Re: looping with Protools on the Mac

[dtapia@unoco.edu (Douglas Tapia)]

Looping with Protools has been like a revelation to me, too.  No, it is not
a real-time process, but the system has become so good that it is prety
intuitive to pull off clean loops fairly quickly in the studio.

A few musicians and myself are putting together a broad range of "dancable
soundscapes" using bits of very long jams that we then assemble into fairly
structured tunes.  This is by no means revolutionary, as this has been the
driving force behind a number of "dance" projects, most notabably for me
Amon Tobin and Bill Laswell's "Material," (not to mention that Teo Macero
was doing this with Miles in the late 60s!) however Protools makes doing
this sort of thing dead easy.  No cutting tape, no bouncing down, no guess
work.  And if you don't like the results, just undo them and find something
that works better.

The studio I work in has recently aquired a HUI and I must say, for any
Protools owners out there, you MUST get this box (or Digi's forthcoming
ProMix).  You can get rid of your mouse, you could even get rid of your
monitor (though a monitor is still really nice to have).  The HUI allows
you quick access to all plugins and just about every aspect of Protools
that you would want to control.  Finding insert and loop points is way too
easy thanks to the jog/shuttle dial.

We generally start with a drum beat. Several of the musicians I work with
play drums, and someone will just jump into the booth and play some
patterns for about half an hour.  We'll all sit down with this raw
material, pick something that is both groovy and a little twisted and loop
that.  Someone will lay down a bass line which will also be looped, and we
just go from there.  We'll lay in found sounds, free jazz jams, analog
synth weirdness, etc.  For one tune, we have even settled on a B3/guitar
unison line that is being ram-roded on top of a 4 bar rhodes vamp that was
looped in realtime using an Echoplex.

Loops with in loops within loops.  Protools has definatly changed my life
and the way I make music.  If you have a fat trustfund, you really must
pick a system up.


>As an 'old school' looper in the late '70's (two spaced 4-track reel-to-
>reels), it's surprised even me how hooked I've gotten on Protools in the 
>last
>year or so.  So much so, that I recently bit the big bullet and upgraded 
>to
>their PT24 system.  While we're not talking 'traditional' looping in the 
>sense
>of simple realtime looping (I'll never get rid of my EDP), these software
>recorder/editors open up a whole new concept of looping, which I'm sure a 
>lot
>of you people are exploring.  You can grab a phrase (or a piece of a 
>loop) and
>simply paste copies of it back-to-back in endless, and completely editable
>permutations.  With the multitrack capabilities, you can overlay more 
>tracks
>or loops.  While there isn't the 'instant gratification' of a dedicated
>looping box, the flexibility and absolute control over the elements you're
>using is addictive.  The prices of these software packages (especially for
>PC's) is coming down all the time, they're getting to be a great value 
>(since
>they're really complete recording studios in a box).  My Protools 4.1 
>software
>and hardware combo (the Audiomedia 3 computer card with analog and dig. 
>ins
>and outs, and some cool fx software) was 'only' around $850 (I'm going to 
>sell
>my 6-month old pkg for about $500).  And I guess some of the PC pkgs (I'm 
>a
>dedicated Mac guy) are even cheaper.  Cool stuff...
>Tim Story
>(storypod@aol.com)