APRIL 29, 2022
Why Pro Tools Music Creators Go Further
The art and process of making music has drastically transformed over the last two decades. Music can be made on a laptop anywhere. Artists can gain a following, earn a living, and make award-winning work without a recording contract or a radio hit. And writing and recording music can be accomplished easily within a single application, as the bedroom has now become the new recording studio, and the computer the instrument.
How did this transformation come about? If you ask audio professionals, they’ll most likely answer Pro Tools.
Maybe you’ve heard of it; maybe you haven’t. But you’ve definitely heard Pro Tools—on your phone, in the car, on the radio, and anywhere else there’s music being played. It’s the audio production software top artists, producers, and engineers use to create your favorite songs and albums. And its easy-to-use tools make it simple for aspiring artists to start making music with it too. If you’re looking to find which music creation software—aka digital audio workstation (DAW)—is best for you, here are some things to consider.
Why pros love Pro Tools
Over the years, Pro Tools has enabled music creation to evolve in new ways, with many of today’s most prolific music makers using the software to invent techniques all their own.
Dr. Dre became a world-renowned producer by digging through record store crates, finding unique and often forgotten vinyl records, and rearranging their contents into modern masterpieces. Artists, producers, and engineers such as Pharrell, Alicia Keys, Jack Antonoff (Taylor Swift, Lana Del Rey), Benny Blanco (Justin Bieber, Kanye West), Andrew Scheps (Adele, Metallica), and countless others have crafted a whole generation of hits—all from within Pro Tools. Because when you need to sound your very best, nothing delivers like Pro Tools.
It’s the ideal tool for the modern music maker—with just Pro Tools and your imagination, you have everything you need to achieve your creative vision. It comes with all the tools and capabilities you need to do nearly everything you’d otherwise do in a professional recording studio. And it doesn’t charge by the hour.
Whether you’re looking to record vocals, make beats, chop up samples, score movies, or mix and master an album, Pro Tools enables you to do it all. Plus, it comes with a huge collection of professional plugins and loops that cover all the bases—from emulations of classic compressors, EQs, and guitar amps to groundbreaking virtual instruments and samples. Together, they put nearly every instrument sound at your fingertips for inspiration—drums, guitars, synths, and keys, plus orchestral sounds, ethnic instruments, vocal chops, and much more.
Using MIDI software for music production
MIDI is central to Pro Tools and one of the most important music creation software tools for musicians and producers. It’s the language of virtual instruments, enabling you to write, record, and edit notes and performances that “feed” into and are played by these instruments. Because this MIDI data can be changed at any time, it opens the door to a whole world of creative possibilities.
The Pro Tools MIDI Editor makes it easy to compose, record, and perfect parts with a variety of instruments and a familiar piano roll-style editing window. And it doesn’t matter if you can play an instrument or not.
Connect any MIDI instrument or controller and you can easily record performances. While keyboards are the most common, there are new MIDI-enabled instruments being introduced all the time, including electronic wind instruments (EWIs), guitars, drum sets, and more. You can even use your computer’s keyboard to play and enter notes and chords.
If you’re not an instrumentalist, you can enter and edit notes with your mouse and keyboard. This way of composing is particularly exciting because it enables you to create parts that would be humanly impossible to play, such as a guitarist who seemingly has unlimited fingers and guitar strings.
These capabilities are especially useful when it comes to drum programming. Using quantization in combination with the pencil tool in the MIDI Editor, or your MIDI controller, you can make drum patterns as intricate and precise as you’d like. Whether you’re making hi-hat rolls for a trap beat or building up to a drop, Pro Tools makes it quick and easy. You can even “humanize” recordings by adjusting the swing and note velocities—as if a real person played it. Plus, with Real-Time MIDI Properties, you can make changes and adjustments on the fly during playback, keeping you in your creative groove.
From making beats to writing symphonies, Pro Tools gives you the power to make what you hear in your head a reality—even if it’s something crazy, like having a theremin distorted by a vintage guitar amp play in a cathedral backed by a full orchestra of cowbells.
Record and edit audio
One of the most important elements of music-making software is its recording and audio capabilities. Pro Tools enables you to achieve the highest sound quality possible—up to pristine 32-bit, 192 kHz audio. That’s why the music industry relies on it for recording, editing, and mixing.
With its fast and fluid recording and mixing workflows, intelligent integration with audio interfaces and control surfaces, and near-zero latency recording (when paired with Pro Tools DSP-accelerated hardware), it removes creative barriers, so you can deliver your best performance and capture it with incredible dynamic range and detail. You can also loop record and comp together multiple takes to create a seamless perfect performance, helping to minimize recording anxiety.
In addition, Pro Tools comes with an extensive collection of tools and plugins, enabling you to shape, polish, and enhance your recordings—or mangle, destroy, and distort sounds. There’s no end to the level of manipulation you can achieve—you’re only limited by your imagination. Subscribe annually and you’ll receive over $2,000 worth of additional plugins, sound libraries, and more for free as a member of the Inner Circle, giving you even more creative possibilities.
Work with anyone, anywhere
With Pro Tools, you can truly let your music take you places. It’s the most widely used recording software for music production and the choice of professional recording studios, producers, engineers, and the music industry worldwide. And it’s the universal language among creators who require the highest quality.
Whether you’re an aspiring music creator using Pro Tools Artist, a music professional working with Pro Tools Studio, or making a living in audio post or high-end music production using Pro Tools Ultimate (now part of the Pro Tools Flex bundle), you can collaborate with anyone, anywhere. Work on projects together in the cloud or take your session to any studio, giving Pro Tools users a leg-up for landing jobs and working with other professionals.
