I also take care of a few settings that will probably stay the same for the whole song. No need to put that into the macro, because you only have to set this once or twice per song and leave it untouched most of the time. Also, I select the note value that is contained in my drum part. Hey, it’s a start!īefore we build our macro we have to select the drum part we want to work on in our Edit window. So let’s get into a normal Beat Detective drum edit.Īt least one Beat Detective shortcut already exists in Pro Tools and that’s Cmd + Num 8 which opens the Beat Detective window. ![]() I’ll explain how and why I created my macros, but I’ll also provide the macros as a download (see the bottom of the article), so you can easily incorporate them into your own workflow. I’m sure if you think about it, you’ll find it annoying as well. Before you’ve even done anything at all, you have to capture your selection and switch to the required operation mode. I edit drums a lot with Beat Detective and good as the results are, the process is incredibly mouse click intensive. For this article I wanted to pick one example and I chose the piece of software that gave me the impulse to seek for a program like this in the first place: Beat Detective. Over some time I’ve created quite an array of custom macros with it to make my life in the studio easier. The macros feel just like the stock program shortcuts. It also puts your mouse cursor back to where it was lightning fast. It can find those buttons relative to their corresponding window, so the placement of the window on your screen does not matter at all. The cool thing is it can even move your mouse to buttons on your screen and click on them. Keyboard Maestro can access everything in your Mac’s menu bar, move windows and press keys for you. It’s inexpensive, it’s reliable and it has all the features you’d ever need. ![]() Not just with keyboard shortcuts, but with a ton of other triggers as well. It’s a lightweight program, which runs in the background of macOS and makes basically everything accessible with macros. Keyboard MaestroĪfter some searching I decided on Keyboard Maestro for creating my custom shortcuts for my Mac. The distances across such a large display exacerbated the problem with excessive mouse movement and clicking even further. For me it was painful before, but since I recently switched to a huge 38” curved display I’d probably go mad without custom keyboard shortcuts. If you are regularly working in “mouse-only" parts of your DAW software (or any other software) you have probably lost hours of precious time just clicking around. Maybe I’m a bit of a nerd when it comes to this, but I think almost everything in well designed software should be controllable by keyboard. Instead, what always bugs me is when you come across a part of your familiar software where the manufacturer has not provided any useful keyboard shortcuts. Of course different software will always have different keyboard shortcuts, there’s no easy solution for that. Working with unfamiliar software is possible, but feels clumsy and slow when you are just using your mouse. We all rely on keyboard shortcuts to speed up our workflow and get our work done on time. Nowadays all DAWs basically work the same, but a great deal of why trying out a new DAW software often feels so alien and weird is because you don’t have your familiar keyboard shortcuts available. It’s Not Just About Speed It’s About Workflow ![]() In this second article from guest contributor Chris Schmid, we show how to create custom macro and shortcuts for the Pro Tools Beat Detective using Keyboard Maestro.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |