Plug It In, Plug It In - Posted on 2017-05-04 by Christian Voegler

This past lesson focused on the use of plugins in Pro Tools.  I've used them before in other DAWs, but I think the way they're presented in Pro Tools is a little easier to implement/understand.  One thing I wasn't quite grasping at first was the use of sends.  As I mentioned in a previous blog post, my mentor, Hollis Greathouse, drew up a diagram that helped me understand the concept of routing, but when I tried it at home, I wasn't sure exactly how to tell Pro Tools which plugin to use/how much dry vs. wet signal I wanted.  I always go back to review each chapter in the eBook the day before going over to the studio for a lesson, so when they talked about it in the Inserts vs. Sends video (I swear I've heard that Foster the People song they were using to demonstrate with somewhere, but I couldn't tell you where exactly or when), I made sure to pay special attention to that part.  To help myself remember, I came up with a little mnemonic device:  "Send it on the bus to the insert on the aux track."  Basically, choose a Bus under the Sends, create an Aux track and select the Bus you chose for the Send as its input, then choose a plugin under the Insert section on the aux channel strip in the Mix Window and control the wet/dry signal mix using the fader.

However, the most interesting/entertaining part of this lesson was the Sine Wave assignment.  It's amazing how you can transform one little pop into a piece of music just with effects and the editing tools!  Admittedly, my experience with the assignment was mainly trial and error with more of the latter (at one point I had to start over from scratch) but considering my mentor said mine was "more creative than most," it must've paid off.  I'm still waiting on a grade for it; here's hoping for the best.