Templates are a handy thing.

You can save yourself a lot of time when setting up sessions for tracking or mixing by keeping a couple of templates on hand that have a lot of your favorite settings ready to go. My main tracking template consists of a click track, some audio tracks, and a couple of cue sends setup across the auxiliary banks. All of my tracks are routed out main outputs 1-2 of the interface, while the two cue sends are routed out 3-4 and 5-6 respectively. These sends can then be patched into a Cue system, headphone amps, or whatever you have that's sending signal to the musicians you're recording.

A "template" can simply be a "locked" Pro Tools session file. After setting up your favorite settings, save the session with a desriptive title: "Tracking Template", "Mixing Template", or whatever else is appropriate. Save the session in a place on the home hard drive so you always have access to it. "Locking" the session will keep you or anyone else from accidentally saving over it. On a Macintosh, this can be done by highlighting the session in the Finder, selecting "Get Info" (Command + I) from the File menu, and checking the "locked" box. Now you're all set. When using a template to start a new session, don't forget to re-name and save the session (song name, etc.) onto your recording drive before you accidentally start recording on the home drive. For more info on this and other subjects, check out this month's (February) Pro Tools column in Recording magazine.