank between our tracks we're going to end up changing applications to
do this we're going to go to the settings in our iPad to general and turn
off multitasking gestures there are three key areas to the interface the
first one located at the top of the screen is the tab bar below that we have
the main window which will display either the mixer or tracks view and at
the bottom of the screen we have our toolbar which is used for displaying the
transport or our soft keys in the tab bar we can see the focused application
the track type and layouts button which allow you to filter the type of track
shown on screen and you can also recall custom fader layouts created with an s3
or an artist mix which I'll explain in a little bit to the read of that we have
the share button which you can use to tell all of your friends about the app
the Settings button which has one main setting that controls how your dog
behaves whenever you bank around inside of the app and the universe scroller the
universe scroller is composed of individual rectangles and each
represents a track in the current session the yellow outline tells you the
tracks that are currently shown on screen while the blue one shows you the
track that's currently selected you can swipe left or right on the bar to
navigate between tracks or tap on a track that you would like to view the
track that you tapped will be called the leftmost fader with the next seven
tracks in the session spilling to the right on the bottom of the screen is our
toolbar on the Left we'll see a fader button which allows us to access the
fader for the selected channel no matter where we are on the console or if we're
in the mixer view or the tracks view below that we have the soft key
show/hide button which our view between the transport and the
soft keys and if the soft key button is unlit will see a familiar transport
displayed with the addition of a handy loop playback button on the far right
the mixer view shows a trimmed-down version of our Pro Tools mixer and banks
of 8 faders each fader has a track number and name a fader a level meter
input monitor record solo and mute buttons a pan indicator and an
automation mode indicator the tracks view efficiently displays five rows of
eight track tiles for a total of forty tracks displayed at the time if you have
more than 40 tracks in your session you can swipe down to access additional
tracks or you can use the universe scroller in the tab bar each track tile
displays the track's number and name a level meter and indicators for its
current input monitoring record mute and solo status below the tiles of the track
function buttons we can use these by tapping on a function and then tapping
on a track tile to toggle the status of that function for example we could hit
the input modifier and then put a couple tracks in input we could also record
enable some tracks solo tracks or mute them most things in this app behave the
way that you would want and expect them to there's a couple cool tricks I'm
going to show you that will really help you get the most out of the app let's
start with the mixer view at the top of the track I can change the automation
mode I'm going to put this one in touch hit play and write some volume
automation because the iPad is a multi-touch device we can write
automation across more than one track if we want I'm going to select some more
automation modes across a couple tracks hit play and write some automation
if at anytime I want to return a fader to zero DB I can double tap on that
fader and it'll jump back to unity gain the same applies for the pan knob if I'm
paying left or right I can double tap on the pan er and it will return to the
center you can also use the fader window in the mixer view by tapping fader to
show our selected track one example of where you might want to use this is if
you want to work on the lead vocal but you want to adjust it in relation to
something else on the console so for example we could scroll down to our
vocal tracks using the universe scroller select our lead vocal by tapping on the
track name swipe left on the universe scroller to get back to our keyboards
hit the fader button and now I can adjust my keyboards in relation to my
lead vocal if you want to move the fader window you can do that by tapping on the
track and holding it until the window starts to pulse and then placing it
wherever you like on the screen I like to leave it on the left because I
usually prioritize my faders from left to right and I always know where it'll
be another great feature of this app is that we can still use the modifiers on
our computer keyboard so for example if I was in Pro Tools and I wanted to
record enable all the track's in my session normally I would hold down
option on my computer keyboard and click on record on any one of the tracks now
all of the tracks in my session or record enabled I can also do this with
the app so for example I'm going to hold down option on my computer keyboard I'm
going to make sure that I'm using the record track modifier on the iPad and
tap on any one of the tracks in the session now you can see that I've
recording abled all the tracks on the iPad and on the computer screen the
tracks view is what really sets avid's Pro Tools control app apart from the
rest for me being able to navigate a large session with track tiles is
incredibly fast and the visual feedback that you get from it allows you to know
what's going on where within a matter of a few glances with one swipe I can get
from one end of the console to the other select the track that I want call up its
fader and go to work the organization here was really well thought out we can
use the meters and the status buttons to figure out what's happening pretty quick
and if that's not organized enough for you you can use the track type button at
the top to filter out the type of tracks that you want to find for example I'm
only looking at auxiliary inputs right now this can be really useful if I've
got a whole lot of tracks and I just need to find a reverb return let's talk
about the app banks da W setting as you'll recall there's one important
setting in our settings window when app banks da W is turned on Pro Tools
control will force the da W to follow its track focus when the setting is
turned off the to act independently of each other personally I like leaving the
setting turned on and using tracks for you to quickly fly around my session but
experiment and see what fits your workflow the best speaking of workflow
let's talk about soft keys soft keys are programmable buttons that can perform
one or more functions think of them like shortcuts they're stored by page without
the 12 soft keys per page Pro Tools control comes pre-loaded with 108 soft
keys that covered the most common functions in Pro Tools
for example page two is all of our edit modes and our common edit tools we can
