Playlists are very useful. If you’re new to Pro Tools, you’ll probably get by without them, but they make managing clips easy and fast, and if you’re familiar with them, they can improve you better than any advanced plug-in or mixing technique The quality of your music. Learn more here.
playlist
A playlist is an empty space on the timeline. There is one for every track you create, but the first thing to understand is that you can have multiple tracks. Audio or MIDI tracks can have many playlists to choose from, and it’s quick and easy to create new playlists while tracking, and sort them later to find the best material for your completed project.
It’s called a playlist because in any DAW, you can arrange clips on the timeline, and this list of instructions will play in the order you specify in the list. If you want to know more about clips and how they relate to the files on your hard drive, read this article.
Why should I use playlists?
A great example of where playlists are useful is tracking vocals. There are a lot of variables, and your singer will most likely want to try it a few times. While you could keep duplicating the vocal track and recording on each new track to preserve the replacement, this would waste the track, add clutter to your sessions, and be inconvenient to use. Creating a new playlist can solve all of these problems.
In this example, you can quickly and easily swap between alternative clips by creating a new playlist for each clip. Changing to a playlist view, you can see them in context and easily and solo alternative segments in “comp”. Parts from alternative combinations are combined together to form a hybrid combination that brings the best parts of all combinations together in one place.
Free video tutorials
To learn more, start with this free video tutorial brought to you by Avid Support, where we’ll learn the basics of playlists in Pro Tools.
