My Workflow in Pro Tools

As many of you may know, Pro Tools is the industry standard for music production in professional recording studios and is also my DAW (digital audio workstation) of choice. The most current version of Pro Tools is Pro Tools 11, which comes out sometime this summer. To find out more information about Pro Tools and the new additions in Pro Tools 11, check out my review here. In today’s post I will be talking about the workflow I use in Pro Tools.

The first thing I do when starting a new session is import the audio track I will be recording over. The key command for this on Mac is Shift – Command – I. The second thing I usually do is figure out the tempo of the instrumental. This can be done either using tap tempo or identify beat. This video illustrates the different methods of finding a tempo of a track in Pro Tools. The next thing I do is create mono tracks for each section of the song (verse, chorus, etc.):

1. LV (Lead-Vocal)
2. BG (Backgrounds)
3. EMP (Emphasis)
4. ADLIB

On each track I record multiple takes, usually 3 + times, to ensure I get a great take. I do this through playlists, which this video illustrates. This enables me to consolidate tracks and keep the project organized.

The next thing I do is create subgroups using aux tracks. I then group specific tracks and send them to their respective subgroups. For instance, LV_CH will then go to LV_CH_SUB, BG_VRS will go to BG_VRS_SUB, etc. This way in the event of minor mix changes, I can go to the aux tracks, rather than having to remix the whole project.

The last thing I add is the Master Fader. This is very important in determining the overall level of the session. A general rule of thumb is mixing the session to a level of -6dB ~ -3dB, which will give the mastering engineer, if one is used, enough headroom to work with.

In my next post I will dive into Mixing in Pro Tools. Check out the recording revolution for some great videos and tips on mixing in pro tools.