Tracktion Waveform is a free fully featured digital audio workstation.
This program was known only as Tracktion in the past, but now there are both free and
paid versions of Waveform, which was the previous paid software.
This software is used to record audio and MIDI, mix songs, and has a bunch of plugins
for editing.
We’ll go over everything that’s included, particularly in the free version, to get you
started making music with this software.
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To get started, go to Tracktion’s website and download Waveform.
This is Waveform 11, and it’s the newest version.
It’s very similar to the previous digital audio workstations Tracktion has released
in the past, and we’ve done videos on those on the channel.
Create an account on the website and sign in to download the software.
Make sure you remember the username and password that you used to login.
Waveform will require you to login the first time you start up the program to activate
it, even though you’re using the free version, and you’ll need this login information to
get it out of demo mode.
You can choose either the free version or the pro version.
The pro version has a few more features, but most people will be ok with the free version.
For information on the differences, they make a comparison table available on the website.
Install the program from your downloads folder and launch it to get started.
Let’s start by getting all are settings done.
Switch to the settings panel at the top left.
The first setting is for appearance, which just changes how everything looks.
We don’t really have to make any adjustments to this, since it won’t affect how the program
functions.
Next we have Audio Devices.
If you’re on a Windows computer, make sure to set the audio device type to ASIO, then
select your audio interface, that way all the inputs from your audio interface are available
and low latency.
If your audio interface doesn’t have a driver, or you’re using the built in sound from
your computer, check out the ASIO4ALL driver and we did a separate video on how to use
that on this channel.
For my audio interface, I’m using a Focusrite Scarlett 18i20.
This is a rackmountable USB audio interface with 8 inputs and outputs, plus the option
for expansion to 8 more.
It’s a great all-round audio interface for the home studio, so check out our video review
on the channel or the links in the video description to get one for yourself.
Control surfaces will allow us to setup a MIDI controller to adjust things like volume
and panning, and plugin controls over that MIDI controller.
We’ll look at this again later in this series in our video on automation and control surfaces.
Downloads lets us download and install additional content from Tracktion that we may have purchased.
If you paid for an upgraded package of Waveform, you may also get some additional synthesizers
and plugins that can be downloaded from here.
File locations is where we tell Waveform where we have all our loops and plugins stored on
our computer.
In my case, I have separate folders for all my plugins, since I do a lot of videos with
various digital audio workstations and I want to keep them separate.
Select the folder if you’ve installed any extra plugins.
If you’re just working with the plugins that come with Waveform, you can skip this
step.
We don’t need to go through every setting to get started, so let’s just skip down
to MIDI devices.
Here we’ll see all the MIDI devices connected to our computer.
Click on them to check them off in green and enable the ones you want to use with the software.
We’ll come back to using MIDI in a future video.
Finally, the last panel shows us what plugins have been found on our computer.
That’s basically all the settings we need to cover now.
Switch back to Projects at the top left.
This is the start screen we get when we first run Tracktion Waveform.
We can click on our previous projects to open them from here.
In the bottom left or open a new project in the bottom left.
Type a name for the project, choose where it’s being saved on the computer, and choose
a template.
I usually just use a Default template, then manage it on my own from there after.
Now we’re in our project.
Tracktion Waveform has this interesting one window design, where everything mostly stays
in a single window, except for some plugins, and then you’re not constantly switching
windows or view modes, such as from a mixer view to a tracks view.
Before we get to any of the features, we should know that there’s an indicator in the top
right that shows us whatever our mouse is over, so we know what that button is for.
Refer to this if there’s something unfamiliar in the program that you need to know about.
The left panel of Waveform has a few sections for Files, Search, Tracks, and Markers.
Files is a File browser for our hard drive, allowing us to drag things and import them
into the project.
Search can be used to search for samples and loops that have been added to Waveform, based
on some tags that are saved with them.
Tracks allows us to disable and hide tracks.
Disabled tracks don’t play and are hidden.
Hidden tracks will still play but are not displayed, so they don’t take up space on
our screen.
Last, we have Markers.
We can see the beats and bars markers and the absolute time markers.
There’s even an indicator that tells us what type of marker it is.
Let’s start with the bottom section the way it is here, because then we’ll expand
the panel and look at the rest of the controls as we go along.
The bottom left has the expand button to make the bottom panel bigger.
This will open the center panel in the bottom that will be where we control everything from
later.
Leave this closed for now as we talk about more settings, but we’ll expand it after
again.
The menu button controls things like saving the project, opening the project, and importing
and exporting files.
This is basically like the File menu that you would see with a lot of different programs,
it’s just laid out differently.
Just to the right of this, we have the Undo and Redo buttons.
Then last we have the panel that will focus on whatever we’re using, whether it’s
a track, marker, tempo setting or whatever else.
This is the panel that will be in the bottom center when we expand it later.
Now we’re going to look at the next 8 buttons in this set, which are some of the project
setting buttons.
The top left button is the Loop button.
This turns looping on and off.
We’ll see at the top of the tracks along the timeline, there’s a little blue bar
at the beginning.
We can drag the start and end indicators to where we want to loop to start and stop.
This sets the loop region.
When the looping button is turned on, the project will play and loop this region.
When it’s off, it will ignore it and just keep playing past the loop region.
The next button is for snapping.
Snapping will snap a clip to the project beats and bars when we move or trim it.
