Mixing Efficiency

Aug 1, 2007 12:00 PM, By Brian Smithers

How to take better advantage of Pro Tools' creative potential.

As an acoustic musician, I have spent a major portion of my life in the practice room, squaring away all the left-brain technical stuff so that when I perform I can be entirely in right-brain expressive mode. As an electronic musician, however, I am too often guilty of trying to be both artist and technician at the same time, with sheet music on one knee and a software manual on the other. The predictable result is that I am less effective at both roles.

I don't expect to persuade anyone to sit down and practice at the computer the way one plays scales and arpeggios, but clearly some thoughtful preparation can pave the way for more-effective creative time. Big-league engineers ordinarily have assistant engineers to set up the console, patch in their favorite processors, organize tracks, and document everything so they can focus on the music instead of the technology. For the rest of us, it pays to be our own assistant engineers and spend some time preparing a session for the real creative work.

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In this article, I will focus on ways to set up a session for a more organized and efficient mix. In addition to thinking ahead so you don't have to interrupt the creative flow, you can use certain tricks and underutilized functions in sequencers to help smooth out the rough spots in a mix session. Although I will use Digidesign Pro Tools 7.3 for my examples, each of the major DAWs and digital audio sequencers offer similar shortcuts and time-savers. All of my suggestions work in HD, LE, and M-Powered systems unless otherwise noted. Being efficient in Pro Tools means using lots of shortcut keys — I'll use Windows modifier keys and note their Mac equivalents in parentheses (see Web Clip 1).

Conquering Space and Time

In preparation for mixing, you may listen to a rough mix or simply throw the faders up to unity and listen through once or twice to get the big picture. As you make mental notes of each new section, press Enter on the numeric keypad to drop a marker. In the Edit Memory Location dialog box that appears, type a name (intro, verse, chorus, and so on) and click on Marker (see Fig. 1). Be sure that all other options are deselected and Reference is set to Absolute, then press Enter to close the dialog box. No matter how long it takes you to type cantankerous contrabassoon cadenza, Pro Tools will drop the marker where you first pressed Enter.

Later, you can add comments to the markers to indicate moods, lyrics, objectives, and so forth. Comments can be displayed in the Memory Locations window, and they'll show up in the tool tips that appear when you hover the cursor over a marker. (Enable Details under the Tool Tips options in the Display Preferences window.)

After you've marked the song's road map, locate to each marker in turn and click on Play. If you were off-target, zoom in and drag the marker to a more precise location. Instead of locating by clicking on markers in the Memory Locations window, use the shortcut of pressing Period (.) on the numeric keypad followed by the number of the memory location and Period again. Pro Tools relocates efficiently enough that you can use this technique to experiment with the arrangement, skipping or repeating sections without editing.

If the song was not recorded to a Pro Tools click track, the grid will not align with the song's tempo. Tempo-based effects, such as filter LFOs and note-based delay times, will not correspond to the song. Take the time to create a tempo map of the entire song, using either Identify Beat or Beat Detective. Even if you have no intention of using Beat Detective to time-correct any parts, the tempo map will be useful.

Work in 4- or 8-bar segments, starting from the beginning of the song. Be careful to make very precise selections and listen to each selection in Loop Playback to confirm that it is accurate. Set up a click track and listen to whether it aligns well with the audio tracks. You will almost always want to base the tempo map on the drums.

Up the Organization

You should have named your tracks when you created them — Pro Tools (and other DAWs) names recorded or processed files after the tracks in which they were created. If you didn't, do it now so you know which fader is which. Although Pro Tools is fairly intelligent about shortening long track names, you're always better off keeping them short to begin with — you're more intelligent by far. You have room for only eight to ten characters of average width, so use them wisely.

Be sure your Comments field is visible and use track comments liberally. Note any outboard processing, corrective action, musical function (lead, background, and so on), or other tidbits. Assume that you will forget everything, and use comments to help you remember.

Group your tracks by instrument type or musical function. Obviously, the drum tracks should be next to each other, and you probably want the rest of the rhythm-section instruments to be near the drums. Don't be dogmatic, but do be consistent from session to session. You won't have to waste time searching for the guitar-solo track if you know it always goes immediately to the right of the electric and acoustic rhythm-guitar tracks (in that order). Consider adopting the Recording Academy's recommendations (see Web Clip 2).

If you have a lot of tracks, reorder them more efficiently by dragging them up and down in the Tracks list. If you need to move groups of tracks, do it from the Edit view. Alt-click (Option-click) on any track's Track Height Selector and choose Small to fit as many tracks as possible onscreen. (Mini or Micro will fit more, but you'll have a harder time reading track names.) Select the tracks you need to move, and drag them up or down as a unit.

Most DAWs allow you to color code tracks, and this can be a great help in finding your place in a lengthy set of tracks. In Pro Tools, you can automatically colorize tracks and regions by function (under Display Preferences) or individually assign colors from the Color Palette, which is found under the Windows menu (see Fig. 2). To apply the colors of the tracks' small color bars to the entire length of the channel strips, hold Ctrl + Start + Alt (Ctrl + Option + Command) as you click on any color in the palette, and drag upward until you achieve the desired intensity.

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