Hey guys, in this video series we’re going to talk about how to use Pro Tools First.
This is a free version of Pro Tools that you can use to learn the software and some audio
recording techniques before upgrading to the full version, but it does have some limitations
that won’t make it practical for use on large projects, so keep that in mind.
Before we get started, we need to install the program on our computer.
Even though it is a free program, you will need to sign up for an Avid account on the
website.
Then you’ll be able to download the program and install it.
The first time it starts up, we’ll be asked to configure our audio interface.
Just select your device.
The other settings, like the outputs and sample rates, are usually ok by default, but you
can change them if you need to.
If you’re going to be recording, set it to optimize for recording.
That will reduce the latency while recording.
Otherwise, it can be set to optimize for playback if you want to hear everything properly with
a bunch of plugins while mixing.
Once we get it started, we need to create a new project.
We can pick an existing template, or create a blank project.
Then type in the name of the project.
Now is the time when we can talk about the largest limitation of Pro Tools First, and
that’s that you can only create 3 projects at once.
The projects are stored on the cloud and there is no way to download the project or create
more than 3 projects without upgrading to the full version.
When we open a new project, we’ll be asked to create a Profile for the Artist Chat, but
we don’t really need to do this and we can close the window.
Now we have project we can work with.
Let’s take a look at what we have for different buttons in this program first, before we go
ahead and start creating music.
There are two windows we can see in this blank project.
The EDIT window shows us our tracks and all the clips.
This is the view we’ll use to record all our tracks and edit them.
Then there’s the MIXER window, which we’ll use to adjust the levels, panning and add
plugins to each of our track.
We’ll work with this view after we’ve finished recording all our tracks and we’re
working on the mix.
The best way for us to work with this is to maximize each of these windows.
Then, we can switch between them by pressing Ctrl and = on the keyboard.
At the top left, we have the Edit modes.
We can switch between SHUFFLE, SPOT, SLIP, and GRID.
In SHUFFLE mode, when we place a clip between two other clips, it will shift those original
clips around and fit the new one in between.
In SLIP mode, the clip is placed exactly where we put it.
In GRID mode, the clip is placed about where we want it, but it is snapped to the GRID
based on the tempo and resolution of the project.
If we right click on GRID, we’ll switch between normal grid mode, which snaps to the
timeline grid, and relative grid.
In relative grid, our changes are made by the grid resolution, but it won’t snap to
the gridlines.
So if we previously used SLIP mode to move a track to a different position not on the
grid, we can then move the track by a relative amount in that mode, but it won’t snap directly
to the grid points.
In SPOT mode, when you place a clip, a small window will open that makes you enter the
exact position where you want the clip to be.
To the right, we have a few different mouse tools.
On the far left, we have the Zoomer tool.
We can switch between normal mode and single zoom mode.
In normal mode, clicking zooms in once at the clicked area.
After this it remains in zoom mode.
In single zoom mode, we can zoom once and then the mouse tool will automatically switch
back to the previous mode.
To switch between normal zoom and single zoom, right click on the zoom button to open the
dropdown and select one.
We can also zoom out by holding down Alt and clicking.
If we want to highlight a certain area, we can click and drag with the zoom tool to magnify
that area to the entire edit window.
In the middle, we have a smart tool, which combines multiple tools we’ll look at next.
To use this, click the outside border around the three center tools.
The next mouse tool is the trim tool.
Once again it has multiple modes we switch between by right clicking on it.
The first mode is just a simple trim tool.
In this mode, we can trim the beginning and end of the track.
This works with the tools we looked at previously.
In SLIP mode, it will trim to wherever we release the mouse.
In GRID mode, it will trim and snap to the project grid.
The second mode is TCE, or Time Compression Expansion.
Trimming the ends of the track in this mode speeds it up or slows it down.
You can use this to match tempo between different tracks if you’re trying to piece together
different recordings.
The final mode is Loop trimming.
With this tool, we can lengthen a clip and it will loop that clip.
When using this, it’s important to make sure our starting clip is a complete, seamless
loop.
After the trim tools, we have the selection tool.
