WHY YOU NEED TO LEARN PRO TOOLS

If you are planning to be an audio engineer or music producer in today’s music industry, it is absolutely essential that you learn Pro Tools. With the advent of digital recording, Pro Tools has become the industry standard, and you’ll be hard pressed to find a recording studio that does not use it. Even if you plan to be a recording artist yourself, a basic working knowledge of this software is both helpful and necessary.

What is Pro Tools, exactly? It is a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) that functions very much like a multi-track recorder and mixer, except everything is controlled virtually and digitally via computer. Because of its ability to give the user unprecedented control over recorded sound and digital audio files, it has become very popular in the recording business since the first versions were released in the early 1990s. Pro Tools can be used with a simple audio setup (with a Mac and an MBox, for example), or it can be used for a wide range of complex functions in a professional studio. Over time, it has come to be a staple software in recording studios all over the world.

Why do you need to learn Pro Tools? Not only will it help you with most of your recording functions, but frankly, it has come to be so widely used in professional recording that you won’t be able to find your way around most recording studio setups without knowing how to use it.

What has made this DAW so essential to modern recording? There are a few factors that have contributed to its success:

• It offers a wide range of applications. Professionals use Pro Tools for simple recording, mixing, film scoring, music editing, film/television audio post-production…the list goes on and on.
• It offers lots of additional features, including a huge amount of automation, digital processing, and even surround sound mixing.
• It can operate as a self-contained workstation. Entire albums have been recorded, edited and mixed using Pro Tools.
• It is adaptable and compatible with many other devices and programs. Pro Tools can incorporate a wide range of third-party plug ins, for example.
• As its usage has increased, Pro Tools has become a universal language of sorts. Sessions are easily saved and transferred between computers and/or studios. If you use Pro Tools, it is a good bet that another studio will be able to open your project and work with it as needed.

All told, Pro Tools has become almost as essential in today’s studios as microphones, amplifiers and consoles. There are other software programs that will do the job, but if you want to know your way around the music industry today, you will have to have a working knowledge of this software. That is why you should never enroll in a recording school that does not offer Pro Tools certification.