Mike Slinn
Mike Slinn

Pro Tools Overview

Published 2020-03-01. Last modified 2025-03-19.
Time to read: 3 minutes.

This page is part of the av_studio collection.

I have written eighteen articles about Pro Tools. They are somewhat ordered, but largely are meant to be read in any order.

Avid provides a nice, high-level explanation of how to record music, suitable for any DAW.

I have a Pro Tools Artist subscription. After a few years of working with Pro Tools, the program seems intuitive. Newbies are in for a rough start unless they know someone who is willing to hold their hand.

Avid Control Is Your Friend

Most new Pro Tools users should not spend much time memorizing the old and clunky Pro Tools user interface. Instead, they should try to do as much as they can using Avid Control, running on a tablet. Avid Control presents a much more user-friendly and intuitive interface than Pro Tools itself.

This approach is particularly helpful for artists who work alone and who do not primarily use a keyboard located in front of the computer monitor that displays Pro Tools. Running Avid Control on a tablet over Wi-Fi allows the artist to control Pro Tools remotely. Some types of musicians for whom this advice is particularly useful include drummers, guitarists and saxophonists. These musicians find it awkward or impossible to play their instrument and operate Pro Tools at the same time.

Experienced old-timers, who have memorized all the hot keys, and who are not the talent being recorded, will, of course, continue to work directly with Pro Tools.

Avid Support

As I mentioned, I have an Artist subscription, which means I am only entitled to email support. My personal experience is that Avid’s email support sucks. Badly. They are extremely slow to respond, arrogant, rude, and generally useless. I pay money for this abuse? Fuck them, and fuck their managers.

When an Avid employee responds in public, their attitude is markedly more civil. The Facebook forum is better, and Avid employees are active there. The Reddit group r/protools is also worthwhile.

References

PDFs

Videos

See the Free Pro Tools Tutorials from Production Expert.

I have written eighteen articles about Pro Tools. They are somewhat ordered, but largely are meant to be read in any order.

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