Music Producers... please share your approach...

[tlester]

Hi all -

I'm about to start a new chapter in my music life... I've been an engineer for quite a while and know PT well from an engineering stand point (i.e. as a multi-track, editor, mixer, etc). I'm starting to get involved with creating music and collaborating with others in the creation of music. Some of this creation will require for rapid development of music/songs. Since being approached to work like this, I've been toying with different ideas on how to best accomplish this. I've done a few test projects with PT and they turned out great. However... I used my rather barbaric skills to do this. For example, I programmed the drums on the grid, I took 4 or 8 bar loops, time stretched them to fit, and then duplicated them. Last... I added a few live tracks to complete the stack.

While this worked fine... my first thought was... what if the music director wants it 10 bpm faster! The midi stuff would be fine, but those dropped in loops would all have to be re-stretched or compressed in time and lined back up again.

I started looking at my alternatives... I.e. Logic, Nuendo/Cubase, and PT. All have their pro's and con's. In the end, they are all just tools. However... I know PT well and that adds to the comfort level.

So... I was wondering if those of you who are really on the music creation end and not necessarily the "music documentation" end (i.e. us engineers) could share some of your approach to music creation. If you work with the kind of projects I'm talking about (i.e. jingles, beds, etc) and work quickly... even better. What tools do you use to augment PT? What are your techniques?

Many thanks in advance.

-Tom