Pro Tools (mac) and Logic Users. Looking for time savers?
Imagine selecting a single button on your iPhone or iPad (you can have multiple iOS devices connected at the same time!) and the computer automatically executes a series of mouse clicks and keyboard shortcuts. Amazing!
Add plugins for ALL of your backing vocal tracks, or ALL your favorite drum plugins and settings with a single click.
From what I’ve seen Remote (iOS 7+) can help two types of people.
1. If you record yourself frequently and want to avoid taking off the headphones, walking back to the computer to perform tasks on the computer with mouse/keyboard. (See video 1)
2. If you are a mixing engineer and have established standard sequences of plugins, and signal flow that you use as a starting point for many mixes. (See video 2)
This will work for anything listed in the menu area of Pro Tools. Even if there is already a keyboard shortcut assigned! This works in all Mac OS and Pro Tools systems slightly differently. But the steps are all pretty similar. For Windows systems I believe the process would be very similar. See Sound on Sound article here.
Here in a forty second video, I demonstrate the process.
STEP BY STEP INSTRUCTIONS
Before After
1. Identify the menu item needing a custom shortcut. Make note of the EXACT wording, spelling, capitalization, and spaces.
2. Mac/System Preferences.
3. Select KEYBOARD preferences.
4. App Shortcuts in the left column.
5. Select the + button.
6. If the Application is not in the drop down menu at the top, go to the bottom of the list to “Other…” and you can add Pro Tools.
7. Type in the exact name of the menu command for the Menu Title. Choose a new (unused) shortcut.
8. Go to Pro Tools. Behold, and experience the magic.
On a similar note, there are companies and individuals that create software for macro commands. Meaning that you hit one key, and in the software it can do a series of things. For example, you could hit Option-1 and the software would run a script of actions: create eight stereo aux tracks, inputs sequential, four different compressors on each, with custom settings, a reverb send, with custom setting, set up a parallel compressor for one of them, create custom track colors and names for them.
One (of many) ways to accomplish this is with Slate Batch Commander.
There are other options that run keyboard scripts. So if it’s a series of keyboard shortcuts that you can program in, that series can be reduced to a single hotkey! Keyboard Maestro ($35 US) is one that seems to be highly recommended.
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