The name of our magazine, ISP Música, gives a good idea of two of the reader profiles who devour each monthly issue: musicians and sound professionals. The former enjoy the instructional pieces and the test benches of guitars, drums, basses, etc., while the latter savor the articles on audio equipment, installations, reviews… However (and this may well be your case if you are reading these lines), it is common for both profiles to come together in a single person: musicians interested in, say, audio recording, or engineers who grew into the profession out of their passion for an instrument, which they still actively play.

Although both profiles are obviously related, the tasks each of them carries out are highly specialized, so an experienced user from one camp can often feel some frustration when they find themselves in the other.

In the previous issue of ISP, Jorge Quesada delivered the first installment of this Survival Guide, in which we want to offer tips and tricks for musicians who have built their own home studio (to compose, record, practice, prepare for live shows, etc.) but who may never have received formal training on the subject.

We continue the guide with this article, in which we have chosen Pro Tools as our reference DAW, since it is one of the most widespread today, although many of these practices apply to any other program.

If you are usually “on your own,” read on to discover all kinds of techniques, tricks and keyboard shortcuts, specially selected for those who regularly face the task of recording themselves…

Where to start?
Templates, preset sessions that give you direct access to certain configurations (tracks already created, virtual instruments, routing, labels, sends, etc.), are an effective way to save time.

The advanced template manager was introduced in PT8. To access it, select “Create session from template” in the dialog window that appears when you open the program.

If the Quick Start window does not appear when you launch Pro Tools, you can enable it in the preferences menu. Select the “Operation” tab and click on “Show Quick Start dialog when Pro Tools starts” (Fig.1).

Don't hesitate to open the templates provided, because you will discover different ways of organizing a session that may inspire you to find your own ways of working with the program. Although these templates are useful, things get really interesting once you can create your own templates and save your way of naming tracks, layout and organization, routing, etc.

To do so, simply save the active session by selecting “File > Save as template,” which will open a dialog window where you can choose which category to save the template in, create new families, etc.

With the “Import Session Data” dialog, opened with Alt+Shift+I, you can bring specific tracks from other sessions into the project you are currently working on. That is why, alongside “normal” templates, a common practice is to save sessions with tracks containing a particular virtual instrument or plugin you use often, so you can import it quickly into the current project.

Save your favorite Omnisphere sounds in one template, your EZ Drummer, Stylus, reverbs, delays, etc. in others. When you want to use one of those sounds, instead of creating a new track, loading the plugin and hunting for your preset, simply press “Alt+Shift+I” and choose the right track from one of the templates.

When creating new tracks, Cmd+Shift+N opens the “New tracks” dialog window; the up/down arrows increase/decrease the number, Cmd+Right/Left toggles between Mono/Stereo, and Cmd+Up/Down changes the track type (Audio, MIDI, etc.).

To add or remove new track types in that same dialog window, you can click on the “+” and “–” symbols, or use the up/down arrows while holding Cmd+Shift.

Once the tracks have been created, you will want to rename them. To do so, double-click on the current name, which will be something like “Audio 1.” To move to the previous/next track without closing the window, press Cmd+Left and Cmd+Right respectively (Up/Down also works).

Output, input and bus labels can also be renamed. This can be done in the “Setup > I/O” window, but also by right-clicking on the name itself and selecting “Rename.” Faster.

Renaming sends saves a lot of time in the long run, since it is easier to know which send to click on if you can read “PLATE, DLY, CHORUS” instead of “Bus 1-2, Bus 3-4, Bus 5-6.”

PT9 introduced a feature that lets you create tracks from existing ones. For example, if you want to send all the guitars to an aux bus, once the desired channels are selected, right-click on the output of one of them, choose “New Track,” and then give the new track a name.

The outputs of the chosen channels will switch to a bus (the next free one available), named after the newly created track, which in turn will be picked up by the new aux channel.

When you have many tracks in the mix window, Cmd+Alt+M switches between standard and narrow width. The former makes channel names easier to read, while the latter lets you show more tracks in the same space.

Changing the color of the different channels also helps when handling large sessions. To do so, click on the channel's color strip (if the color label is not shown, you can enable it under “View > Mix Window Views > Track Color”).

In the “Color Palette” window that opens, you can not only choose among the different colors, but also apply them to groups, regions, or the surface of the entire channel. For the latter, enable the “Apply to channel strip” option (Fig.4).

Modifiers and routing
In Pro Tools, the Alt key applies a given action to all the channels in the session. For example, if you click on a channel's output while holding Alt, the output of every channel in the session will change.

When working with several tracks, the Shift key lets you select several consecutive channels. When the channels are not adjacent, the key for making a selection is Cmd.

Following the previous example, if you wanted to change the output of only some channels, after selecting them with Shift or Cmd, pressing Alt+Shift will apply the action only to the chosen channels.

These modifier keys are very powerful; it is worth practicing with them until you are fluent:

For example, to bypass a plugin you can Cmd+Click on it in the insert slot (without having to open it). If you Cmd+Alt+Click, all plugins in that slot will be bypassed, on every channel.

If you had previously selected a range of tracks, Cmd+Alt+Shift+Click will bypass all plugins in the same slot, but only on the chosen channels.

More examples? Cmd+Ctrl+Click on a plugin deactivates it (it stops using resources and is shown in gray). Cmd+Alt+Ctrl+Click will deactivate all plugins in the session in that slot, and Cmd+Alt+Ctrl+Shift+Click only the selected ones.

The same method can be used to bypass sends and/or make them pre-fader, insert/remove a plugin on several tracks, mute/solo/arm several channels, change automation, inputs…

Regarding the latter, to change sends, inputs, outputs, etc. you can use another modifier key, Cmd, which lets you assign sequential values.

If you change a channel's output to Bus 1-2 while holding Cmd+Alt, not only will that channel's output change, the one to its right will output to Bus 3-4, the next one to Bus 5-6, and so on.

Have you created several aux channels that will host different effects? Select them, hold Cmd+Alt+Shift and assign an input bus to the first one; the others will take the next free buses as their inputs.

Have you already created and named the tracks you will use to record an electronic drum kit as audio? Put the channels in ascending input order, select them and hold Cmd+Alt+Shift on the input selector of the first one: the others will use the next inputs on the interface.

It may seem a bit complicated at first; a good rule for remembering the modifier keys is shown in Fig. 5.

Markers
Another very useful feature when working alone is markers.

To create a marker, use the “Enter” key on the numeric keypad (Fn+Enter if you are on a laptop), and to delete them just Alt+Click on them.

It is useful to create a marker at the beginning of each section of the song (Intro, Verse 1, Chorus 1, Bridge, Solo, etc.), because by opening the markers window (Cmd+5 on the numeric keypad) you can jump to any part of the song with a single click.

See the number associated with each marker in Fig. 6? You can also jump to a section by pressing the period on the numeric keypad, then the marker number, and then the period on the numeric keypad again. This can also be done during playback.

And going back to selecting contiguous elements with the Shift key, you can also use markers to select part of the song. Click on one of them (in the timeline or in the markers window), then hold Shift and click on another marker to create a selection between the two positions.

Playlists
OK, all the tracks are now created and routed, and the session is laid out with markers. Before recording the first take, you should create a new playlist on the track or tracks you are going to record. To do this, click on the triangle next to the track name (in the edit window) and select “New” or “Duplicate.”

Since Pro Tools 9, there are keyboard shortcuts for these actions: Cmd+\ creates a new playlist, and Cmd+Ctrl+\ duplicates the active playlist (including any audio it may contain).

In either case, Pro Tools will by default add the suffix .01 to the current name for the new playlist, ideal for recording the first take on it. The next time you select “New Playlist” or “Duplicate,” you will see that .02 is added, and so on.

If you plan to record a part on several tracks, for example an electric guitar with a couple of mics going to separate channels, it will be useful to create a group with those channels before creating the new playlist.

Select them and press Cmd+G; the “Create Group” dialog window will open where, among other attributes, you can choose the group type (Edit, Mix or Edit and Mix).

If you select Edit or Edit+Mix, whenever you create a new playlist on any of the tracks in the group, a new playlist will automatically be created and named on the others.

Levels, EQ, compression
A question we often get at the magazine is what levels you should record at in digital.

Assuming you are working at a 24-bit depth, as a general rule you should set the input level so that the meter reads around -18/-22dBFS. Peaks should hit -18dBFS at most.

This leaves plenty of headroom above to accommodate unexpected signal peaks, while still making use of a large part of the available dynamic range: 24 bits means a theoretical 144dB; by setting the maximum input level at -18dB you are reserving 3 bits of headroom and using 21 bits (126dB) for the signal.

In addition, these input levels are what the processing plugins you will likely use later “expect,” which optimizes the gain structure along the whole signal path.

As for EQ and compression while tracking, light settings are usually used. EQ boosts or cuts of up to 3-4dB, and 2-3dB of gain reduction on the compressor, with medium attack and release times.

If you are going to use plugins for this, the good news is that in Pro Tools inserts are post-region, which means the processing is not printed. You can practice and try different settings without fear; the resulting region will not be affected.

Recording
OK, everything is ready for the first take. Click on the marker that indicates the beginning of the song (if you placed the markers in order, you can press “,1,”), arm the tracks (in PT8 or later, you can do it with Shift+R, Shift+M to mute and Shift-S to solo), and let's set a pre-roll time that lets you “catch” the song's click and know when to come in.

Cmd+K enables/disables the pre-roll and post-roll times; you will see two small markers appear around the blue position marker. When pre/post-roll is active, these markers appear yellow or green (it varies depending on the PT version); when it is not, they are transparent.

To change these times, you can drag the markers forward/backward, or enter an amount in the transport window. In Fig. 9, both times are active and last one bar.

Now everything really is ready to record the first take on playlist .01. To start recording, besides the traditional method of clicking Rec and then Play, you can also press Cmd+Space, the number 3 (on the numeric keypad), or F12. On a Mac, this last key may be assigned to an OS function, so you will have to disable it first.

If you are going to do several takes, remember to create a new playlist for each one. This will help you keep better track of the number of passes recorded, jot down comments on each one and/or build a composite later (details below).

Loop Recording
In some cases, loop recording is very useful, for example for recording parts like a solo, backing vocals, a tricky passage, etc. To enable it, Ctrl+Click on the Rec button in the transport bar until you see the “Loop Recording” symbol appear (Fig. 10).

Now you just have to create a selection (again, markers come in handy here) of the section you want to record in a loop, and start recording. Keep in mind that, in this mode, the pre-roll time only works during the first pass.

You can now do as many takes as you consider necessary, without having to stop, click anywhere or press any key.

By default, when recording in Loop mode, PT will stack one pass on top of another, and when you stop it will leave the last one on top of the others. To listen to other takes recorded in Loop mode, right-click on the region and select “Matches.”

If no alternative region appears (or too many do), you may need to adjust the “Match Criteria.” For loop recording, choosing “Track Name” and “Region Start” usually works well (Fig. 11).

Since PT8, there is an option that assigns each pass in Loop Recording to a new playlist, which makes the later job of creating a composite take much easier.

To enable it, open the preferences panel and, under the “Operation” tab, enable the “Automatically Create New Playlists When Loop Recording” option.

Compositing
A composite take is one made up of the best fragments selected from different takes. It is a very effective method for achieving a good final performance in just a few passes.

Once you have finished recording the different takes, create a new playlist (you can replace the name suffix with something like .CP or .MST to indicate that it is the master take), and select the “Playlists” view in the “Track View Selector” (under the track name, where you can choose Waveform, Volume, Pan, etc.).

This will display the different existing takes beneath the main playlist. To listen to an alternative take, press the respective “solo” button that appears on the left: unlike its normal behavior, this will not mute the other tracks in the session; it serves to “activate” that particular take.

When you hear a fragment you like, select it and click on the up-arrow button (or press Cmd+Alt+Ctrl+V) to copy it and paste it into the main playlist. At the end of the process you will have something similar to what is shown in Fig. 12; notice that the relative colors of the regions are kept, as a visual indicator of the take each fragment comes from.

The comping feature was included from PT8 onward; if you have an earlier version, you can work by creating temporary tracks and copying the regions from the different takes, or by switching playlists on the same track.

Once you have the master take, it is a good idea to crossfade between each region. Select all the audio on the track by placing the cursor somewhere on it and pressing Cmd+A, then open the “Batch Fades” window with Cmd+F. Adjust the parameters and hit OK to create all the necessary fades with a single click.

That's it for this installment of the Survival Guide. In the next issue we will talk about Region Groups and Region Loops, multing, moving regions, session management… Until then!

Note: All keyboard shortcuts are given for Mac. For Windows, replace “Ctrl” with the Windows key, and “Cmd” with Control.