Here’s how this delay send and return is specifically set up in Pro Tools:

1. Activate a send (the “diamond” buttons above tracks’ Input selectors in the Mix window) on each track that you want to have delay — adjust the volume and panning. I recommend starting with the volume at 0.0. Select a mono or stereo bus output (e.g., bus 1–2) as the path to the aux track.

Fig. 4.13. A basic effects send/return setup using an aux input in Pro Tools.

2. Create a new aux track by selecting New Track from the File menu or by typing . + Shift + N (Mac) or Control + Shift + N (Win), and then choosing Aux Input from the dropdown menu above the Create button. Choose Mono for a mono return/mono plug-in or Stereo for a stereo return/stereo plug-in. Output Send A Send A Output Bus 1–2 3. Choose the bus path (e.g., bus 1–2) as the input of the aux track from the track sends (in the Mix window). The output of the aux track usually goes to the main outputs, unless you want to route it somewhere else. With this setup, the individual send faders control the amount of signal from each track that’s sent to the delay plug-in on the aux input. The aux track fader controls how much of the delay effect on those tracks is added to the overall mix.

Sends, returns, and busses are integral parts of recording and mixing in Pro Tools. Their functions are explained in greater detail in chapters 11 and 12.

ON THE CD
Open up the Pro Tools session titled “Basic Effects Send” on the CD-ROM and try playing around with the sends, busses, and aux tracks (effects returns). The signal flow of this setup is often misunderstood . . . take some time to really digest the
concepts so you can use effects sends/returns effectively.

DIGITAL EDITING
When cutting and splicing analog tape, you rely solely on your ears to find musical edit points. There are often hundreds of pieces of tape to keep track of and all razor-cut edits are destructive. It is an exacting and exhaustive process that yielded good results for several decades. However, it’s fast becoming a dead art since digital editing has forever changed the way we think about production.

Possibly the best feature of recording to hard disk is digital editing. The biggest highlight in my opinion is that you actually see the waveform you’re trying to edit; you’re able to combine your senses (hearing and sight) to get the job done. Obviously, music is heard, not seen, so we must continue to rely heavily on our ears to make sure anything we do sounds good.

However, for visually oriented people like me, being able to see what I’m listening to helps me find accurate edit points much faster. In fact, most people rely on sight as their primary sense . . . even musicians.

With its variety of functions, there’s really little you can’t do in Pro Tools when editing audio or MIDI. In fact, because Pro Tools offers so many ways to edit your music, every Pro Tools user seems to utilize different techniques and functions to get their work done — an entire book could be written on Pro Tools editing techniques alone. That said, I’m going to cover just a few of the functions I use regularly. Additional information on all of the editing features of Pro Tools can be found in the Pro Tools Reference Guide and on the Digidesign Web site. I also recommend getting together with other Pro Tools users and exchanging tips — you’ll be surprised how much you can learn. (Visit Digidesign’s User Conference area on their site for access to a knowledgeable and vibrant community of Digi users, from newbies to top pros.)

In its most basic forms, Pro Tools editing is cutting, pasting, copying, and clearing regions and files; being familiar with these commands is imperative. If you haven’t experimented with them yet, try basic edits on an audio file now — don’t worry, you can undo everything. In fact, Pro Tools has multiple levels of undo so you can step back up to 16 previous edits if you need to. When editing, the pieces of audio you’ll be working with are called regions. You need to get familiar with creating regions, capturing regions, locking regions, placing regions in tracks, and sliding regions so you can manipulate them comfortably.

There are many tools that help you edit in Pro Tools, such as rulers, zoom presets, edit tools, and edit modes (Shuffle, Spot, Slip, and Grid . . . covered earlier). The edit tools and modes help you trim, scrub, nudge, select, grab, and draw waveforms in almost any way imaginable. That said, most of us haven’t read and memorized the Pro Tools Reference Guide cover to cover, nor have we needed to explore every single function presented there.

Usually I learn new techniques when forced to do so. For example, I needed to figure out the best and fastest way to comp a vocal part together. So I paged through the reference guide for information and considered a few different techniques. As mentioned earlier, I chose to comp vocals using playlists. This technique might not be the technique that someone else would use first, but it works well for me. The moral: Don’t feel like you have to be a Pro Tools expert to edit like a pro.