Although the use of a click track is widely accepted and even common-place in many music cities, some artists won't use them.  Good, bad or indifferent, not having a song recorded to a grid can be frustrating at times -- especially in the mixing environment.  So many of the plug-ins that are now available for Pro Tools have the ability to "sync up" with the tempo of the host session.  If the song wasn't cut to a common time source, it makes using time-based effects tricky to say the least. Granted, a lot of plug-ins have a tap tempo feature that allows us to tell the plug-in what tempo we're at.  However, this isn't helpful with a rock band that starts a song at 120 BPM, slows down to 110 BPM at the Bridge, and then finishes the hail-mary guitar solo ending at 180 BPM. (admit it, we've all been in this movie before...)

So, what do you do?

The "Identify Beat" feature in Pro Tools can be really handy for these type of situations.  Because our effects are following the tempo ruler of the session, we can quickly assign different BPMs to different sections of a song and not have to fool with automating several different plug-ins.

Here's how you do it:

1. Highlight the drums, percussion, or other rhythmic source for the first section of the song  (Intro, 1st Verse, etc.).
2. Go to the Event Menu and select "Identify Beat."
3. Verify that the Start Time, End Time, and Time Signature of the highlighted regions are correct.
4. Click "OK."
5. Move onto the next section of the song and repeat.

You'll notice that this will assign a tempo in the Tempo Ruler for each section of the song. Now, all of your BPM syncable effects are good to go.  As the song changes time section by section, Pro Tools now knows when and where it's doing that.  This will not only save you some time, but it will also make for a lot cleaner mixes when using these type of effects under these type of circumstances.