comping in Pro tools LE - help requested! Plus great pro tools hd comping tip!

[mr xy]

OK - so I'm working with someone who likes to do an awful lot of detailed comping. The studio I'm working out of has LE - I'm used to HD and have a great comping method which I learned from 'pro tools tips and tricks with kenny gioia" - highly reccomended by the way.

The way it works is:

Two tracks - one is your master comp tracks, second is track with the multiple takes as play-lists. You assign voices to these tracks - 1 to the master, 2 to the play-list track. This way whenever something is playing on the master track it mutes the play-lists track. To me this is perfect and makes comping super easy.

I was hoping with pro tools 8 le there would be something similar with the new play-lists view/comping feature. However - it seems that only the solo'ed playlist will play - I was assuming that the promoted regions on the master playlist would mute the solod alternative playlists - but alas no as far as i can see.

So my question is - is there a way to achieve the behavior I like in HD with assigned voices on a le system. Hope this all makes sense - really appreciate any input from you pro tools peeps out there.

[daeron80]

I used to do that. It's one of the few remaining advantages of HD. But the way I remember, you assign the same voice to both tracks. Otherwise, the mute wouldn't happen. Or have they changed the way that works in HD since v5.x?

Anyway, there's no simple way to do an auto-mute like that in LE. You could buy a ducking gate, I suppose. The threshold would have to be able to be set low enough that background noise on the master track would trigger the gate on the source track to close - probably like -80 or something, and I don't know if there's a ducking gate made with threshold that low. You could probably make one with MAX/MSP and run in under Pluggo. Or if you're on Windows, make it with SynthEdit and run it using the fxpansion VST-RTAS wrapper. It probably wouldn't work as perfectly as the voice-assignment trick, though. That is one cool feature of HD. It's useful for all sorts of mixing tricks, too, not just editing.

[albee1952]

This sounds like a case of an old habit that you need to get past before the new work flow will feel good. I love comping in PT8 and work the same way in both LE and HD. The only thing I do is; I hit STOP before soloing the next playlist(if you are in LOOP Play, it seems to take a second for the audio to actually switch from one playlist to the next). Each time I want to audition the next choice, I hit STOP and solo the next choice and go(each time you solo a playlist, it overrides the previous solo). Having never done it the way you describe, my method feels completely efficient and fast(at least to me).

[mr xy]

thanks guys. I think you probably do assign the tracks to the same voice in HD - whoops.

Honestly - it is not an old or bad habit - for anyone that has comped like this it is is really useful - and as stated - also really useful for other tricks too.

I've found that putting a compressor on the playlist track keyed from comp track is the closest I can get to the behavior I like in HD. I really don't see why they couldn't include an option for the master take to have priority over any soled playlists in the new editor but I guess we don't always get what we want...

[daeron80]

When I moved from HD to LE in 2005 (by moving from working in studios to working at home and then at a spoken-word-oriented job), that was one of the hardest workflow habits to shake. I still miss it. The problem with using a ducking compressor is that if you set the release fast, you hear both tracks between phrases, and if you set it slow, it doesn't recover fast enough. And there's no good in-between place. PT8's comping feature should be close enough, though. A lot better than switching playlists until you get carpal tunnel.

[DonaldM]

Originally Posted by albee1952

This sounds like a case of an old habit that you need to get past before the new work flow will feel good. I love comping in PT8 and work the same way in both LE and HD. The only thing I do is; I hit STOP before soloing the next playlist(if you are in LOOP Play, it seems to take a second for the audio to actually switch from one playlist to the next). Each time I want to audition the next choice, I hit STOP and solo the next choice and go(each time you solo a playlist, it overrides the previous solo). Having never done it the way you describe, my method feels completely efficient and fast(at least to me).

I do it exactly this way, too. I find it works great.

[trondned]

I've tried most comping methods there is, and I keep coming back to the old-school way

I create one track called Vox, one track called Main Vox and 4-5 tracks that I don't name.

Vox: This track has no processing, and is only used for recording.

Main Vox: This is where the final result is, and is loaded with my favorite chain of plugs and sends.

Unnamed tracks: Alternate takes. These are muted, and stays that way. If you're low on track-count, just disable these tracks, you can still move audio to and from them.


If the vocalist wants to sing through the entire song, we'll do that and I just move the takes down to the muted tracks after each pass. After doing four or five takes or if we feel we've hit gold, I move that take to the Main Vox track and start comping. We just listen through the take, and stop when there's an off note. I'll just mark that word on all the muted tracks and hit cmd-e to separate the regions, then I ctrl-drag one at a time to the Main Vox track. If we can't find a good enough replacement for a word, I just erase that line and do a punch-in on theVox track and move it down to the Main Vox track. This will let the singer hear the previous phrase readily processed, and you can adjust the volume separately on the two tracks.

If the session is on a tight schedule I don't use the muted tracks, we just record until something goes wrong, and then I'll stop, erase the mistake, move it down to the Vox track and go on from there. Once we're though the song, the vocal is ready, just needing a couple of crossfades. When done I hide and disable the muted tracks.

[daeron80]

Actually, the old old-school way would be to track passes with some punches to a few separate tracks, then bus them to the comp track, and record them to it in real time by muting and unmuting, and leveling with fader moves. Works fine on an analog console. In fact, it's pretty fun. It would suck big time in a mouse-controlled DAW, though.

Trondned, what advantage do you find your method gives over using one track with each take on its own playlist?

[tamasdragon]

In pt 8 the new comping method is working like charm really.
With a few shortcuts, it is a huge time saver. What I usually do is always solo the main track, and with the selection going up and down, promote the takes to the main playlist one-by-one. This way you always here one take, if you do not like it, undo it, go down to the next take, etc. This way I can work very fast, and don't miss the old-school method.
Tamas Dragon

[trondned]

Trondned, what advantage do you find your method gives over using one track with each take on its own playlist?

I guess it would be pretty similar, exept having to create a new playlist between each take vs. move audio between each take. Anyhoo, to be able to see all the playlists at once is such a new feature in PT, I haven't gotten 'round to checkin' it propperly out. I will though, as I definitely see the point with it

Other than that, I really like the consept of having a separate volume-fader for the pre-recorded audio and the monitoring of the 'now'-recording, as opposed to punching in on the same track.