Pro Tools: Recording

This is where the book changes shape. Chapters 1 through 11 built the foundation—sound, signal, equipment, acoustics, and the DAW itself. Everything from here forward is practice: a session open, the clock running, an artist on the other side of the glass waiting on playback. Read the capstone arc below before you start; the work you do tonight is the record you will master in Chapter 19 and register in Chapter 21.

There is a moment right before you press record—the mics are set, the levels are right, the artist has their headphones on and is nodding along to the click—where everything you have learned up to this point converges into a single button press. If the mic is wrong, you will hear it. If the gain is too hot, you will clip. If the headphone mix is bad, the performance will suffer. Recording is where preparation meets execution, and there are no second chances on a perfect take.

The first professional session I ever engineered was a disaster. The artist showed up two hours late. I had set up a condenser mic but forgot to turn on phantom power—so when I asked her to do a sound check, nothing came through the monitors. Dead silence. I scrambled to figure out what was wrong while she stood in the booth staring at me through the glass. Once I got signal, the buffer was still at 1024 samples from the mixing I'd been doing the night before, and she heard herself a full beat behind the music. She pulled off the headphones mid-take and said, “Something is very wrong.” I wanted to crawl under the console.

Then I dropped the buffer, fixed the cue mix, called for a five-minute break so she could shake it off, and we cut the song. By the end of the night we had a vocal that lived—and I had learned to walk every signal chain before opening my mouth to say “ready when you are.”

This chapter walks through the eleven steps of running a professional recording session in Pro Tools—tracking live performers into microphones, DIs, and MIDI controllers. If you are starting with no audio at all and producing a beat or composition from scratch, that is Chapter 13 (Music Production). The workflow here applies whether you are tracking a full band, a solo artist over a pre-recorded instrumental, an actor doing dialog replacement, or any session where the goal is to capture a performance as accurately and tonally pleasing as possible.

The Albini epigraph at the top of this chapter is not a technical instruction—it is a philosophy. “That's all sorted before someone walks in the door” describes an entire phase of work that most audio textbooks skip: pre-production, the planning, demo recording, and creative decision-making that happens before a single note is tracked in earnest. Skip it and you pay for it in the session. Do it well and the tracking day runs like a machine.

Early on, before I respected pre-production, I booked a full day with a singer and a band and walked in with nothing planned. We spent the first two hours just figuring out the key—the song sat right on the singer's break, and every chorus cracked. By the time we transposed down two semitones and reset everyone's charts, half the energy in the room was gone, and we had burned a third of the budget on a decision that ten minutes of demo work would have made for us. I have never walked into a session cold again.

The Demo and the Scratch Track

A demo is a rough working version of a song—not meant for release, meant for planning. A scratch track is a temporary performance—a scratch vocal, a scratch guitar—recorded to establish timing and arrangement reference for the musicians who will track after it. These are two of the most productive tools in a recording workflow, and they share a common purpose: they force decisions while the stakes are low.

Record a demo before you book expensive studio time. It does not have to be elaborate—a vocal into a phone voice memo over a rough instrumental, or a keyboard sketch with a click track, is enough to answer the questions that otherwise eat your first studio hour:

• Is the song actually finished? Missing bridges and placeholder lyrics become obvious the moment you try to record them.
• Does the key work for the vocalist at full performance energy? A key that sounds fine in the kitchen at 9 AM may push the singer into break register at the top of the chorus by hour three.
• Is the tempo right for the feel? Slow it down five BPM and an aggressive verse suddenly breathes; speed it up and the ballad stops being a ballad.
• Is the arrangement too sparse, too dense, or the wrong length? Structural problems—an intro that drags, a bridge that does not land—are cheap to fix in a demo and expensive to fix mid-session.

Play the demo to the artist before the tracking day. Their reaction tells you everything. If they wince at the chorus, fix the chorus. If they cannot remember the words without reading them, they are not ready to track. If the key pushes them to the top of their range on every hook, transpose down a step and check again. These are conversations that cost nothing when they happen before the clock is running and everything when they happen inside the studio.