Scroll toggle, when enabled, causes the tracks and timeline window to scroll along the project
when the marker reaches the end of the window.
If we turn it off, the window will stay at the time where we started and the time indicator
will scroll past the edge of the window.
If we turn it on, it will scroll with the time indicator.
The button that looks like a MIDI cable is the MIDI learn button.
We’ll come back to this when using control surfaces.
The bottom left button turns on the metronome so we can hear a click track to play in time
with the project.
If we’re not trying to play with the project time, we can just disable this and keep our
own time.
This is really helpful when using MIDI in a project, since MIDI basically has to lock
to the project’s beats and bar timing for it to work and be edited properly, so we need
to play along with the metronome.
The lock button locks automation settings to clips instead of tracks, that way when
we slide a clip, the automation stays with it.
The button that shows the arrow going into the circle is to turn on punch-in and punch-out
recording.
When recording, we can either have it set so it records as soon as we press the record
button, or set it to record inside the loop region only.
This saves us from having to trim the clip if we want to start a little before it, and
that way we can listen to the song a little first and get the timing right.
The last button is MTC, which we would only ever turn on with a MIDI hardware sequencer.
Most people won’t ever have to use this button and should leave it disabled.
The next set of buttons are the transport.
The transport controls our song navigation, playback, and recording.
The top left green button is automation read.
When this is on, automation on the track will be read and applied to that track.
When it is off, automation will be ignored.
The next button is to turn on automation write mode.
Then we have the play and record buttons.
The bottom left button is the panic button.
Sometimes, something can go wrong in our software, causing the audio software to create a loud
noise.
If it gets stuck like this, this button is a panic button that will reset the audio device
and clear the sound.
The button that looks like a rewind with a line is the button we press to snap to the
beginning of the project.
Then we have rewind and scroll buttons.
We can also snap to the beginning and rewind or fast-forward just by clicking on a point
on the timeline.
Finally, there’s a button to create clips from previous recordings.
I’m not entirely sure what the use of this button is, and haven’t found much in the
documentation about it, but I’ve also never needed it.
To the right, we have all the controls for the project timing.
This is where our tempo, time signature, and key signature are shown.
We’ll be able to click each of these later when we expand the bottom panel to control
them.
We also get our project time indicator, which shows us where in time we are, both in beats
and bars and absolute time.
Beside that is the master channel plugins section.
This is where we add plugins to the master channel, which is basically the output of
all the tracks together in Waveform.
Then we have the master pan and volume controls that are also applied to everything at the
end.
Finally, there’s the level indicator to show us how loud the entire project is.
We’ll need to keep an eye on this and make sure there’s no clipping as the project
plays.
Now let’s expand the bottom bar to see all these controls again, using the button on
the far left.
This is basically just a layout change.
Everything is the same, just rearranged a little to make it more accessible.
The left side has all the menu controls, and the right has all the controls we just looked
at.
We still have our tempo, time signature, key, and time markers here, along with the automation,
play and record, panic button, navigation buttons and clip button.
The bottom has the master channel controls for volume and panning and the level indicator.
This view gives us full-time access to this new center panel.
Whenever we click on a control in Waveform with more options, this center panel will
switch to more detailed controls for it, and that’s how a lot of the settings will be
adjusted for Waveform from now on.
That covers all the bottom controls we need to look at for now.
The next thing to cover is managing our song’s tempo, time signature, and key signature.
First, start by snapping to the beginning of the project.
Then click on either the tempo, time signature or key signature button.
We’ll see that now the center panel at the bottom updates to this control.
When we click on this, we should see that the time is set to 1,1, which is the first
beat of the first bar, so the very beginning of the song.
Now click on the second option below that to set the BPM, and type it in on the keyboard.
Do the same thing to set the time signature and key signature.
Along the top of the tracks in Waveform, we can see the lane that says Tempo.
This is the global track for the entire project.
It’s used to add changes to the tempo, time signature and key signature throughout the
project.
To make these changes, click our cursor to where in time we want it to change.
Click on the left side of the global track, where it says tempo.
We’ll see the bottom gives us the tools to make a new tempo change, new time signature
change, and new key change.
Select one of these and the indicator will show up along the global track.
We’ll get the new option for the new tempo as well as the time it starts at.
If we click away from this, we can click the little square on the tempo bar of the global
track to bring this back up.
Then we can edit it again, and delete it if needed.
Now let’s cover markers.
Markers just mark a certain point in the song.
For example, we can add a label to the verse or chorus of the song, and this just keeps
it organized and helps us navigate through it easier.
Click on the markers track to add a new marker.
In the bottom, we’ll see a dropdown that says Markers: combined.
We can select to show all the markers, the absolute time markers, or the beats and bars
markers.
Absolute time markers are set based on minutes and seconds, and will stay at that position
in time if the song tempo changes.
Beats and bars markers are set to a measure, and will change in position in time if the
tempo is sped up or slowed down.
At the bottom, we select a new marker and pick which type it will be.
Now we have options to name it, set the position, the length, and the color.
We can also click the marker again to bring this menu back up, change the settings like
the name or time, or even delete it.
That covers what we’re going to do in this video.
In the next video, we’ll look at how to manage all our tracks, record audio and edit
the clips.
Thanks for checking out this video on setting up Tracktion Waveform as a digital audio workstation.
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