Music Lesson: Punching In and Out

In this video, I'm just going to show you how to do punching in and punching out. This allows you to replace a small section of a recording.

Setting Up

Let's start off. I've set my track and cleared out the guitar part from earlier. To keep things simple, I'm just going to talk into the microphone instead, so you can really hear when I make a, well, very fake mistake.

Recording Example

• If I arm my track, hit record, hit play:
  • 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10.
• Stop that. We have a nice recording with a very fake cough in the middle.

Clarifying Pro Tools Transport Behavior

Before we go any further, I'm just going to clarify the way that transport behaves in Pro Tools.

• Let me disarm the track.
• This is a little different than other DAWs, particularly if you're used to Logic.

I like to work in Pro Tools with my edit selection and my timeline selection linked. This means that:

• If I make an edit selection (I have the select tool at the moment), my timeline selection, indicated by what's in dark grey up here, follows.

Playback Example

Now, if I press play:

• 7, 8, 9, 10, it plays exactly what I highlight:
• 1, 2, 3, 4.

If you're used to other DAWs, you might not like that. In which case, not a problem. Go up here and turn this button, just underneath the hand control. This unlinks your edit and timeline selection, which means that:

• I can make an edit selection, but my timeline selection is maintained.

You can see the blue arrow for down and up for your selection here, and my edit selection is indicated by these lines and dots instead.

Playing Selections

Now if I press play, I won't hear my highlighted selection. I'll just hear 1, 2, 3, the timeline selection.

• If I want to play the timeline selection, that's not a problem. 9, 10.
• I can use the open square bracket tool.
• In fact, I could use the close square brackets tool as another technique to play by edit selection.

But whatever works in your workflow, I'll keep these linked for now.

Loop Playback

So, let's turn this back on.

• Shift + forward slash.
• By the way, if you're collecting shortcuts, I need to replace this.
• You can also hear that loop playback is currently turned on, indicated by the cycle button on the play button.

Turning Off Loop Playback

If I right-click, I can turn this off. There are actually four other ways to do this:

• Press the 4 button on the numeric keypad.
• Use Command + Shift + L.
• Go to my options page.
• I've got loop playback here as well.

Whatever you find easy, the right-click is probably the easiest one when you're first learning.

Rerecording a Section

I want to rerecord just this section, just this cough.

• If I were to just hit record, I'd have to be ready very quickly.
• I'd have to find my place almost immediately before I said the number six.

Using Pre Roll

What I'm going to use instead is a bit of pre roll.

• Pre roll is already here, indicated by the white flag in front of the edit selection (sorry, the timeline selection).
• That's the pre roll flag, and the pre roll value is set up here.

It's not actually doing anything at the moment. It will be yellow when it's active. If I click here, I make it on or turn it off.

I tend to use another shortcut to set my pre and post roll:

• Hold the option key and with the edit selection, click in front.
• I've now set a pre roll and if I click here, I've set a post roll.

Hitting Record

• Now, if I hit record and play:
  • 3, 4, 5, 6, 9.

Although that sounded a little odd, if we play that back:

• 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, we have a smooth replacement.

I'm not sure what happened with the missing numbers, just a little glitch in Pro Tools. We can turn off pre and post roll if we don't need them later, but that was a nice and easy way to get things done.

Quick Punch Mode

Now, simple punch ins like that work fine.

• I'm actually going to undo that record.

The trouble is that sometimes you might want to actually capture recording a little earlier. Maybe, if you've got some guitar stabs, you don't necessarily want to come in on the beat, you want to come in a little before you play the instrument slightly in front of the beat.

Changing Record Mode

So, I'm going to change my record mode. Again, right-clicking is the easiest way to get to this, and I'm going to go for what's called Quick Punch.

• You can see the P in the middle of the transport control.
• We can press the 6 key on the numeric keypad to do the same thing.

Testing Quick Punch

So, let's try my record one more time.

• Hit record, hit play. Don't forget to rearm the track:
  • 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.

What actually happened is that it started recording the moment it started playing. It's all the way back at this preroll flag, and it didn't stop recording until the transport stopped.

Capturing Early

This means:

• You can grab my trim tool to extend this further out or extend the beginning.
• So, I've captured everything.

If I did come in a little bit early, it's not the end of the world. Let me undo those.

For most overdub and punch-in/punch-out situations, Quick Punch is really useful. You end up using more file size, but it's not really a problem these days, not like when I first started using Pro Tools when we were all astonished by the first ever 1 gigabyte hard drive.

Overview of Record Modes

We've seen other record modes; we'll look at loop mode in the next video.

• Destructive mode will overwrite the original audio file.

My general rule for this is don't use destructive mode.

Commitment in Destructive Mode

It's something that has very limited functionality. I have worked with a producer that insisted we use it to mimic the days of analog tape where you make a real commitment to overdubbing.

• On analog tape, if you took another go at something, you would wipe over the previous recording.
• Here, I could still get back my original cough if I wanted to.

Risks of Destructive Mode

This meant that you would leave things 95% happy and just move on because there was a risk of actually being even worse than the original take. You would lose the original take unless you backed up, which led to generation loss and other issues with the analog gear we had to deal with.

But it did mean that sessions kept moving. Honestly, 100% polished isn't necessary. Certain genres of music don't really suit this approach.

• If you listen to Led Zeppelin guitar solos, you'll hear Jimmy Page makes all sorts of mistakes, but that kind of helps. It adds to the energy.

If they had replaced every single note to make them all perfect, a lot of the life and energy would have just been sucked straight out.

Avoiding Destructive Mode

By working in destructive mode, you remove the ability to press undo and you are committing to everything. What I actually did during the session was just to use normal record and pretended to the musicians and the producer that it was destructive, just in case something went horribly wrong.

It's an option that might be available to you if that's the way you want to work. The other record modes depend on the version of Pro Tools you're running, so you might not have track punch or destructive punch.

It's not really a huge loss, to tell you the truth.

Conclusion

Okay, in the next video, we'll look at loop recording.