Enuff Q: How about some tips!!!!

[Kenny Gioia]

That's right you guys. Lets make a thread filled with some of your best Pro Tools tricks.

Come on, hiding your tricks just stops you from learning new ones.

I'll put a new one on each day if you will.

OK

[Kenny Gioia]

1. Whenever I have a sound that I know where I want it to end, but I'm not sure where It needs to start (For EX. Reverse crash, Reverse Reverb, Reverse Guitars.)

I place the region's start where I want it to end. Then you hit the "K" key. It shoots it back. (You must be in the mode that connects the locater with the selector) TDM system only.

[lwilliam]

Any track that I KNOW will be a scratch track (like me working out a bass part before the session dude shows up), I immediately begin the track/filename with an "x". For example: "xBassGtr1".

That way, it's very easy to find and get rid of all of your scratch tracks later on.

[Kenny Gioia]

3. Making a Ping Pong panning delay with feedback that disentegrates over time.

Make 2 mono Aux's.

Pan Aux 1 Left and Aux 2 Right.

Set Aux 1's input to bus 1 and
Aux 2's input to bus 2.

Put a mono Medium or Long Delay Plug in on both aux 1 and 2. About 300ms.
No Feedback.

Put the Hi freq cutoff about 3Khz on both

Now on aux 1 set up a send for bus 2
Now on aux 2 set up a send for bus 1

Set both sends to about -8db
(This is your feedback level adjustment)

Now use bus 1 for your Ping Pong panning delay and it should pan and filter down each repeat.

For a more dramatic effect. Ad an eq in the second plugin slot on aux 1.
Set that eq to rolloff Lo's & Hi's and boost some 1Khz.

This will make every repeat thinner than the previous one. You can also add the Sansamp so that each repeat gets more distorted. Or Autotune so that each repeat gets more In tune? (I haven't tried that)

It seems like alot of work but if you just add it to your template like I do It's painless. Also add some reverb to the returns.

Let me know if you like it.

[zeeman]

i'm sure not a new trick but:

i love to take a far room mic(for me it's actually outside the door of where i cut gtrs,it's really the vox mic still setup from earlier) when mikeing gtrs, record that track along with the close mic, then slide the region up so it matches the close mic. it adds a nice space but it stays real nice and tight.
try it with far drum room mics also....

cmz

[Monte McGuire]

For vocal overdubbing, I like to set up a handful of tracks and comp on the fly. Set up one track as the recording track, select 'input only monitor' and record enable it. The first of the rest of the tracks is the 'good' track, set to record safe and the rest can be muted and used to hold the other unused, potentially good takes. It's also useful to have a muted 'dustbin' track to hold bad takes that you know you want to delete but you don't have the time right now to delete.

All these tracks should be assigned to a bus that is brought back to the mix through a single aux input that has any processing you need, such as EQ and compression. This can be used for the headphone send too, although I prefer to just listen to 2-mix with the talent.

After you record a take on the recording track, you slide it down to one of the tracks below depending on how good it is. The higher up, the better the take. If there's something to replace, cut it out of the 'good' track and your monitors (and the talent's) will do the right thing, just like a punch in in the old days.

This system makes it fast and simple to do any sort of complicated overdubs that need to be comped. I never put off comping 'til later, since I think the talent should have a big say in what's used and what isn't. After the 'good' track has a complete take, you can then delete all the rest of the stuff.

[sidereal]

Creating trippy ambient beds....

Take the bass gtr track, copy it to another track... instantiate Bruno, crank the mix to 100 percent and tweak with it until you've got that Brian Eno action happening. I also do this with SoundBlender.

Doing this with the bass will ensure that the ambience is in the same key as the rest of the song and it will also change with any key changes (although you'll have to do some shifting on key changes to compensate for the plug-in delay).

[Kenny Gioia]

Scratching with audio.

Take a snippet of audio. Preferably a transient.

Duplicate it so now there's two of them next to each other.

Reverse the second one.

Now open Vari Fi and slow down the first one and then speed up the second one.

Now move them around until they sound right.

I used this trick on the new LFO single "Every Other Time". Even though there's a DJ in the video.

P.S. I didn't invent this. Someone on this board said it and I thought it was worth repeating.

Thanks

[Jules]

To not suffer the regular problem of a noise gate 'softening' the attack of a drum it is placed on...


Create a duplicate track next to the snare so you have 2 snares (have the copy tracks fader fully down), gate one, set the key input to be external (a mono unused buss), route the copy snare track to be the 'key' (a pre send down the above mono buss), set threshold attack and release as usual..

then, here's the biggie...

Nudge forward the KEY track so it opens the gate a little EARLY, then you will always have the FULL attack of the origional, but be able to gate out crap you dont want...

Full range can sound weird, try half range - just reducing that hihat a little can be most helpfull.

Jules

[ July 21, 2001: Message edited by: Jules ]

[PTUser NYC]

Good tips! Let's keep this thread going!

Like it was said eariler, if you are setting up several identical tracks for the purpose of comping between several takes that are all going to get the same reverb and plug in treatment, rather than setting up a million identical aux sends, and inserts you can assign all the tracks to an unused pair of busses, and bring them back on an aux return. Then, just effect the aux return, while you decide your comp.

I like to decide a 'double track' of 2nd place phrases at this point too. Maybe not perfect, but there on another track if I ever need it for anything.

Sometimes its easier to comp on one track, by importing all the audio takes on top of eachother on one track, and cutting them all wherever a transition needs to occur. Then you get a little pop up window asking you which take you want.

I like the single track with mutiple takes piled up on eachother for comps of performers who are similarly pocketed with each take, or for takes with space between them, like drum hits for example.

For performers who are less consistent, and who may require sliding around in time for rhythmic reasons, the multi-track method works for me. In fact, I usually use it because I like to see whats going on on all the tracks at once.

[ July 23, 2001: Message edited by: PTUser NYC ]