Locking Key and Tempo

The two most consequential creative decisions in any recording session are key and tempo, and both should be confirmed before the artist arrives—not discovered during soundcheck.

For key: the guiding question is where the song sits relative to the vocalist's full-energy passaggio—the register break between chest voice and head voice. Identify the highest and lowest note the melody reaches. Play the song through at the proposed key and have the vocalist perform those peak moments at performance energy, not warm-up volume. If the hook sits right on the break and the artist has to push, pull the key down a semitone or two. If the verses are so low the words lose intelligibility in a chest voice, bring the key up. The goal is to put the money notes—the phrases that carry the emotional weight—in the singer's strongest register. Chapter 3 covers keys and the musical foundations behind them; this is where that theory converts to a practical pre-session call.

For tempo: use a scratch track recorded to a click as your test. If the artist rushes the groove, the tempo may be too slow. If phrases feel compressed, it may be too fast. For band sessions with a drummer, have the drummer play the main groove figure at several candidate tempos and record each—listen back in the car. The tempo that makes you involuntarily move is the right one. Once you commit, write it down. You will enter it into Pro Tools in Step 4 of this chapter, and every loop, every sample, every edit from that point forward will depend on it being correct.

Building a Song Map

Before you open a session, build a song map—a section-by-section blueprint of the recording. It does not have to be elaborate; a simple document or even a handwritten page works. The song map answers:

• Structure and bar counts: Intro (bars 1–8), Verse 1 (9–24), Pre-Chorus (25–32), Chorus (33–48), and so on through the outro. Knowing the exact bar numbers means you can drop markers in Pro Tools before the session starts, navigate instantly during recording, and plan overdubs in advance.
• Instrumentation by section: which instruments play in the intro, which drop out for verse 1, what enters in the chorus. This prevents the “what do I play here?” conversation mid-take.
• Planned overdub order: drums and bass first, then rhythm instruments, then leads, then vocals is a common sequence—but your order may vary by genre and by what the artist is most comfortable locking down first. Decide in advance.
• Click track preference: does the artist want a standard click, a specific sound (wood block, side stick), or a shaker pattern? Find out before the session, not between takes.

A song map shared with every player before the session converts tracking day from a rehearsal into an execution. Players arrive knowing their parts, the engineer knows which channels to arm for each section, and the producer has a yardstick against which to call good takes.

Communicating With the Artist Before the Session

I once saved a wasted day with a single phone call. Two days before a vocal session I called the artist just to confirm the key, and within a minute it was obvious she was fighting a cold—her speaking voice was already rough. We moved the date a week instead of burning a booked day on takes we would have thrown away, and she came in healthy and cut the whole thing in three hours. The call lasted only a few minutes; the session it protected cost real money.

The pre-session conversation is not small talk—it is session management. Before any tracking day, confirm the following with the artist:

• Are they vocally ready? Singers should rest their voice the day before. Playing the demo two days before the session and asking them to call you if the key feels wrong is standard practice among working producers.
• Do they know the material cold? An artist who is still writing lyrics on the way to the studio will cost you the first two hours. Ask to hear a run-through over the phone or via a voice memo.
• What will they need to hear in their headphones? More of their own voice, a specific reverb on the return, more click and less guitar? Find this out before you build the cue mix. Building the wrong headphone mix on the fly while the artist waits in the booth is one of the fastest ways to kill the energy in the room.
• Do they have a reference? Ask the artist to send you two or three songs that capture the vibe they are after. Reference tracks before the session give you a shared vocabulary—instead of arguing about what “warm” or “big” means, you are both pointing at the same thing.

These questions take ten minutes over the phone. The answers save hours.

