SUMMERY:

Automation In Pro Tools is so important for polishing up your mixes. There are so many reasons to use it from Volume Riding, Panning, Muting, enhancing effects and the list goes on and on.

Mixing is an art.

Those subtle little changes a mixer can make in a song can also be so powerful.

If you haven't yet learned to use automation then you're neglecting a big part of what mixing is all about.

Automation Basics

The basic automation interface can be found in the Edit Window within our track's controls.




By default, a track's menu is set to Waveform. Within that Menu and for the use of Automation, we have Volume, Mute and Pan Now, we can either change to these views as we're mixing for automation or, we can do it another, more efficient way.

Click on the Arrow pointing to the right at the bottom of your Track's Strip.




It will reveal a new lane. By default, this will be your tack's volume. Then you will see a + and - key. Click the + key to reveal a new lane which will be your track's Mute and click the + key again to reveal it's Pan. It should look like this:




Having your track that you want to apply automation to set up like this, can make things a lot faster and easier to work with. Of course we can stretch the view to see things easier by dragging the bottom of one of these extra lane's down, we can also minimize these lanes when we're not automating.

Volume, Mute and Panning.

Volume, Mute and Panning are the three basic automation variables for every track. Once you have created automation lanes for your track you can work on them without going back and forth between track views.

Automation is typically edited with the Pencil or Smart Tool but I mostly find myself using the Grab Tool.

WIth the Pencil Tool you just click on a lane a draw, however it's not the best tool on Mute Lanes.

WIth the Smart Tool, select a section of a region and then hover near the top of a lane until your cursor turns into a rectangle type icon, then just pull up or down.

As I said, I tend to just stick with the Grab Tool as it works for everything I typically need to do and I have gotten used to using it.

Automation for Plug-ins

If your track has a plug-in on it, and you want to automate some settings for that plug-in within a track's lane, this too can also be done. This is useful for many things like automating a plug-ins bypass, Eq changes and so on and so on. Every plug-in has different variables which can be used for automation. Note that these will not be listed in a track's drop down menu by default. We have to add them first.

To do this, we need to click on a plug-in and look to the top. Usually to the left of the bypass button you will see a section that say's Auto. Just underneath that there will be a button that looks like this:




When you click this the Plug-in Automation Window will appear.




From this menu we can add many of the plug-ins functions for automation. Simply located the function you want and click Add. That function will then jump to the right. Now hit OK.

Now go back to your Track's Automation Lanes and click a + sign to add a new lane. If your Plugin is nt selected for that lane, just click on the drop down menu to select it.




Now you are ready to add automation into your lane.

Automation for Sends

To set this up is almost the exact same way as setting a lane up for a plug-in apart from once you have added a send on a track, it will now be added in your track's automation menu automatically. Simply click on a + sign again and choose what you would like to automate on that send. We have Level (Volume for the send) and mute.

That's It. Practice using automation and I promise you your mixes will get better and better.




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