Pro Tools 8, Sibelius and Structure

just finished a composition and engineering project in Pro Tools 8 for a large Musical (30+ actors) that was produced in Houston. I want to share with you how this process worked and my experience using Pro Tools 8, Sibelius and Structure for this project.

Here's the setup, the Musical required MIDI production, Score notation (Sibelius) import/export and finalization. The Score was originally written in Sibelius. Our goal was to record the entire ensemble inside Pro Tools using Digidesign's Structure Sampler and record additional instruments like violin on audio tracks.

My process was as follows, I created ONE Auxiliary track and opened Structure on that Aux track for all of the ensembles instruments. I then loaded each instrument of choice inside the Structure Sampler. Once the instruments were chosen, a template was created and we imported session data for the starting point of each new song. MIDI and Audio Tracks were routed separately to corresponding instrument tracks inside Pro Tools. The routing flexibility feature in Structure is incredible. It allowed me to have total control over tempo and mixing for the instruments without having to print to audio.

Throughout the project we were sending MP3's to the Music Director so that the actors could learn their music and the Director could block the scenes. On a daily basis, the Director requested very specific changes to the tempo. To accomplish this, I used Pro Tools 8 Elastic Audio Properties feature and was able to use the “tempo operation window” on both MIDI and audio tracks with ease. Prior to Elastic Audio, this process would have been far more difficult. With Elastic Audio tracks retained their pitch and I did not have to re-record the violin. Of course all of the MIDI tracks stayed relative to whatever tempo I chose.

Another great feature we used was the Score Editor . It kept the communication between the composers and me really clear. When the composer made a change in the score, I could easily adapt to the necessary changes without a glitch.

The end result sounded incredible and saved hundreds of hours of work. We created 60+ songs, for a 2 1/2 hour musical in record time. Pro Tools 8 + Sibelius is a STAR.