Pro Tools 11 - #08 - Edit Tools; pt.4 - Pencil Tool and Automation Video Lecture | Pro tools Tutorial: Basics to Expert - Video & Sound Editing

hello this is music tech help guy and
welcome to episode 8 of my Pro Tools 11
video tutorial series in this episode
we're going to wrap up the last of our
main edit tools and pro tools
in the previous three episodes we've
already talked about the trim the
selector the grabber the smart tool the
zoom tool the scrubber tool but we have
not yet talked about the pencil tool so
that's what we're gonna do in this video
we're going to talk about the pencil
tool and how you can use it to draw
automation and all of its secondary
functions as well one thing that we
won't be going over with the pencil tool
is how to use it to say draw in MIDI
notes and work in the MIDI editor that
will we'll cover another day so today
we're basically just going to talk about
using the pencil tool and its secondary
shapes to draw in volume mute and pan
automation to create some cool creative
things so the most basic function of the
the pencil tool is that you can use it
in freehand or line mode to draw in
volume automation so let's say that I
wanted my strings here to sort of fade
in I could change from waveform view to
volume view and I could either use the
freehand mode to sort of manually draw
in a shape or whoops or I could use the
line tool to sort of get something
that's a bit more refined and more there
we go
a little more straight there so I could
maybe fade in the strings
now notice that nothing happens there if
you're on if you find that your
automation isn't being read you have to
make sure that you go over to your track
and here it says off make sure the
automation mode is set to read so it
actually reads the automation on the
track because if I need to unmute the
track and it fades in and also if you
hit command equals sign your mixer will
also follow this as well so there you go
so that might be one thing you want
might want to do with with with the
pencil tool it's not one of the most
basic things you can do with it by the
way if you want to delete automation
with the pencil tool if you hold option
the pencil just sort of flips around and
you can erase your automation points and
you could also use the selector tool to
drag over any automation that you don't
want and you can hit delete to delete it
so I'm going to set my strings back to
off and what I really want to do is I
want to add a second strings track sort
of like a deep bass strings and I want
to do some creative things with some of
these other tools rather than just the
the freehand and line tool let me create
a new stereo instrument track and I'm
gonna call this bass strings and I'm
going to choose expand there it is
and the patch I'm going to use is under
huge pads it's called octa strings the
arm the track and just play a little bit
for you
so the part I'm going to play is going
to follow the core progression of the
song which is
basically a flat G flat a flat D flat
all in just hole notes so let me turn my
click track on so just so I can stay in
time and let me just play this in
so there it is we're not really gonna
deal much with MIDI editing editing for
a while but for now I'm going to use the
grabber tool to double click on my MIDI
clip I just played in I'm gonna hit
command a to select all of the notes I'm
gonna go up to event event operations
quantize or option zero I believe I
showed this to you guys in another video
and I'm going to quantize the note on
and off to a whole note which is
basically what I played in someone hit
apply sama notes are right there set to
the grid just one thing I should mention
that the MIDI editor actually has a copy
of all of the Edit tools that were in
the the Edit window it's just that we're
not going to get and they all have
actually independent functions different
functions than they do in the Edit
window so we're we're gonna get to those
eventually but we're gonna wait until we
start talking about MIDI to actually get
to that alright so let me use my
selector tool I'm just gonna trim up my
clip here use the grabber tool click on
my new clip hit command D to duplicate
it let's see what this sounds like
cool so I want to do something a little
bit more interesting with this I don't
want just hole notes I want the notes to
feel like they're maybe moving a little
bit one quick thing we can do just with
the pencil line tool is show the audio
volume on the the bass strings track
here and pull us up to the top and what
I'm gonna do is I'm gonna set my grid to
a half note and I'm gonna create these
sort of half note swells so I'm gonna
start right here and by the way I'm what
I'm drawing in just before the grid line
and I'm drawing just up to the next grid
line so I'm gonna do click here and pull
down just like so so again using the the
line tool you can do it the freehand
tool as well but it's not going to be
quite as exact one of the great things
about the selector tool in automation is
that you can actually drag over
automation hit command C or control C
and a PC to copy and then click where
you want the next sort of iteration of
the automation to go and hit command V
or ctrl V to paste it in place
so I actually can just go down the line
here and draw in this little volume
swell and I get enough of them I can
copy those and paste those as well so
now I get something like this
so that's kind of cool to be able to go
and just take something as simple as
whole notes and make it move and give it
some motion let me delete that
automation let's try something else
let's try the square to low and come
back to the triangle tool the square
tool actually the triangle square and
random tools are cool because they will
create a shape at the pace of whatever
you've set your grid so like if I set my
grid to an eighth note and I drag over
this with the square or the the triangle
or the random pencil tool it'll actually
create that shape of square shape a
triangle shape whatever it may be in the
the rhythm of whatever you had your grid
set to so I can do things like that so
I'm going to do is I'm going to create a
bit of like a ducking effect where the
volume alternates between high and low
high and low at an eighth-note pace
maybe I want to go a little faster than
that let's try a sixteenth note instead
or you can try a bit more subtly you
know instead of doing like a complete
on-and-off look I was doing you can just
do like a subtle ducking effect I
promise you get those little cliques in
there another way to do this or a
similar effect is instead of affecting
volume you can choose to affect the
audio mute which basically affects the
new button and so basically this is
either on or off there's nothing in
between you're either fully muted or
