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[Pete301]

Hey guys,

I use Pro Tools as my main DAW and I was wandering how people use instrument tracks. Currently I create all of my composition using the instrument tracks and then when I am comfortable with the compositional side I bounce them down to audio tracks and mix (I think it helps a lot with latency).

I would like to know how other people make use of this, There are 2 ways that I have used:

1. Using plugins on the instrument tracks and doing a lot of creative stuff like that before rendering the tracks to audio and keeping the plugins live when rendering, this means the only thing I do with the actual audio, is mix.

Pros: Doesn't interrupt the creative process
Cons: Makes it more difficult to change things because you have to re-render the audio (though this could be a good thing if you are changing things for the sake of changing it rather than actually improving)

2. Only do the composition in instrument tracks, maybe mess about with effects/EQ but then strip these out prior to making them audio and add in the plugins while they are in audio tracks.

Pros: Gives a lot of flexibility when mixing creatively, almost makes it feel like remixing. Less taxing on the computer as it doesn't need to load the audio from the library and then go through plugins.
Cons: Can interrupt the creative flow if you have got something to sound really cool and have to strip it out.


I don't even know if this is a problem for anyone, I feel like the first option is better for me. Although I don't know how many instruments is too many, my computer seems to get a bit pissed off if I'm using a lot of high resolution instruments and putting them all through effects.

[Audiosprite]

hm, well it's rare for me to freeze an instrument track to audio unless there's some degree of randomness inherent in the sound of the instrument. in which case i'll freeze the instrument eight times before it sounds the way i need it, lol.

[ZackParrish]

I don't freeze any tracks, unless you are having buffering issues, pop/clicks and other misc artifacts in the audio during playback there isn't much use for it. Latency doesn't effect anything MIDI wise either unless you are recording input from another source into the project, in which case latency may cause syncing issues... and most DAWs these days have some form of latency compensation to sync the audio automatically anyway... so again... unless you are having issues with live playback of all the tracks hammering your system I don't see the point? Maybe I read your post wrong...

[Pearl Pixel]

Thing is Pro Tools is pissed off INCREDIBLY easily.... So although it'll take 10 years to for all of my instruments to buffer or it'll stop in the middle of my song with a 'CPU error' I am never happy with my music enough to bounce to audio and mix individual stems. I do happen to agree with Zack though, if you don't have too many tracks going on at once I don't see much of a point. I would freeze my tracks in PT if it were actually an option yet, but sadly it isn't!


PLEASE NOTE: I am not very good at mixing, so your method may be incredibly good! Everybody has their own workflow, and your method may be totally different from another person's workflow and that's okay As long as it works for YOU!

[Pete301]

Hmm, interesting. I thought that everyone would bounce to audio. I always thought of it being a bit unpredictable to keep as midi because the audio would be created new each play. But maybe that's me being silly.

The reason I ask the original question is because I noticed that a couple of my tracks were out of time when I used a certain plugin and pro tools didn't seem to recognise it as needing delay compensation. Not sure how delay compensation works on instrument tracks for pro tools. I'll try keeping my current song as midi and see how it feels, I don't need to use that dirty plugin anyway .

[dawid w. mika]

Sometimes while I'm processing samples inside of song I'm freezing it when I want to retain some changes in further uses of sample (hum cancelllation, hpf and even 'harder' things like  pitch shifting or distorting) to make fx chain shorter.

I find it also helpful when I want to work very fast - freezing some less important parts of music that I'm happy with softens temptation to make endless adjustments.

I'm using Cockos Reaper as a daw and thanks to it's flexibility I can use macros for fast freezing of small items (even from midi). Just take look at this: http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=109999 Maybe you can do something similar in protools.

[Oguz]

Hmm, interesting. I thought that everyone would bounce to audio. I always thought of it being a bit unpredictable to keep as midi because the audio would be created new each play. But maybe that's me being silly.

The reason I ask the original question is because I noticed that a couple of my tracks were out of time when I used a certain plugin and pro tools didn't seem to recognise it as needing delay compensation. Not sure how delay compensation works on instrument tracks for pro tools. I'll try keeping my current song as midi and see how it feels, I don't need to use that dirty plugin anyway .

Sometimes it's good to freeze tracks to get the exact same performance every time. If you have round robins and random humanisation, they change all the time while you mix if you don't freeze/print tracks. Plus it might be easier to edit audio if you need to sync long notes, rolls etc.

[ZackParrish]

Hmm, interesting. I thought that everyone would bounce to audio. I always thought of it being a bit unpredictable to keep as midi because the audio would be created new each play. But maybe that's me being silly.

The reason I ask the original question is because I noticed that a couple of my tracks were out of time when I used a certain plugin and pro tools didn't seem to recognise it as needing delay compensation. Not sure how delay compensation works on instrument tracks for pro tools. I'll try keeping my current song as midi and see how it feels, I don't need to use that dirty plugin anyway .

Haven't touched protools in about 8 years but the little I did use it made me loathe protools. So, on your MIDI/Instrument tracks, they are off sync with each other during live playback but when you bounce them they are synced up without any adjustments by yourself? That's pretty weird if that's the case ... so no advice on that one other than what you are already doing. I know some VSTs are a bit more demanding on the system and can have some lag in note transitions and such... but that's usually larger VSTs more in the realm of orchestral instrumentation. Some guitar sets can be pretty shoddy too if you aren't using ASIO drivers with a pretty small buffer size(1024 or less).

Are you using an ASIO compatible device with ASIO drivers?

[Pete301]

Haven't touched protools in about 8 years but the little I did use it made me loathe protools. So, on your MIDI/Instrument tracks, they are off sync with each other during live playback but when you bounce them they are synced up without any adjustments by yourself? That's pretty weird if that's the case ... so no advice on that one other than what you are already doing.

It was happening during playback though I didn't bounce so I'm not sure if it was in sync when bounced, I think it would continue to be out of time. It was only one effects plugin (mondo mod) that made it go out of time and I have managed to achieve the same effect without using it so it's not a huge issue. I just wondered if anyone else did this technique.

I have heard that pro tools isn't the best for composition, but it's the DAW I've used for 5 years or so. I have bought fruity loops fairly recently and that seems pretty cool. But I like a lot of the functionality in pro tools.