Pre-Production Checklist

Use this before you open Pro Tools for the session:

• ☐ Demo or scratch track recorded and reviewed with the artist
• ☐ Key confirmed against vocalist's range at performance energy
• ☐ Tempo confirmed with a scratch pass to a click; BPM written down
• ☐ Song map drafted: section names, bar counts, instrumentation, overdub order
• ☐ Reference tracks received from the artist and loaded in the DAW
• ☐ Headphone mix preferences confirmed with the artist
• ☐ Material confirmed finished (lyrics, chord changes, arrangement)
• ☐ Session template selected and session file named before the artist arrives

None of these items require a studio. All of them pay dividends the moment the red light goes on. The session that feels effortless from the outside—where takes happen fast, energy stays high, and the artist leaves knowing they got something real—almost always had a week of invisible work behind it. That invisible work is pre-production. Start there.

Before you open Pro Tools, walk the physical chain. Every cable, every preamp, every microphone—verified before the artist arrives. The fastest way to lose a session is to open the booth door, hand the singer the headphones, and discover the kick drum mic is plugged into the wrong preamp.

1. Plug in every microphone and route it to a preamp or interface input. Confirm the mic stand is the right height and the pop filter sits two to three inches in front of the capsule.
2. Engage phantom power (+48V) on every channel feeding a solid-state condenser—and make sure the mic cable is fully connected before you switch phantom on. For a tube condenser, power comes from its own dedicated power-supply box, not phantom; give it about five minutes to warm up. (Never send phantom to a ribbon—see Chapters 5–6.)
3. Connect every DI box for bass, acoustic guitar, and any electronic instrument going direct. DI → preamp → interface input.
4. Power on every MIDI controller—keyboards, pad controllers, control surfaces—and confirm USB or DIN routing into the computer.
5. Walk the chain. Speak or play into each input. Watch the preamp meter. If the meter does not move, you have a dead cable, a phantom switch that did not engage, or a connector that is not fully seated. I cannot tell you how many sessions I have seen delayed ten minutes because someone did not push an XLR cable all the way in.
6. Patch preamp outputs to the interface inputs. Confirm the interface is connected to the computer and recognized by the operating system.

Mic positioning techniques live in Chapters 5 and 6. The chain you are walking now is the physical wiring—signal-on-paper before signal-on-tape. If anything is wrong here, nothing downstream will save you.

1. Save the session to your dedicated audio drive—never the OS drive. The system disk is already busy running the operating system; asking it to also stream session audio is a recipe for clicks, dropouts, and crashes.
2. File format: WAV. Bit depth: 32-bit float. The 32-bit float ceiling is effectively unclippable at the file level—you can pull peaks back from levels that would have squared off in 24-bit.
3. Sample rate. I work at 96 kHz as my default for music sessions. The only reason I drop to 48 kHz is when a project spec demands it—film and television deliverables, podcasts, broadcast, video collaborations where downstream stages expect 48. Do not let a higher sample rate be a brag; let it be the default and step down only when a real constraint requires it: a deliverable spec (film/TV/broadcast at 48), a CPU or drive that can't sustain the higher rate, or an interface limit—ADAT lightpipe, for instance, halves its channel count at 96 kHz, so a high track count over ADAT can force 48.
4. Configure I/O, Playback Engine, and Preferences as described in Chapter 11. If you built the Tracking_Template_v1.ptxt session template at the end of Chapter 11, this is exactly the moment it pays off—open it, save a copy with the artist's name and date, and you have skipped twenty minutes of setup.

You can get audio into Pro Tools four ways: record it, generate it from a virtual instrument, generate it from a signal generator plugin, or import an existing file. Importing is the move when the artist is performing over a pre-made instrumental, when you are referencing an existing song, or when you are dropping samples and loops from a library.

