Virtual instruments are great.

Almost all the popular DAWs on the market come stocked with a rack of virtual tools that are actually usable and in some cases, sound great. It use to be that anything “free” sounded par at best. By now it’s no secret that Pro Tools 8 has revamped it’s look and now includes a pretty cool selection of new virtual instruments. The only downside to this (if you use these type of tools as much as I do) is that they are RAM dependent. This means it doesn’t matter if you have Pro Tools HD or LE because either one requires a lot of memory and a fast processor to really work with these type of instruments. So, here’s a couple thoughts that might save you some time before hitting a roadblock…

There’s a tendency these days to save every production decision till the mixing process. We’ve all heard these type comments before: “Oh, we’ll fix that in the mix” or “Just pull up a sound and we’ll dial it in later”, etc. I am a big believer that the sound and the performance go hand in hand. What would it sound like if you asked David Gilmour to play a guitar solo without delay so you could add it in later? Apart from taking the extra five minutes to come up with a sound that inspires the player and/or myself, I like to print (record) the performance to an audio track after I’m doing recording it. Here’s how you do it: After you’re done recording a performance, make a new stereo audio track. (or mono if appropriate) Assign the output of the source track to the next available bus. Then assign the input of the new audio track to the same bus. Record Enable the audio track and record the processed audio of that performance. One of the reasons I prefer doing it this way (as opposed to using a bus from the Sends section of the fader path) is that what you’re hearing on playback is most certainly what your recording. In other words, you’re monitoring what is being recorded and are not running the risk of some conflicting routing, etc. that might require this process being re-done later. After the track is recorded, Right + Click (or Control + Click) on the source track and select “Hide and Make Inactive”. Now that track is tucked away and no longer using system resources, but it’s always there if you need to tweak the sound later. This process is useful for virtual instruments as well as audio guitar tracks using a plug-in like Eleven. The more virtual instruments you use, the more handy this becomes. Stand alone virtual instruments like Reason can also benefit from this process. Instead of running Reason in real time with Pro Tools, (which is a big CPU hog) bounce the Reason tracks to audio tracks, quit Reason, and come back to it at a later point if need be.

Another trick that’s handy is disabling tracks that aren’t needed while recording. Drums are a great example of this: Bottom Snare, Toms, Hi Hat, Room Mics. Typically these tracks aren’t really crucial in order to hear what the drummer’s doing. Also, any extra microphones (like other room mics) can be temporarily turned off while recording virtual parts. More tracks = more processing, which could be used elsewhere in cases like this.

If working with these type tools is crucial for what you do, then invest in a powerful enough system that can really handle what you need on a day-to-day basis. In the meantime, if you stay mindful of what you’re doing and what’s really needed to get a task done, then you’ll be surprised at some of the shortcuts you’ll run into that can save you time and money.