From MIDI to Audio: Music Creation Workflow in Pro Tools Tutorial

Follow step-by-step, from New Session, to creating MIDI, and routing and recording audio, and discover how different Pro Tools features compliment each other in an everyday, professional, Pro Tools music creation workflow using MIDI and audio .

Introduction

If you’re composing your music using MIDI in Digidesign Pro Tools, chances are, at some point, you’ll want to record your MIDI sounds sources onto Audio tracks. Especially as your project is getting closer to the mixing stage, or if you’re working with limited CPU resources and virtual instruments.

I’ll be showing you a straightforward, tried and true method for this workflow. Along the way, I’ll add some extra mini-lessons that will shed some light on the more commonly asked questions surrounding this topic.

• Create a New Pro Tools Session
• Customize the Edit Window display
• Use the Digidesign A.i.r Xpand Virtual Instrument
• Learn how to set “good” record levels
• Use Busses to route audio signals
• and much more…

Requirements

To get the most out of this tutorial, the following are highly recommended:

• Pro Tools 7.1 or higher
• Digidesign A.i.r Xpand Virtual Instrument
• The ability to get MIDI into Pro Tools, via a controller keyboard

Create a New Pro Tools session by launching Pro Tools. Select New Session from the File menu.

For this tutorial, you can leave the default settings of the New Session dialog as-is. Just type a name for the new Session in the “Save As” field and hit Save.

You should now have a New Session with no tracks in it – like so.

Navigate to, and click on the Track menu and Select New… from the list of menu items.

In the New Track dialog that appears, create one MIDI track by selecting MIDI Track from the Track Type drop-down menu (as pictured). But don’t hit “Create” just yet.

Still in the New Track dialog window, use the Add Row button – (the plus sign at the far right) – to add three more tracks. Use the the two drop-down menus in the middle of the New Track window (called the Track Type and Track Format menus) to configure the tracks as follows:

1. Stereo Aux Input
2. Stereo Audio Track
3. Stereo Master Fader

Once you’ve done this, check to make sure your New Track dialog looks like the picture (below this paragraph) and then hit “Create”.

In the Edit Window, your session should now look something like this.

At this point, let’s just take a few moments to customize the Edit Window. This tutorial is written with everything being done in the Edit Window and this step will help ensure that we’re both looking at the same thing in Pro Tools.

First, let’s make our I/O Settings visible in the Edit Window. We can do this by navigating to the View menu, selecting the Edit Window sub-menu and then selecting I/O from the menu items.

We also need to make our Inserts visible in the Edit Window. We can do this by navigating to the View menu, selecting the Edit Window sub-menu and then selecting Inserts from the menu items.

Ok – now your Edit Window should be the same as what I’m looking at during this tutorial. Here’s what my screen looks like.

On the Aux Input’s first Insert, instantiate (“insert”) the Xpand plug-in by selecting Xpand from your plug-ins list drop-down menu.

Assign the MIDI output of the MIDI track to the MIDI Input of the Xpand by doing the following:

• Click on the output tab of the MIDI Track

• Select the Xpand 1 – Channel 1 from the MIDI Output tab’s pop-up menu

The default patch on the Xpand! Instrument is a pad sound called “Shimmer”. It has a really slow attack time (meaning it takes a few seconds before the sound is at full volume). So, for the purpose of this tutorial, I think we should use a patch with a little more attack – like an Acoustic Piano.

On the Xpand, the word patch refers to a combination of up to four individual parts (A,B,C, and D), or sounds. The sounds are layered together to produce a richer overall sound, called a patch. The Xpand has over 1000 preset patches that utilize around 500 combinable parts.

At the top of the Xpand plug-in interface, click on the Plug-In Settings Select Button. It’s the little button with two overlapping squares.

When you click on the Plug-In Settings Select Button, the Plug-In Settings Dialog opens. It will look something like this…

At the top-left of this window, you’ll notice drop-down folder selector/menu. (On my system, it always defaults to the “Action Pads” folder.) Click on this Selector to reveal a list of Xpand Patch folders. Navigate down the list to folder “13. Acoustic Piano”.

Now, the plug-in setting dialog will show you a list of all the different acoustic piano patches included in your Xpand library. Click on one that you want to work with and then click Done.

Record enable the MIDI Track by Clicking the Record Enable button.

and use on of the following methods to start recording:

• Press Command+Spacebar (Mac) / CTRL+Spacebar (Win)
• Press the number 3 on the numeric (ten keypad) keyboard
• Press the F12 key
• Click the Record, then the Play button on a Pro Tools Transport

With Pro Tools recording, play four or eight bars of something on your MIDI keyboard.

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Tagged as: patch, Recording, shortcuts, timeline selection, workflow, xpand