Import Audio

Shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+I (Cmd+Shift+I on Mac) or File → Import → Audio. Locate the file, select it, and—this is the part new engineers miss—click “Convert” (or “Convert All”), not “Add,” before clicking “Done.” If you skip the conversion and the file is at a different sample rate than your session, the audio will play back at the wrong speed and pitch. Click “Use Current Folder” so the file is copied into your session's Audio Files folder, not left referenced from somewhere on disk that may not exist next week.

Import Video

Shortcut: Alt+Shift+Ctrl+I (Option+Shift+Cmd+I) or File → Import → Video. Pro Tools supports H.264, MOV, MXF, and most common formats. Useful for ADR, scoring, and any session where the picture is the master clock.

Import MIDI

Shortcut: Ctrl+Alt+I (Cmd+Option+I). As a learning project, find MIDI files online for famous songs, drop them into a session, and reassign the parts to your own virtual instruments. It is one of the fastest ways to learn arrangement—you are studying the architecture of a hit without writing a note.

The Workspace Browser

Window → Workspace. The Workspace is Pro Tools' built-in file browser. Use the magnifying-glass search to find files anywhere on disk. Click the speaker icon in the waveform column to preview before importing—no need to import-and-listen-and-undo. Pro Tools also detects the tempo of WAV and AIFF files (not MP3 or other compressed formats); verify the detected tempo against the audio and round to the nearest whole BPM.

The Workspace is also where Pro Tools decides which drives it will record to. Every volume gets a designation in the browser: R (Record) allows recording and playback, P (Playback) allows playback only, and T (Transfer) means copy-only—Pro Tools will not play or record from it. If a track refuses to record and the input is fine, check the Workspace: external and USB drives often mount as Transfer, and you can change the designation from the same column.

Files drag straight out of the Workspace onto an existing track, into empty Edit-window space (Pro Tools creates a new track matching the file), or into the Clip List for later. Audition with the speaker icon, mark keepers in the ratings column, and use the search-filter row to narrow by name or kind when a session folder holds hundreds of files.

To drop a Workspace file into your session, hold Alt (Option on Mac) and drag the filename into the tracks area. If “Ticks” is selected next to “Polyphonic,” the audio will conform to the session tempo when it changes—this is what you want for loops, not what you want for a full instrumental you are matching the tempo to.

Setting the tempo is the step most engineers rush, and the one that pays the biggest dividend in Chapter 14. The grid is your reference for every edit, every fade, every quantize, every snap. If the grid is wrong, every edit is wrong. Set your tempo before you reach for Splice or any tempo-matched loop—Splice pitches and time-stretches to your session tempo, so the grid has to be right first. If you're building a beat from scratch, set the tempo now; if you imported an instrumental, find its tempo first, then bring in Splice.

For voiceover and ADR sessions, the grid is set to Timecode or Min:Sec instead of Bars|Beats—music is the case where Bars|Beats matters most.

Create a Click Track

Track → Create Click Track. Pro Tools generates an Aux track with a Click plugin that follows the session tempo. Open Options → Click and confirm the click is enabled. Set the Edit window to Grid mode, ruler to Bars|Beats, resolution to 1/4 note.

The default click sounds like a sterile cricket. If your performer hates it—and many do—open the Click plugin and switch to a different sample (Side Stick, Wood Block, Cowbell, MIDI Beep, etc.). If you want to humanize it further, replace the click track entirely with a programmed drum loop or a shaker pattern at the session tempo. The point is rhythmic reference, not a sterile tick. I have lost vocalists to bad clicks; I have never lost one to a shaker on the offbeats.

Brand-New Arrangement: Set the Tempo Yourself

1. Show the Tempo ruler if it is hidden: View → Rulers → Tempo (or right-click any ruler header and check “Tempo”).
2. Find the red diamond at bar 1. The Tempo ruler is a thin track at the top of the timeline labeled “Tempo.” Tempo events appear as small red diamond markers sitting on the ruler. The session always has at least one—the default 120 BPM marker at the very start of bar 1.
3. Double-click the red diamond. A Tempo Change dialog opens.
4. Type your BPM and press Enter (or click OK). The click will now play at your tempo.
5. Tempo changes mid-song? Move the playhead to the bar where the change happens, click the “+” next to the Tempo ruler, and add a new tempo event. Pro Tools holds the new tempo from that point forward until the next event.

