Hey Casey! I was wondering how your journey of learning Pro Tools began, I'm currently taking a class and this program is absolutely daunting... Any tips for a budding artist?
That is so awesome to hear! First of all, congratulations! you just took the first step in learning a skill that’s going to pay you back the rest of your music-making life. I encourage even people who don’t plan on doing their own engineering all the time to learn the basics of one DAW (Logic/GarageBand are great and more affordable). I use PT and sometimes Ableton. It was helpful to me and alleviating for my anxiety-prone personality to know no matter what I can record something any time I want. It also strengthened my arranging skills because so much of production is about making better spacial decisions. I work better this way, but it’s different person to person. Sometimes I wish I’d taken a class!
My first DAW ever was PT which made for some initial headaches. Now that I use it all the time, I think it’s a lot more intuitive than some people on the boards say it is. For one, the grid and tab-to-transient features make editing really fast/easy. You’ll get the hang of it! And it’s visually really easy to organize (I like to color code all my tracks). Youtube is your new best friend. I can’t tell you how many hours I spent watching 14 year olds teach me how to EQ vocals or manipulate the midi features. It’s such a brilliant and free resource. Take advantage of it.
To get you started: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwVgaBOvP9s
I had next to no experience messing around with Logic or Garage Band; only reason I started on PT was because that was what my friend who I was learning how to produce from was using. Now I think maybe having no point of reference with other DAWs made it easier for me to learn. He gave me a cracked copy of PT and from there I spent about a year studying. The first half of the year was me hitting my head against the wall, the last 6 mos. were extremely productive and resulted in a record. My ears and eyes adjusted to things. I started to have dreams about trimming wavs. I think if I had to do it again I wouldn’t have isolated myself to much. It’s a lot easier to learn when you have some sort of community around you.
Aside from YouTube, I’ve found the avid community forum is a great resource--I always recommend troubleshooting between more than one opinion because the issue might differ depending on your computer/interface/DAW PT edition. I started out on PT 10 and when I switched into 11 I had to take some time adjusting.
Overall, ask as many questions as possible--make lots of mistakes and show them to your friends as much as you can for feedback. Hope this helps and good luck!
xox
CD