change the edit mode by tapping on the appropriate soft key or change what tool
we have selected if you want to use the smart tool you can tap on two of those
at the same time don't forget we can use our keyboard modifiers along with the
app so if I want to reduce all of my track sizes I could hold down option on
the computer keyboard and hit the track size small soft key another useful one
on this page is the fit all tracks and edit window this put all of my tracks in
micro and fit as many of them in the Edit window as it could now there are a
lot of soft key pages available with a lot of functions you're probably only
going to use a few of them let me show you how to make your own custom soft key
page so you can put your favorites there and get to them quickly to do this go to
the you control icon in the upper right of the computer screen and click on you
control settings then click on the soft keys tab I'm going to go to page 11 and
create a soft key that will bring me back to page 2 where all of those edit
tools were to do that I'm going to go to page scroll down to page 11 double click
on a blank soft key and select page in the upper left
drop down menu over on the right I'm going to click action scroll down the
jump to page and then enter page two now in the Pro Tools control app I can
scroll down to page 11 hit the jump to page soft key and it will bring me back
to page two with all of my edit controls in practice I can make a whole page full
of these on the pages they would send me to I could also have a soft key that
would return me back to this page let's talk about creating soft keys with your
favorite functions I like to create groups a lot so I'm going to go over to
my custom soft key page which is number 11 and show you how to make a soft key
for creating a group to do that I'm going to double click on the next
available soft key go to the drop-down in the upper left and select Yukon
scroll down to groups and hit create edit / mixed group now if I go to page
11 on the pro tools control app I can hit the soft key for create edit mix
group and it will prompt me with a create group dialog box take a few extra
minutes to explore the pre-made soft keys in the app and experiment making
your own as with all things in Pro Tools there's more than one way to do a task
the more that you can customize things to your workflow the faster you'll be
one of the largest benefits to using the pro tools control app is that it runs on
the Yukon protocol this means that it can control any Yukon enabled hardware
or software on the hardware side pro tools control is the perfect companion
to the artist mix that I have here I like to keep the app and tracks view
scroll around the console select a track and as you can see the artist mix
follows the track focus of the app one of the benefits to using an s3 or an
artist mix alongside of the app is the ability to use custom fader layouts a
custom fader layout allows you to lock specific tracks to specific faders on
the control surface now unfortunately you have to have one of these hardware
units to be able to use custom fader layouts but on the bright side being
able to recall and switch between them on the app makes using them much more
efficient than ever before to create a custom fader layout we need
to go to the you control app in the upper right of our computer screen
and click on you control settings the next thing I'm going to want to do is go
over to layouts and store the first slot as blank I'm going to name it and then
hit store now the reason that I want to do that is because we're about to lock
specific tracks to specific faders if I want the surface to behave normally I
can go back and recall the blank layout where no specific tracks are locked to
any faders that means that if I Bank in the app the service will Bank as well
now that that's done let's go over to the assign tab on the Left you'll see a
strip column which shows all of the strips that are available on all of my
services right now I have one artist mix if I had multiple you'd see more strips
available to me on the right you'll see an assigned to column if we click that
you'll see a list of all of the tracks in our current session I typically like
to work with submasters in my session so I have all of my drum tracks going to a
drum sub all of my bass tracks going to a bass sub all the scents going through
its synth sub and so on and so forth so in this fader layout I'm going to
make fader one the drum sub master fader to the bass sub master fader 3 the
acoustic guitar master fader for the synth master fader 5 the bgv master
fader 6 the vocal master now since I have two more faders available if I
don't assign anything to them they're going to behave as normal
that means if I Bank right on the surface they'll just continue to bank
few tracks I don't really want that to happen
so I'm going to make fader number 7 my master fader and then I'm going to make
fader number 8 my lead vocal once I have all of that entered I'm going to go back
over to my layout page it's a slot number 2 and I'm going to call this sub
masters I'll hit store and now back on the iPad we can tap on the track types
layout button tap on layouts and be able to switch between the two custom fader
layouts that we just created you'll notice when I tap on them that
the artist makes updates we're currently on the sub masters custom fader layout
and you'll see that I have my drum master bass acoustic guitar synth
background vocal vocal master master fader and the lead vocal track that I
assigned to fader 8 if I hit Bank you'll notice that the
faders are locked and the service doesn't update and if I go back to the
blank custom fader layout you'll notice that the service does not have any
tracks locked to faders and we can bank normally now here's where things get
crazy if you're not a 1d alw type of guy and you like to sneak around you can
actually use the artist mix and the pro control app while you're doing it for
example I'm going to hit the application button on the artists mix and switch
over to logic you'll notice that the surface and the Pro Tools control app
both updated we even have soft keys that are specific to logic that's right we're
using Pro Tools control to control logic try not to think about it too hard the
main takeaway is that it's pretty cool if you like to use both this works with
heavy hitters like Logic Pro X magic Sequoia Cubase Nuendo digital performer
and even with video editors like avid media composer and Final Cut Pro you can
find a full list on avid support page
there that's better so as you can see Abbott's given us a huge boost in our
workflow with the Pro Tools control app the portability the flexibility with
other applications and the feature set make this one a no-brainer go check it
out in the App Store and until next time have a great Pro Tools session