Imported Instrumental: Match an Existing Tempo

1. Drop the timeline cursor on the first beat of the first full measure of the imported audio. Use the kick drum on a downbeat—sharp transients are easier to align visually than sustained sounds. Use the first beat of the loop, not a snare in the middle, so bar numbers represent the song accurately.
2. Open the Transport window: Window → Transport (Ctrl+1 / Cmd+1 on the numpad).
3. Click the conductor icon to disable it. Pro Tools is now in Manual Tempo Mode.
4. Click the tempo value field and tap the “T” key in time with the music. Pro Tools averages your taps. Use the up/down arrows for fine adjustment in 0.1 BPM increments.

Important: Changing the tempo in Manual Tempo Mode only moves the grid lines and click playback—provided the track's timebase is set to Samples (the default for audio tracks). If the track is set to Ticks, the audio regions shift relative to the grid. If the track is set to Ticks and Elastic Audio is enabled, the audio actually stretches to follow the tempo. When aligning the grid to an imported instrumental, keep the track in Samples mode and Elastic Audio off.

Set the Key Signature Too

Tempo is half of the session's musical DNA; the key signature is the other half, and it lives in the same menu you just visited: View → Rulers → Key Signature. Every new session claims to be in C major whether or not that is true. Click the “+” at the head of the Key ruler (or choose Event → Add Key Change) and the Key Change dialog opens—pick the key and mode (A minor, E major), confirm it sits at bar 1, and click OK. If the song modulates, drop a second key change at the bar where it happens, exactly like a tempo event.

Ten seconds of setup, and three things stop being guesswork:

• Splice and loop browsers match what you actually wrote. The Splice panel (later in this step) filters and pitches samples to the session's tempo and key—but it can only match a key the session declares. Set A minor here and every loop you audition arrives already speaking the song's language.
• MIDI becomes key-aware. With a key signature in place, Pro Tools' Transpose tools—Event Operations and the MIDI Real-Time Properties covered in Chapter 13—offer in key transposition, so moved notes stay inside the scale, and the Key Change dialog's “Edit Pitched Tracks” option carries existing MIDI parts through a mid-song modulation automatically.
• Collaborators stop guessing. The keyboard player overdubbing next week, the topliner writing to your rough, the mix engineer reading your session notes (Step 10 asks for the key)—they read it off the ruler instead of hunting for the root by ear.

Make it a habit: the moment you set the tempo, set the key—two rulers, side by side, before a single note is recorded.

Verify the Grid Across the Whole Song

Do not stop after the first four bars. Scroll to bar 30 and check the kick lines up against a grid line. Scroll to bar 60. Check again. Scroll to the end. If the grid drifts even slightly by bar 50, your tempo is off by a fraction of a BPM—nudge the up/down arrows in 0.1 increments until the grid locks to the transients all the way through. This can take patience. Every cut, every fade, every quantize operation in editing depends on an accurate grid.

Splice Integration

Splice—one of the largest royalty-free sample libraries in the industry—is built directly into Pro Tools. Here is how to use it without leaving the DAW:

1. Open the Splice panel. Window → Splice. The browser opens as a docked panel inside Pro Tools.
2. Sign in. The first time you open it, log in with your Splice account credentials. A free account can browse, preview, and license a rotating selection of free, royalty-free samples (filter for “Included”); the full catalog of millions of sounds requires an active Splice subscription.
3. Browse or search. Filter by instrument, BPM, key, genre, or tag. Splice automatically shows samples that match your session's tempo and key.
4. Audition in time. Click any sample to preview it in time with your session—Splice will pitch- and time-stretch on the fly so you hear how the loop sits in your track before you commit.
5. Drag into the timeline. Drop the sample directly onto an audio track at the bar where you want it to land. The file is downloaded into your session's Audio Files folder automatically.
6. Search with Sound. Drag any clip from your timeline into the Splice browser. Splice's AI analyzes tempo, key, and timbre and returns matched samples that fit the clip you dragged. This is the fastest way to find a complementary loop or a layer that sounds like it was recorded for the song.

Shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+N (Cmd+Shift+N). Pro Tools has three primary track types for recording, plus two utility track types every session needs.

Three Recording Track Types

Audio Tracks record audio from microphones, DIs, or buses. Mono for a single source (one mic on a vocal, one DI on a bass); stereo for stereo mic techniques, keyboards, or stereo virtual instruments. An audio track only passes its live input when it is record-enabled or input-monitoring is on—otherwise it plays back what's already recorded. (This is the key difference from an Aux track, which passes its input continuously; more on that below.)

MIDI Tracks record MIDI data—the instructions that trigger virtual instruments and external hardware. MIDI tracks do not produce sound on their own; they send data to an instrument that produces the sound.

Instrument Tracks are a MIDI track and an audio track fused into one. You load a virtual instrument on the track, record MIDI into it, and the same track plays back the instrument's audio—no separate routing. They have inserts, sends, and audio I/O like an audio track, plus a MIDI input for the performance data. Use stereo unless the virtual instrument is mono only. Instrument tracks are convenient for quick setups; separate Audio + MIDI tracks give you more routing flexibility for stems and re-amping.

Click the “+” to add multiple track types in the same dialog. Choose between Ticks (tracks move with tempo changes) or Samples (tracks keep their original position regardless of tempo). MIDI and instrument tracks default to Ticks; audio tracks default to Samples. This distinction becomes critical when you change tempo later—audio on a Ticks-based track will shift; audio on a Samples-based track will not.

Two Utility Track Types Every Session Needs

Auxiliary Input (Aux) passes audio through without recording—no record-enable button. Auxes are used for effects returns (a reverb send), headphone cue mixes, and grouping tracks under a single fader (sub-mixing). Covered in detail in the mixing chapter.

Master Fader monitors and controls the main output (or any output). Use it to confirm the sum of all tracks is not clipping the bus and to make final volume adjustments. Every session should have one. For music work, set it up stereo to monitor your stereo output—that is the default you want. (Mono, 5.1, or 7.1 master faders exist for specific deliverables, but stereo is home base.) I have opened sessions without a Master Fader and watched the mix bus clip into the red without anyone noticing because the channel meters all looked fine.

Both types earn their keep on tracking day, not just at mix time. The Aux's pass-through behavior is exactly what you want for monitoring a hardware synth or drum machine without committing it to disk yet—route the instrument's input to an Aux and you hear it through the session, effects and all, while the writing is still happening. The same behavior powers the headphone cue mix you will build later in this chapter: the singer's reverb lives on an Aux return, so the vocal feels finished in the cans while the recorded track stays bone dry.

Master Faders are free—they consume no voices and no DSP—so use more than one. I keep a second Master Fader on the cue bus, because a headphone amp clips just as easily as a mix bus, and a singer flinching from a distorted cue mix will never tell you why the take went flat. The meter tells you before they do. Name your output paths in Setup → I/O while you are at it, so the fader reads “Cue 1–2” instead of “Output 3–4” and the next engineer does not have to guess.

Drop both into the session template you built in Chapter 11 and they are simply there from the first take—one fader watching the mix bus, one watching the cue, every session you ever start.

One habit ties all of this together: when a track misbehaves, read its header before you touch anything else. A track that will not record usually has no input assigned or no R armed; a MIDI track that plays the wrong sound has the wrong patch in its selector; a part that lands in the wrong place after a tempo change has the wrong timebase on that selector. Every one of those answers is sitting in the header, in plain sight, faster than any menu.

