[MUSIC] Once you have everything set up it's time to start making some sound. To create a new track in Pro Tools, you want to use the command Shift Command N on a Mac or Shift Control N on a PC. This will bring up a prompt for new track. In this lesson we're going to work with instrument tracks or software instrument tracks that we can use with our midi controller. So in the option where it says audio track, I want you to choose instrument track. You also have an option to choose mono or stereo. And for an instrument track we really want these to be stereo tracks because that means they utilize the left and right stereo speakers to create big lush sounds. After you've chosen a stereo instrument track, click create. This has created a software instrument track for us to start recording on and playing some different sounds. If you remember from our last lesson we created a section for our inserts or plugins. We can use the same area for EQs, for reverbs, for compressors, but we'll also use it for our instruments that we load. In the first slot of your insert section click and choose instrument and expand. If you're using the demo version of Pro Tools or Pro Tools First, you'll probably have less options or different options than the ones you see here. Once you open expand, you'll see that there's a whole of of different knobs and faders, but you don't really want to worry about too many of those right now. After you have loaded expand go back to your instrument track and click the little record button on track itself. This is called record enable and what that means is it allows the track to actually pick up signal from your MIDI controller and play back sounds. Play your MIDI controller and test it out. [MUSIC] Expand is a software sampler, which means that it's taking prerecorded audio and plays it back when we play our MIDI controller. It also means that you can choose more sounds than these Beneath The Waves sounds that it comes with. If you click where it says Beneath The Waves, you can see that all of the sounds that expand are separated into different categories. You can have pads and leads, which are synth sounds. And you can also have strings or vocals or acoustic pianos, which are more realistic sounds. Once you've found a sound that you like, go ahead and close expand, and hit return or enter on your keyboard to go back to the beginning of your sequence. To record, use Command Spacebar on a Mac or Control Spacebar on a PC. If you're using a Mac, make sure that you check out the disabling spotlight reading, because you'll need to disable this key command in order to use this shortcut in Pro Tools. If you want to have a count off to count you in to the recording, remember you can highlight that up at the top right hand side of your screen, and that will give you two bars to prepare for the recording. Once again if you don't see this area, go back to Window, and then Transport, to bring up a floating menu of this Transport bar. [SOUND] [MUSIC] Unless you're a MIDI master, you probably didn't play this perfectly in time. But that's fine, because we have a function called Quantizing that will make what we played sound exactly in time. Once you've recorded something, you'll see that its created this blue region, and that region contains all of the notes that we played in MIDI data. The region is at your convenience to move what you played around the timeline as you please. And if you remember the edit modes that we talked about in the first lesson, you can see that slip mode allows you to move the region wherever you want. Really fine tuned. And grid mode is going to allow you to move this region based on the grid points of your tempo and you can see it's a much more structured movement. All I'm doing to move this region is just clicking and holding. To access our Quantization settings, we want to double click on this region to bring up the MIDI editor. If you're using Pro Tools first, this menu might look a little bit different. It just comes up at the bottom of your screen rather than a new window. In this MIDI editor, we can actually change the notes that we played. [SOUND] And we can also change the length of the notes by dragging to either end and controlling the length. [MUSIC] But most importantly, we can use this to get this perfectly in time. Use Command A or Control A to select all of the MIDI regions that you've got, and Option or Alt 0, depending on Mac or PC, to bring up your Quantization window. Quantizing uses your tempo and your grid to be able to snap each one of these MIDI notes into perfect time depending on the note value you choose. So if you play a lot of really fast notes at a quick tempo, you want to have a smaller grid point. Probably a 32nd note or a 16th note. If you did what I did, which is basically a chord, you can have a smaller grid value. So I'm going to choose a quarter note. Click Apply. If Apply doesn't click automatically, hitting enter or return will do the same thing. Now what I played is perfectly in time. [MUSIC] Once you've changed the actual length of your MIDI notes, changed the notes you played, or Quantized, you can close the MIDI editor. [MUSIC] >> And the cool thing about MIDI is that you don't have to stick with this sound. You can change the sound to whatever you want. So if we go back into expand, we can change this Male Eee Choir Pad to strings if we want. [MUSIC] Once you find a sound that you like, close expand and double click on the track name to rename it. When we name tracks, we want to be able to differentiate them from each other, especially when we add a whole bunch of new software instruments. So I'm going to choose something that's really original for this track, so next time I go back to it and if I want to edit it further, then I'll be able to recognize exactly which track it is. I'm going to call it Bright Strings. [MUSIC] After you're happy with one track, add some more. [MUSIC]
