Producing with Pro Tools First

Let’s dive in my learning a little about this program, and why its free.

“Free” isn’t always free: In this video we will look at what you can do (and what you can’t) in Pro Tools First.

One of the biggest drawbacks to Pro Tools First is project maximums. There are a few things we can do to deal with it, though.

The downloading process for Pro Tools First is a little more complicated than normal. I’ll walk you through it in this video.

Because of that PACE and iLok stuff, we have an extra step in installing, too. Let me walk you through it.

Next, let’s create a new session from scratch on our own.

As we start to build a session, it is always a good idea to keep things organized. This is how I do it.

Next, let’s start to build a track by adding a drum loop into the session as an audio track.

Pro Tools First has a lot of MIDI instruments built in, which will let us make a little of different sounds.

Now that we’ve looked at some of the presets, let’s build our own sound in this video.

The Expand!2 has some effects built-in to it that we can access to give our sound a little more color.

Now that we’ve created something, we should save it so we can use it in future tracks as well.

Getting comfortable with the various editing tools in Pro Tools will make your workflow much faster. Let’s learn them!

We have a lot of stuff on the screen. Let’s hide what we don’t need.

One of the great new features of Pro Tools is the ability to stretch audio.

The ability to Warp audio has been common in programs like Ableton Live for awhile. In this video I’ll show you how Pro Tools does it.

Next, let’s talk about how to chop up and edit our audio files.

Markers are a great way to keep track of your arrangement.

It’s time to record a track! Pardon my guitar playing in this video while I get something into our track.

Now that we have some music recorded, let’s polish it up with some editing.

Before we anything to our instrument tracks, let’s be sure our MIDI system is setup correctly.

Now we are all set to record some bass, synth, drums, or whatever else we want!

In this video, I’ll walk you through creating a drum track using our MIDI instrument and the MIDI Editor.

We haven’t spent much time yet in the Pro Tools Mix Window. Let’s explore it now.

Just like in the Xpand!2, we can control the placement of our sound with Panning from the mixer.

Next, we need to look at how we can get control of our mix using one of Pro Tools First’s built-in Equalizers.

Pro Tools First has a number of other effects built-in as well. Let’s explore some of those!

No discussion of mixing would be complete without showing you how to use Automation.

Let’s take a look at what we’ve created so far.

Once you have a completed track in Pro Tools, you want to Export it. This is how.

Exporting, or Bouncing, has a number of a settings we should explore. In this video I’ll walk you through the different options.

Pro Tools has a sneaky little setting called “Offline Mode”.

Now that we have an exported file, let’s talk about how to get it to an Mp3 so you can upload it.

That’s it for now! Here are a few parting words and tips.