I first used Pro Tools around six years ago, having spent the previous decade flitting between various DAWs – Sonar, viaCubase, via Cakewalk, as I recall. After a couple of years, I found myself gravitating more towards Logic, for a number of reasons – I love a lot of its native plugins/sample libraries, the superior midi aspect makes it better for putting together scores or sketching ideas quickly, and I don’t have to plug in anything external if I want to get my laptop out on a train and work on something.
The last big project I did in Logic was the recording, editing and mixing of a Heck Tate track for the excellent Rip This Joint Compilation Vol. 1 (available as a free download or LP here).
The Logic session for Heck Tate’s ‘Drip Dry’ track for the RTJ comp.
Since we were generally satisfied with how ‘Drip Dry’ turned out, we began work on recording the first (and last) Heck Tate album in the same way. Tracking is almost complete, and the size and complexity of the sessions is starting to make Logic unworkable. Consequently, when it came time to do some interim test mixing, I fired up the old copy of Pro Tools. Immediately, I was struck by how much ‘cleaner’, quicker and intuitive dealing with pure audio files seemed to be. Crucially, the ease and speed with which one can overcome CPU overload by making tracks inactive or sub-mixing to a bus track made all those Logic-induced headaches go away.
Naturally, when it came time to edit and mix the latest episode of Gwaith Sŵn’s Sonic Darts, I saw an opportunity to make my life easier by using Pro Tools. It was all going so well as I raced against the clock to meet Resonance’s submission deadline. After 8-hours solid working on it, I reached the 3am hinterland in surprisingly good spirits. That was, until I clicked on ‘Bounce’ and was greeted with a 1-hour countdown. In my enthusiasm, I had completely forgotten the exporting in PT takes place in realtime, and I had condemned myself to another 2 hours (one to wait for the mix, another to listen through and check for errors in final file) before any sleep.
This month’s edition of Gwaith Sŵn’s Sonic Darts is broadcast tonight at 8pm (then repeated tomorrow at 9am) on Resonance104.4fm.
This time around, we’re tackling the subject of conspiracy theories. I contributed a piece that explores Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) and alien conspiracies.
You can listen online here: http://radioplayer.resonancefm.com/console/
Kevin Ka Wei Chan 