you're not muted at all
so that one doesn't give you sort of the
clicky sound that the the square tool is
giving us another way to do this and to
play with the mute function is to use
the random function the random pencil
tool what this does is it sort of
randomizes when it's on and when it's
off it's sort of like the square tool
but just it's it's completely random and
you can try out some different random
rhythms if you will and then maybe find
the parts that you like and copy and
paste them
so maybe I really like the way this one
sounds I can just copy that one
automation shape there using the
selector tool pull the rest of this out
I'm gonna put my grid back on 1/4 know
so I can hone in exactly what I want to
go I can just copy and paste in that
random shape that I generated from the
the random pencil tool
okay so I like the way that sounds but
let me just
let's try using something with the
triangle tool since we skipped that one
what I actually want to use the triangle
tool for is I want to use it to make the
pan on our baseline here sort of move
back and forth between the two speakers
so the problem with trying to do this
with a stereo track is that stereo
tracks actually have to balance there's
a left and a right pan knob so we it's
gonna be really difficult to try to make
this sort of sweep left and right when
you have to do it to two different
balancers so what I'm gonna do instead
is I'm going to create a new mono
version of this track and then just drag
the MIDI data down on to it because with
a mid each with a mono track you're only
going to have one balancer you only have
one pan knob so it's not gonna be quite
as more as difficult to do so as you
shift command n let me use a mono
instrument track we'll just call this
bass strings you won't be able to pull
the expand down it's in red because now
it's not the correct format so we're
actually gonna have to go back and
choose the expand again but this time in
mono and we were using the huge pads
octa octa strings there we go I can pull
the MIDI clips down delete our old track
and this time I'm gonna choose audio pin
so notice it's not pan left and panned
right it's just a single balancer that
basically sweeps it's gonna sweep the
stereo image left and right to create
sort of a cup a panning sweeping effect
so this one line now represents how far
left or how far right the signal is
right now it's dead center so I'm going
to choose the triangle tool and I'm
gonna start right in the middle and just
drag out you can make it more you know
more narrow if you want want a really
wide sweeping panning effect
and let's see if this sounds like
let's hear it sounds like with
everything
now if we wanted to do this with
something maybe a little less gradual
sounding we could go back and try using
the square tool for this let's set our
grid to a sixteenth note and let's
choose a square now we're gonna have
this really fast moving panning effect
there you go now at the bottom of our I
just delete this first there you go
let's go back to clips there we go at
the bottom of the pencil tool there's
two additional pencil secondary modes
there's parabolic and s-curve parabolic
and s-curve cannot be used out in the
main area to draw a volume automation or
anything like that really what the the
least without getting into them the MIDI
functions of what they can do
parabolic an s-curve are used to draw in
shapes for tempo automation so and you
can actually use all of these for tempo
automation not just the bottom two it's
just that the bottom two will not work
when when you're trying to draw in like
volume automation at a track it won't
work
so what you can do to affect the tempo
is click on the little little arrow
that's just to the left of the tempo
ruler and by the way if you don't see
the tempo ruler you just click here and
just go down to show tempo and it brings
up this little sort of green line that
is showing you that we have a static
tempo from beginning to end
now one thing that we we can't really do
right now is we can't change the tempo
of our audio tracks you can only really
change the tempo of your MIDI tracks
unless you're using elastic audio now
just for the sake of sake of confusion
where I'm not gonna really get really
deep into elastic audio yet I'm just
gonna tell you that if you want your
audio tracks to change and have their
tempo change based on what what you do
up here as far as tempo is concerned
you're gonna have to turn on elastic
audio so just for now I'm gonna keep
this real simple on anything that's
audio you click on the little oil can
icon choose polyphonic
and then make sure that the little thing
that looks like a watch you click on
that and change it to ticks that's the
time base and what that's gonna do is
it's gonna make the drum loop and it's
gonna make the strings actually change
based on the tempo change that I make
the MIDI data will always change to the
tempo unless you've got the time-based
set to samples instead of ticks Wellcome
we'll come back to elastic audio and
time basis in a much later video but for
now that's what you need to do to make
sure that the tempo changes so one thing
you can do with the pencil tool is you
can draw in tempo changes so if I use
like the line tool here and I want to
start really slow and then go to a
faster tempo you can do that
or maybe I wanted to use the the
freehand tool instead just to draw in
something something weird
you can also use the parabolic and
s-curve shapes up here to draw in with
parabolic you can draw in sort of
logarithmic shapes
and you can also use it to draw in sort
of exponential shapes
and you can also use the Esther s curve
function to draw in s-shaped changes
there you go the I guess the difference
between drawing in and s curve this way
and maybe using the freehand tool is
that the S curve and and logarithmic
functions electric sort of smooth out
the way you drew it
the the freehand tool isn't really gonna
do that for you it's just gonna keep it
as sloppy as you drew it whereas the the
s-curve and parabolic functions lecture
sort of smooth out the motion that you
drew in to make it more parabolic or
more s-curve shaped all right so those
are the pencil tools all the pencil
modes we'll come back to these when we
start talking getting more in depth with
automation and we start talking about
MIDI a bit more there's a few other
functions that these that these serve
but for now they basically serve to just
know that they their main function is to
control volume changes pan changes mute
changes or other automation changes and
again with the parabolic and s-curve
tools you can use those to affect the
the the session tempo across time so I
hope you enjoyed the video and thanks
for watching