PT11 with only 6 instruments???

[MiaKAE]

Hey peps!

First of all, I have to admit that I'm a bit of a newbie in ProTools, so hope you'll bear with me, if it's a silly question (just spend a whole day, trying to figure it out myself, but I feel like I'm stuck! - so please help!)

I recently bought PT11, I installed it and it works fine! BUT! To me, it seems like there are only 6 instruments in PT11?? Is that right? "Boom", "DB-33", "Mini-Grand", "Vacuum" and "Xpand!2" is what I find. But I need e.g. a bass, maybe some horns, strings and so on... other kinds of instruments than just a beatmaschine, organg, synt. and piano. Please don't tell me, that I should go and by them extra -PT wasn't quite cheap...!

What do I do...?
Hope somebody can help me... thanks :)

/Mia

[nst7]

Yes, those are it.

But, Xpand 2 has a zillion sounds in it. It's basically like having a Korg Triton or Yamaha Motif synth. There are various categories of instruments you can look under. That should cover most of the basics for you.

[Park Seward]

You can see all of the plug-ins and VIs by looking at:

http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/e...ive+collection

Boom drum computer with pattern sequencer
DB-33 tonewheel organ simulator
Mini Grand acoustic grand piano
Structure Free sample player
Vacuum tube emulation synthesizer
Xpand2 multitimbral workstation

You don't need to be an owner to use this DUC.

[DonaldM]

Originally Posted by MiaKAE

Hey peps!

First of all, I have to admit that I'm a bit of a newbie in ProTools, so hope you'll bear with me, if it's a silly question (just spend a whole day, trying to figure it out myself, but I feel like I'm stuck! - so please help!)

I recently bought PT11, I installed it and it works fine! BUT! To me, it seems like there are only 6 instruments in PT11?? Is that right? "Boom", "DB-33", "Mini-Grand", "Vacuum" and "Xpand!2" is what I find. But I need e.g. a bass, maybe some horns, strings and so on... other kinds of instruments than just a beatmaschine, organg, synt. and piano. Please don't tell me, that I should go and by them extra -PT wasn't quite cheap...!

What do I do...?
Hope somebody can help me... thanks :)

/Mia

As pointed out you have a truck load of sounds that you can edit to some degree inside Xpand, so spend some time with it. Also, Vacuum can be a powerful synth for those vintage synth leads and basses among other things. Just take time to learn how to program it. And Boom can do a wonderful job on drums. I use it a lot and if you program and EQ things properly it can sound dynamite in a mix. You've got more power than you realize.

All that said, if you need more instrumentation, then take a look at learning how to use Reaper inside Pro Tools via Rewire. With Reaper, you can load in VST VI's...and there's a ton of freebie and/or very inexpensive ones out there with many of them quite nice, actually.

But I'd get to know the instruments you've got first. When I first got Pro Tools all I had was Xpand and Structure Free. I probably went 6 months before I started adding more stuff.

[soybalm]

I have a lot of other go to instruments in 10 but that Xpand 2 does have some very usable sounds and the arpeggiator works great. There are some quirks when trying to automate a layered sound in Xpand. If Strike or a lite version of that was free, that would be a nice touch. I recently used a killer snare sample in Structure Free. Record the output of your favorite snare sound and dump it into Structure Free. But yes, they could use a better acoustic drum VI.

[sunburst79]

Spend a Saturday morning exploring the presets in Xpand. It may not have everything for everyone but its got some great sounds.

[DonaldM]

Originally Posted by sunburst79

Spend a Saturday morning exploring the presets in Xpand. It may not have everything for everyone but its got some great sounds.

+1 AND you can edit the presets and combine them in original ways to make your own sounds. Plus, you can use MIDI to play back up to 4 different parts at a time per instantiation of Xpand, instantiate 4 instances of Xpand on 4 different instrument tracks, assign a different sound to each of the 4 parts in each one and you could have a 16 track band going!