Plus, with prices starting at just $9.99 USD/month, achieving your dream is within easy reach—no matter your skill level.
How did this transformation come about? If you ask audio professionals, they’ll most likely answer Pro Tools.
Maybe you’ve heard of it; maybe you haven’t. But you’ve definitely heard Pro Tools—on your phone, in the car, on the radio, and anywhere else there’s music being played. It’s the audio production software top artists, producers, and engineers use to create your favorite songs and albums. And its easy-to-use tools make it simple for aspiring artists to start making music with it too. If you’re looking to find which music creation software—aka digital audio workstation (DAW)—is best for you, here are some things to consider.
Why pros love Pro Tools
Over the years, Pro Tools has enabled music creation to evolve in new ways, with many of today’s most prolific music makers using the software to invent techniques all their own.
Dr. Dre became a world-renowned producer by digging through record store crates, finding unique and often forgotten vinyl records, and rearranging their contents into modern masterpieces. Artists, producers, and engineers such as Pharrell, Alicia Keys, Jack Antonoff (Taylor Swift, Lana Del Rey), Benny Blanco (Justin Bieber, Kanye West), Andrew Scheps (Adele, Metallica), and countless others have crafted a whole generation of hits—all from within Pro Tools. Because when you need to sound your very best, nothing delivers like Pro Tools.
It’s the ideal tool for the modern music maker—with just Pro Tools and your imagination, you have everything you need to achieve your creative vision. It comes with all the tools and capabilities you need to do nearly everything you’d otherwise do in a professional recording studio. And it doesn’t charge by the hour.
Whether you’re looking to record vocals, make beats, chop up samples, score movies, or mix and master an album, Pro Tools enables you to do it all. Plus, it comes with a huge collection of professional plugins and loops that cover all the bases—from emulations of classic compressors, EQs, and guitar amps to groundbreaking virtual instruments and samples. Together, they put nearly every instrument sound at your fingertips for inspiration—drums, guitars, synths, and keys, plus orchestral sounds, ethnic instruments, vocal chops, and much more.
Using MIDI software for music production
MIDI is central to Pro Tools and one of the most important music creation software tools for musicians and producers. It’s the language of virtual instruments, enabling you to write, record, and edit notes and performances that “feed” into and are played by these instruments. Because this MIDI data can be changed at any time, it opens the door to a whole world of creative possibilities.
The Pro Tools MIDI Editor makes it easy to compose, record, and perfect parts with a variety of instruments and a familiar piano roll-style editing window. And it doesn’t matter if you can play an instrument or not.
Connect any MIDI instrument or controller and you can easily record performances. While keyboards are the most common, there are new MIDI-enabled instruments being introduced all the time, including electronic wind instruments (EWIs), guitars, drum sets, and more. You can even use your computer’s keyboard to play and enter notes and chords.
If you’re not an instrumentalist, you can enter and edit notes with your mouse and keyboard. This way of composing is particularly exciting because it enables you to create parts that would be humanly impossible to play, such as a guitarist who seemingly has unlimited fingers and guitar strings.
These capabilities are especially useful when it comes to drum programming. Using quantization in combination with the pencil tool in the MIDI Editor, or your MIDI controller, you can make drum patterns as intricate and precise as you’d like. Whether you’re making hi-hat rolls for a trap beat or building up to a drop, Pro Tools makes it quick and easy. You can even “humanize” recordings by adjusting the swing and note velocities—as if a real person played it. Plus, with Real-Time MIDI Properties, you can make changes and adjustments on the fly during playback, keeping you in your creative groove.
From making beats to writing symphonies, Pro Tools gives you the power to make what you hear in your head a reality—even if it’s something crazy, like having a theremin distorted by a vintage guitar amp play in a cathedral backed by a full orchestra of cowbells.
Record and edit audio
One of the most important elements of music-making software is its recording and audio capabilities. Pro Tools enables you to achieve the highest sound quality possible—up to pristine 32-bit, 192 kHz audio. That’s why the music industry relies on it for recording, editing, and mixing.
With its fast and fluid recording and mixing workflows, intelligent integration with audio interfaces and control surfaces, and near-zero latency recording (when paired with Pro Tools DSP-accelerated hardware), it removes creative barriers, so you can deliver your best performance and capture it with incredible dynamic range and detail. You can also loop record and comp together multiple takes to create a seamless perfect performance, helping to minimize recording anxiety.
In addition, Pro Tools comes with an extensive collection of tools and plugins, enabling you to shape, polish, and enhance your recordings—or mangle, destroy, and distort sounds. There’s no end to the level of manipulation you can achieve—you’re only limited by your imagination. Subscribe annually and you’ll receive over $2,000 worth of additional plugins, sound libraries, and more for free as a member of the Inner Circle, giving you even more creative possibilities.
Work with anyone, anywhere
With Pro Tools, you can truly let your music take you places. It’s the most widely used recording software for music production and the choice of professional recording studios, producers, engineers, and the music industry worldwide. And it’s the universal language among creators who require the highest quality.
Whether you’re an aspiring music creator using Pro Tools Artist, a music professional working with Pro Tools Studio, or making a living in audio post or high-end music production using Pro Tools Ultimate (now part of the Pro Tools Flex bundle), you can collaborate with anyone, anywhere. Work on projects together in the cloud or take your session to any studio, giving Pro Tools users a leg-up for landing jobs and working with other professionals.
Plus, with prices starting at just $9.99 USD/month, achieving your dream is within easy reach—no matter your skill level.
