One of the features of Pro Tools that makes large-scale editing and song form arrangements so easy is clip groups. A clip group is a combination of several audio and/or MIDI clips that act like a single clip. Creating a clip group is really easy. You can simply highlight a bunch of different clips, and I'm going to go ahead and do that right now. I'm just going to double-click on this clip and Shift+Click on these, and now I can simply go to Clip > Group, and it creates this clip group right here.
Now, it doesn't really matter if the clip underneath the highlighted area is actually separated or not; the clip group will actually include whatever you highlight. So if I undo this and actually add in some more clip area, go back up to Clip > Group, even some of the stuff that wasn't separated is now included in this clip group. Now, let's say that this new clip group comprises one whole verse of a song. So I'm going to use clip groups as an arrangement tool.
If I go up to Shuffle mode and then go to Edit > Duplicate, it makes a copy of that clip group and pushes all the rest of these clips over to the right. So doing this, I can check to see what this would sound like with two verses in a row, as opposed to just one. It's a great technique to test out different song arrangement ideas. So I'm going to undo that and then go to GRID mode. Now, this particular clip group contains both audio and MIDI clips, and that's indicated by this little icon right down here at the bottom.
If I make a clip group with just audio files, like I'll do here, Clip > Group, now we have a different icon. And this icon shows that the clip group is split, so that means that there are tracks in between the parts of this clip group. If I move this track, now they're together and we have this new icon that shows that this is purely an audio clip group. The same goes for MIDI clip groups. I'm going to go and move these two tracks closer to each other and highlight these two, create a clip group, and now we have this icon to indicate a MIDI clip group.
Now, of course there are key commands for clip groups. To make a clip group on a Mac, you can press Command+Option+G; on a PC it's Ctrl+Alt+G. You can also choose to ungroup a group: Command+Option+U on a Mac or Ctrl+Alt+U in Windows. And if I use that command here, you'll see that the group gets ungrouped. If you need to edit one clip within the clip group, you should ungroup the clip group, edit the clip, and then choose Regroup.
So let me do that here. I'm going to edit this particular clip, just shorten it, and now I'm going to remake this group. We'll highlight that, Shift+Click here, and Regroup. Command+Option+R on a Mac or Ctrl+Alt+R in Windows. Once you make a clip group, it shows up in the Clips list over here on the right. Here they are. You can see in this particular group, group-01, we have 8 audio channels and 4 MIDI channels as part of that clip group.
You can also see the type of clip group by the icon here. And this is a mixed group, this is a purely Audio group, and this is a MIDI group. With the clip group you can do all the same things that you can do with any other type of clip, including selecting, trimming, separating, naming, moving, cutting, copying, pasting, muting, locking, adding fades and crossfades, looping, and using Tab to Transients. So for instance, I can trim this whole clip group like this. There's one last thing about clip groups that I want to speak about here: Pro Tools can import and export clip group files, and the file format is CGRP.
If I go over to the clips List over here, into the menu, it says we can export clip groups. We can also import clip groups if we go to File > Import > Clip Groups. These are great features for bringing multi-track loops into a session. So as you can see here in this session, clip groups are helpful organizational tools for arranging the parts of a song. I make use of them all the time, and I'm sure you will too.
Author
Released
1/20/2012- Exploring the Pro Tools interface
- Selecting inputs, outputs, and busses
- Understanding signal paths and gain stages
- Setting up Pro Tools hardware and software properly
- Importing audio from multiple sources
- Recording and editing audio and MIDI
- Adjusting time, tempo, meter, key, and chord in arrangements
- Mixing and mastering a session
- Setting up an effects loop
- Importing and displaying video
- Adding music, Foley, ADR, and FX
- Archiving a session
Skill Level Beginner
Duration
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Introduction
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Welcome1m 16s
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Troubleshooting2m 19s
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Using the exercise files2m 25s
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1. Getting Started
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Creating a Pro Tools session4m 31s
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Creating new tracks3m 58s
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2. Learning the Interface
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Exploring the Edit window6m 44s
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Exploring the Mix window3m 11s
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Investigating the menus3m 22s
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3. Importing
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Importing MIDI2m 48s
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Importing session data5m 34s
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Importing tracks from a CD2m 51s
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Importing video2m 44s
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4. Recording Audio
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Recording audio6m 13s
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Creating a click track5m 24s
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Dealing with latency and ADC4m 58s
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Creating a group6m 5s
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Assigning disk allocation2m 17s
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5. Editing Audio
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Using the Pencil tool3m 10s
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Using the Smart tool1m 27s
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Understanding the Edit modes5m 51s
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Arranging clips6m 40s
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Undoing an edit2m 44s
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Locking and muting clips2m 48s
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Special Edit window buttons7m 15s
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Creating an audio loop5m 19s
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Editing a voiceover9m 41s
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6. Arranging a Session
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Working with clip groups4m 33s
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Creating memory locations7m 11s
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7. Recording MIDI Data
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Setting up MIDI on a Mac4m 17s
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Setting up MIDI on a PC2m 14s
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Setting up MIDI in Pro Tools2m 44s
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Recording MIDI data3m 14s
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Recording options for MIDI6m 21s
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Using Step Input4m 35s
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8. Editing MIDI
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Quantizing MIDI tracks12m 16s
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Using MIDI Learn5m 4s
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9. Scoring
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Exploring the Score Editor5m 49s
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Using the Score Editor5m 5s
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Setting up a score4m 48s
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10. Automation
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11. Mixing and Mastering
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Setting up an effects loop9m 30s
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Working with plug-ins4m 33s
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Applying EQ12m 43s
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Adding compression and limiting14m 25s
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Using delay effects6m 52s
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Applying AudioSuite plug-ins6m 24s
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Adding reverb to your mix6m 50s
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Bouncing down a mix4m 15s
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Mastering a session10m 37s
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12. Working with Video
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13. Archiving
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Conclusion
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Video: Working with clip groups