We can use this to delete sections of a clip, or separate a clip into sections so that we
can move them around independently.
To select a section of track or clip, just click and drag over that area.
If we want to delete it, press the delete key on the keyboard.
This will delete that section of track, while leaving the rest of the track and clip intact.
If we want to separate that selection from the rest of the clip, we do that by pressing
Control and E. Next we have the grabber tool.
We use this to move clips around on the project.
If we click and drag a clip, this tool will allow us to move it within that track, or
to a different track.
This tool also works with the snapping in GRID mode, or in SLIP mode.
Finally, we have the pencil tool, which can be used to draw MIDI notes on instrument tracks.
This is fairly complicated, and we’ll cover writing and editing MIDI in a future video
in this series.
We can also use this tool to create automation for controls like volume and panning, and
we’ll cover that more in another tutorial.
By right clicking on this tool, we can switch the mode for automation, between freehand,
linear, and a few other modes.
Below this section, there’s a few buttons to look at.
First is the tab to transients tool.
When we normally press the tab button in Pro Tools, our cursor jumps to the end of the
clip, or the beginning of a clip, depending on what comes next.
With this button enabled, it instead jumps to a transient, or spike, in an audio file.
Next to that we have insertion follows playback.
When we start playback, the track begins from the red indicator we can see on the ruler.
When we stop the track and play again, it jumps back to that point and starts over.
When we enable insertion follows playback, it will instead begin playing from the point
where we stopped.
To the right we have a tool for the mixer view, and this will show the mixer.
Use this button to bring it back up if you accidentally close it.
Once again, it’s still faster to switch between the edit and mixer view using the
Control and = buttons.
The last button opens a dropdown for more windows we can open.
The next section we’ll cover is the Counter.
This is used to tell us our positon on the track, and it is also used to some extent
when adding MIDI notes.
The top left shows the position in the project.
By default, this is set to bars and beats.
This is what we want to use in most cases, especially if we’ll be combining audio and
MIDI in the same project.
For other projects, we can switch it to minutes and seconds if that’s what we need.
The first tool below the counter is for the gridlines.
Pressing the Grid button displays gridlines on the track in the edit view.
If we click the dropdown to the right, we’ll be able to choose the note resolution for
the gridlines that are displayed.
For example, I can set it to display at each bar, or quarter notes.
If you don’t see all the gridlines, it’s probably because you’re zoomed out too far.
Having these gridlines is helpful for editing, especially if you’re trimming a track or
drawing MIDI notes.
When we have GRID snapping enabled, this is also the resolution that will be used for
moving and trimming tracks.
Next is the nudge resolution.
To nudge a track, first select it with the grabber tool.
Then you can nudge it using the plus and minus buttons on the numpad.
The nudge resolution sets how much those plus and minus buttons move the track.
Up above, we have an indicator that shows the start of a clip, end of a clip, and the
length.
This is by default set to beats and bars, but it can be switched to minutes and seconds
by changing the counter to minutes and seconds as well.
Below that, there’s another time indicator, and this displays the time when we hover over
a track.
The last portion of the counter is for MIDI events.
The top indicator shows the note pitch, the middle shows the velocity of the note from
0 to 127, and the bottom is the panning of the note, with 64 being center.
The button to the right allows us to play the MIDI notes while editing.
When we click this, we’ll hear what the note is.
At the bottom, we have a few of the default options for when we’re drawing MIDI notes.
The first is a dropdown for note length.
This sets any note that we click to that length, but we can easily override it by holding and
dragging the note when we add it.
Just be aware of the grid snapping resolution when you’re adding notes, because they will
start at a grid point, and any dragging will snap it to the grid instead of this value.
The number to the right is the default velocity, which is set to 80.
We’ll look more into how to change the velocity in our video on writing MIDI in this program.
That covers the counter view section, now let’s look at the click track controls.
To be able to use a click track, it first has to be added to the project.
This is something I recommend doing at the start of every project, unless you don’t
plan on using a click track for your style of music.
To add a click track, go to track at the top, and Create Click Track.
We don’t really need to touch the click track after this, it will be controlled from
this upper section we’re looking at now.
The first control we have is for Count Off.
This gives us a few extra measures of click track before it starts playback or recording.
Below that is the time signature, which is set to 4/4 by default.
We can double click the time signature to bring up the time signature window and edit
it.
The location indicator sets when this time signature change takes effect, so you can
have different time signatures throughout the song.
If you only want one, just edit this at the very beginning of the song.
The click sets at what notes the click track will play.
By default, it will play every quarter note.
Then we have the tempo.
We can double click this and set a new tempo by typing it in.
This changes the tempo for the entire song, not at the location we change it.
The tempo dropdown to the left sets what notes the beats per minute are referring to.
So in quarter note mode, there are 120 quarter notes per minute and we will hear 120 clicks
per minute through the metronome.
If we set this to whole notes instead, that indicates there are 120 whole notes per minute.
In this case, the metronome still clicks every quarter note, so we’ll hear 480 clicks per
minute.
Next is the button that turns the metronome on and off.
Even with this button, we still need to have a click track added to our project.
When we press this button, it will open up a window with more controls for the metronome.
The first section is for when a click track will be heard.
The default option is to hear it during playback and recording.
We can also have it play only while recording.
This can make it easier to hear the timing between tracks, but it can be difficult to
notice if all the tracks drift off the project metronome together.
Finally, we can set it to only play during countoff, and you may do this during recording
after you’ve created a drum track.
That way you can start right on time, but you’ll be playing to the drums instead of
the click track and in some cases that can help get the timing better.
There are controls for the note for the click, but this isn’t relevant in our case since
the click is technically controlled through a plugin on the click track.
The checkmark for the countoff can be set so it only does this during record, or if
you’re just practicing, you may want to uncheck this and have the countoff during
playback as well.
Here you can select how many bars there will be before the project starts, but keep in
mind that the countoff button we looked at earlier must be enabled for this to work.
Next is the MIDI merge tool.
With this enabled, recording MIDI over top of previously recorded MIDI will merge the
two clips into one.
Otherwise, they are overwritten instead.
This is helpful if you’re using something like a MIDI drum pad.
In that case, you can go and recording something like the hi hat notes first, then go back
and recording the snare and kick separately.
The final tool is the Conductor track.
When this is disabled, the project goes by the tempo up above that we looked at previously.
When enabled, it uses the tempo ruler, and we’ll cover how to adjust the tempo throughout
the track in a minute.
The last section along this top bar is the transport.
This is pretty simple and provides us with the stop, play, and record buttons.
Below that we have the jump to beginning button, rewind, forward, and jump to end buttons.
Now let’s cover the rulers we have above the tracks.
The first one is for markers.
This allows us to label different sections of the song, such as the chorus and verses.
To add a marker, first move your cursor start time to that section of the song.
Then press the plus button on the Markers ruler, and the Markers window will come up.
First name the marker.
The dropdown allows us to set it to bars and beats, and that will change the position of
the marker if the tempo changes.
Otherwise, we can set it to absolute, which basically sets it to time in minutes and seconds
instead of bars and beats.
If we enable Zoom Settings, Pre/Post Roll Times, and Track Heights, we can save those
settings with the marker.
Then, when we press period, then the number of the marker, followed by the period again,
all on the numpad, the project will snap back to that point and the zoom and other settings
will return to the way they were.
Next is the tempo.
This works as long as the conductor track that we saw from the metronome section is
enabled.
In this case, Pro Tools First follows the tempo as indicated on this tempo track, and
we can use the plus button at points throughout the song to change the tempo at that point.
Finally, there’s bars and beats, but this is just a ruler that shows us at what point
in the song we’re at.
It doesn’t have anything we can add to it like the other rulers do.
Thanks for checking out this introductory tutorial on Pro Tools First.
If this video helped you out, don’t forget to give it a like and subscribe to the channel.
Also, check out the next videos in this series to you can continue to learn about how to
use Pro Tools First.
You can also check out our social media links in the video description down below to stay
up to date on all our new content.