Digidesign Pro Tools LE 6 Tutorials
Audio Recording Basics / Recording an Audio Track
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Subtitles of the Movie (Digidesign Pro Tools LE 6 / Audio Recording Basics / Recording an Audio Track)
In this movie, I will show you all the necessary steps to record a basic audio track. There are things that need to be in place before you can actually make any audio recordings in Pro Tools. In the real world I need something to record, in this case my martin guitar. I need at least one microphone. In this case I have two and they are set up as a stereo pair. If I were doing a direct recording of a keyboard, guitar or bass or some other instrument level or line device, I wouldn't necessarily need a microphone. Either way I take the mic cable or instrument cable and I plug it into the appropriate location on my interface. Check the reference guide that came with your interface to see how it prefers connections from mics and instruments. I have my mics plugged into inputs 1 and 2 on my 002Rack which I will need to remember for the next step. In Pro Tools I will go to the IO setup screen and see how inputs 1 and 2 are patched or mapped over to input names in the virtual world of Pro Tools. I see here that inputs 1 and 2 are mapped over to the labels mic/line1 and mic/line2 which are treated as mono inputs and that both inputs together are mapped to mic/line1 and 2 which is treated as a stereo input. Since I will be recording a stereo track, this last labels what should appear on my input options pop-up menu. Since I am not going to use any of the other labels or patch points, I can delete them to clean things up. I can always add them back later if necessary. Now let's look at the output setup. I have five stereo output possibilities here. But I know I only need the first one because I have plugged in my monitoring system to analog outputs 1 and 2. I will just delete the rest. I will rename analog1 and 2 to hr824s since that's the reference monitors or speakers that I am using for my playback. If you are recording in the same room as your playback system, make sure you turn off the signal going to your monitors. Instead just use the headphone output on your interface in order to avoid feedback problems. We are finished here so I will accept these changes. I will create a new mono track and a new stereo track and show you the input options available on both. With the mono track, I can record either mic/line1 or mic/line2 and with the stereo track I can only record mic/line1-2 stereo. The output option for both is simply hr824s. The source signal should now be directed into either of these channel strips in the mix window or the tracks in the edit window, when I arm them for recording. To tell a track or a channel strip that I wanted to receive signal from its selected input, click the R for the track in the edit window or the R for the channel strip in the mix window. This is called arming the track for recording or record enabling. If I setup everything correctly, I should now see the green level meter start bobbing up and down along with my voice as I narrate this movie. Good, I got it right the first time. If you are having problems getting signal to appear on your meters, simply back track to the source of the signal. Be it a microphone or instrument and follow the intended path of the signal all the way through to Pro Tools to make sure you didn't setup something incorrectly. A few common problems include forgetting to turn on phantom power to a condenser microphone, dead batteries and a self powered microphone or a self powered acoustic guitar with a built-in preamp, forgetting to plug something in or even a faulty or damaged equipment. Try swapping out devices along the signal chain to eliminate possible faults and equipment. If all else fails, have someone else inspect your setup. They might be able to find something you missed. Since I am up and running, I will go ahead and record this little guitar piece. My track/channel strip is armed or record enabled. So to set the actual recording process in motion, I can use either the transport control window or a keyboard shortcut. To begin recording using the transport control, I click on the button with a red circle which is kind of like pressing the record button on a cassette recorder. As with a cassette recorder, you also have to press play which is the button with this green triangle. You can see that Pro Tools has come to life and is in the process of recording everything I am saying to this ever-increasing waveform block right here. I will stop the recording by clicking on this blue square button which is the stop button. Like I said before, I can also use the keyboard to perform this recording and it's typically the way that most people record into Pro Tools since it's so easy to remember and use. To playback audio in Pro Tools, press the space bar. To stop, again press the space bar. To record on the Mac, hold down the Command key and press space bar. On the pc, Control and space bar. On either platform, you can also just press the F12 key. There we go. To stop, press the space bar by itself. So it's always the space bar plus either Command or Control depending on your host computer or just F12. If you don't want to keep this recorded block of audio, choose undo from the edit menu or use the keyboard equivalent, Command+Z on the Mac, Control+Z on the pc. If you are in the middle of a recording and you make a big enough mistake that you just want to cancel without keeping the block of audio, just press Command period on the Mac or hit the Esc key on the pc. Your recording will stop and you will be placed back right where you were with no audio recorded. Now you can try again. This time, I will hit the F12 key.
Tutorial Information
| Course: | Digidesign Pro Tools LE 6 |
| Author: | Nathan Dickson |
| SKU: | 33599 |
| ISBN: | 1-932808-46-9 |
| Release Date: | 2005-02-25 |
| Duration: | 9 hrs / 101 lessons |
| Work Files: |
Yes |
| Captions: | No |
| Compatibility: |
Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux QuickTime 7, Flash 8 |
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