Learning Pro Tools
I’ve been on a bit of a journey. I’ve moved from Los Angeles back to the Bay Area, but that’s only a part of it. It’s when things don’t go as expected that you sometimes have hard-won prizes, insights you couldn’t have had when everything was going along as it was, chugging along on well-worn grooves. I didn’t expect to still be here in this what-was-supposed-to-be-temporary residence. But here we are still, with no idea when we’ll be moving again. And it was when all of my stuff was in storage, all of my usual comforts away from me, that I started to see a few things I had been carrying around, that it was time to let go of. Letting go comes with a lot of emotional release for me. It’s not the gentle letting-go-of-the-butterfly-in-the-hand thing you see in movies. No. It’s a bursting through rock kind of thing with me. It had to be hardened to keep me in, you see.
Once that happened, I got to work. Each time I’ve moved house, the first thing I want to set up, that makes me feel at home, is my music. So I got my piano keyboard out of storage, found the cables I needed (that were scattered around different boxes), got myself the software upgrades I’d been holding off on, and hooked everything up. I finally had a recording set up again, and that’s when I started to feel better. Keyboard connected to laptop connected to recording interface connected to headphones. And exhale.
That brings me to Pro Tools. Pro Tools, for those who don’t know what it is, is a music production software, one of the standards in the industry. It has a steep learning curve - the first time you switch it on, it’s not a case of plugging something in and hearing sound. There are a lot of steps to go through first. Now, I’m someone who doesn’t always like to read the manual, and I’ll wing it. I like figuring it out as I go along. As long as it’s making sound, I’ll just skate over the details. With Pro Tools, this approach has its drawbacks. You’ll be making sound, and then suddenly you won’t. You won’t know why, what to click to fix it, and it can get very frustrating. Suddenly I seemed to arrive at a place where I was ready to take things slow, to learn Pro Tools slowly, methodically. To set up the piano keyboard and plugins slowly, and to iron out all the compatibility issues between my Mac OS, the software version, and the Mac processor. It took a whole day, but I did it. And then I realised that I could.
I’m continuing now to learn all of the things I’ve skated over in Pro Tools - sends/returns, aux tracks, reverb - and it’s actually really fun. I have a notebook that I take notes in, like I’m in a lecture theatre. And I seek out a host of different tutors on YouTube. (There are so many good tutors on YouTube, by the way, just giving you their learning for free.) And I’ve finally understood aux tracks! This is a big milestone for me, because I struggled with them and how to set them up. But now it all makes sense. And I set up a few on a session template, ready to go when I want to record.
And I want to record.