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 The Scrubber Tool
The purpose of the Scrubber in Pro Tools is to emulate the “scrubbing”
technique used to edit analog tape. By scrubbing over a digital
audio edit point, you can listen in closely to find the exact edit
point, which may not be obvious just by looking at the waveform.
To scrub an audio track, select the Scrubber and drag within a track.
To scrub two adjacent audio tracks at once, simply drag along the
line between the two tracks. Zoom in on a track to scrub over a
small area, or press Command (Mac) or Control (Win) to scrub at
a finer resolution without zooming.
The direction, distance, and speed at which you drag will determine
the sound of the scrubbed audio. Normal scrubbing allows you to
scrub at regular playback speed or slower. If you want to scrub
at speeds faster than regular speed, press Option (Mac) or Alt (Win)
while dragging. This is called Scrub/Shuttle mode and allows for
scrubbing at several times the regular speed. This feature is useful
for scrolling through long tracks to find a specific part of the
track.
 The Pencil Tool
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Fig. 4.5. Click on the Pencil tool
to choose between the five Pencil
drawing shapes.
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When editing audio, the Pencil
tool has one function: to redraw waveforms. Often, this is
done to repair waveforms, such as to eliminate a pop or click
on the track. However, the Pencil has many other useful functions,
including inserting MIDI notes, editing velocities for a range
of MIDI notes, and drawing automation and controller events.
And by pressing Option (Mac) or Alt (Win), the Pencil tool
turns into an Eraser, which can be used to delete MIDI notes,
or to program changes and sysex events. (Editing MIDI data
is covered in chapter 5.)
As you may have already noticed, the Pencil tool comes in
five flavors: Free Hand, Line, Triangle, Square, and Random.
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These represent the different shapes you can draw with the Pencil.
I use the free hand and line shapes most often when editing audio.
The other shapes are more useful when drawing or editing automation
and MIDI data.
Note! The Pencil is a destructive tool. It actually changes the
original audio file permanently! Although pencil edits can be undone,
be careful how you wield your pencil . . . it can be sharper than
a sword when used on audio files.
 The Zoomer Tool
Primarily, the Zoomer tool helps you to enlarge a track (as you
would with a magnifying glass or microscope) and find details within
its waveforms. It’s good for exposing problem areas in a track
or locating good edit points.
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Fig. 4.6. The Single Zoom
tool is identified with an arrow to the right of the Zoomer
tool icon. Normal Zoom mode doesn’t have the arrow.
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To zoom in one level and center
the Edit window at the zoom point, click once on a region
with the Zoomer tool. To zoom back out to the previous level,
Option + click (Mac) or Alt + click (Win) with the Zoomer;
in this case, a negative sign “-” appears inside
the Zoomer tool instead of the usual plus sign “+”.
Often, a more useful way to zoom is to click and drag on the
specific part of a track that you want to magnify horizontally.
In this instance, the zoomed area fills the entire edit window. |
In addition to the normal Zoomer tool, you can select the Single
Zoom tool that returns you to the previously selected tool after
a zoom has been performed. For example, when using the Selector
you can click on the Single Zoom Tool mode and, once the Zoom operation
has been performed, Pro Tools automatically switches back to the
Selector.
KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS FOR THE EDITING TOOLS
You can use the function keys to switch between the edit tools.
Simply press:
• F5 for the Zoomer (keep pressing F5 to toggle between
the two Zoomer tools)
• F6 for the Trimmer (keep pressing F6 to toggle between
the two Zoomer tools)
• F7 for the Selector
• F8 for the Grabber (keep pressing F8 to toggle between
the two Grabber tools)
• F9 for the Scrubber
• F10 for the Pencil (keep pressing F10 to toggle through
the five Pencil shapes)
• F6 + F7 for the Smart Tool
A PDF document listing all of the keyboard shortcuts was installed
on your computer with Pro Tools. Print out this document (appropriately
named “Keyboard Shortcuts.pdf”) and become familiar
with the shortcuts . . . they will improve your Pro Tools efficiency
immensely.
Tab to Transients and Link Selections
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Fig. 4.7. Tab to Transients
is particularly useful for editing drums or other percussive
instruments, where the transients are usually indicative of
the beginning of a beat, measure, or phrase.
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In the same area of the Edit
window as the Edit modes, there are two other useful buttons.
Tab to Transients allows you to use the Tab key to navigate
from one transient part of an audio waveform to the
next. |
The other useful button found to the right of the Tab to Transient
button in figure 4.7 is the Link Selections button. This button
links Edit and Timeline selections, allowing you to set play and
record ranges by selecting in the track’s playlist. When unlinked
(the button is unhighlighted), you can make Edit selections without
disturbing the Timeline selection. What that means is that you can
select a portion of the session to play in the Timeline (conductor
ruler), but edit a different section of the session. I usually just
keep the Link Selections button highlighted, but occasionally it’s
useful to unlink the Edit and Timeline selections. For instance,
when unlinked, you can loop a MIDI drum beat and edit a few of the
notes within the loop while it’s playing back without interrupting
the playback.
Track Views
Pro Tools offers many options for viewing your regions and tracks.
As seen in figure 4.8, the Track View Selector, found in the Edit
window below each track’s name, allows you to choose which
data is displayed in the track’s playlist. Whatever data you
choose to display is the data that you can edit on-screen.
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Fig. 4.8. The Track View
Selector for (a) an Audio Track, (b) a MIDI Track, (c) an
Aux Track, (d) a Master Fader Track.
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Audio and MIDI tracks have “Master views.” That is,
when a track is viewed in its master format, any edits performed
on that track apply to all data on that track. For example, when
an audio track is set to Waveform view, deleting part of the waveform
data will also delete automation data on that section of the audio
track. Here are the Master Views for each type of track.
For most of your audio and automation editing, you’ll probably
use the Waveform and Volume views. To easily toggle back and forth
between these two views, click in a track that you want to toggle
(Shiftclick for additional tracks), and press Ctrl + - (Mac) or
Start + - (Win) on the alpha keyboard.
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