Track Organization Basics

Three small habits pay off in long sessions.

Color-code by source family. Right-click any track header and choose “Color,” or open Window → Color Palette. I assign warm colors to drums, cool colors to instruments, a single bright color to the lead vocal, and gray to anything I am not actively using. Once a session runs to dozens—or, on a big record, hundreds—of tracks, eyes find color faster than they find names.

Order tracks the way a mixer thinks. The conventional order puts drums first (kick, snare, toms, overheads, room), then bass, then chordal instruments, then leads, then vocals (BGVs first, lead vocal at the bottom)—and most mix engineers expect to open a session laid out that way. I do it differently myself: I put the bass at the top and build the kit around it, because I like to lock the low end first. Either works—what matters is a consistent, logical layout the next engineer can read at a glance. The mix engineer who opens this session next will thank you. If your tracks are already in random order, click and drag the track header in the Edit window's track list to reorder—hold Shift to select multiple tracks first if you want to move a whole group at once.

Hide what you are not tracking. Right-click the track list → “Hide and Make Inactive” for tracks you are not tracking. Hide alone is a trap—a merely hidden track still plays, so you end up hunting for audio coming from a track you cannot see. Make it inactive too: it stops playing, frees its plugins from the CPU, and stays in the session for when you need it back. Inactive tracks are still in the session—you just are not paying for them during this pass. On Native systems with twenty plugins per track, this is the difference between a smooth take and a session that pops every time the artist sings the chorus.

Name Every Track

This is not optional. When you record on an audio track, the resulting audio file inherits the track name. Default names like “Audio 1” make sessions impossible to navigate—I have opened sessions from other studios with fifty tracks all named “Audio” followed by a number, and it took an hour just to figure out what was what. Double-click the track name to rename. With Commands Keyboard Focus on, press P (previous) or ; (next) to jump between tracks.

Naming conventions matter too. “Lead Vocal,” “BGV High 1,” “Kick In,” “Kick Out,” “OH L,” “OH R”—names a future you (or a mix engineer in another city) will understand without reading session notes.

Markers and Memory Locations

Markers are how you navigate large sessions. Click the “+” next to the marker ruler, or press Enter on the numpad, to drop a marker. Mark every major transition: Intro, Verse 1, Pre-Chorus, Chorus 1, Verse 2, Bridge, Outro. Place markers on the first beat of each section in Grid mode so they snap clean to the bar.

Open the Memory Locations window (Window → Memory Locations, Ctrl+5 on numpad) to see every marker as a list. Click any marker to jump there instantly. On a sixteen-bar second-verse re-take, this is the difference between thirty seconds of scrolling and one keystroke.

I/O Routing

Each track can show Inserts, Sends, and I/O as separate columns in its header (enable them via View → Edit Window Views, and they appear on every Mix-window channel strip too). The I/O column is the routing one: Input on top, Output on the bottom. Inserts and Sends are their own columns—not part of I/O. Empty Input/Output slots read “No Input” / “No Output,” a common cause of a track that records nothing.

For audio tracks:

1. Click the Input dropdown on the track. The dropdown lists every input your I/O Setup has defined—typically grouped by “Mono Inputs,” “Stereo Inputs,” and any user-named paths.
2. Choose the input that matches the preamp channel feeding your mic or DI. If the vocal mic runs to preamp channel 1 and the preamp output is patched into interface input 1, choose “Input 1.” If the source is stereo (a stereo mic pair, a stereo keyboard), choose the stereo input pair (“Input 1–2”).
3. Click the Output dropdown just below the Input. Select your main stereo output (typically “Output 1–2,” which feeds your studio monitors and main D/A converters).
4. Repeat for every audio track. Multiple tracks share the same output without conflict; Pro Tools digitally sums them at the master bus.

A mono input with a stereo output is normal—the mono signal appears centered in the stereo field. Mono can be placed in stereo with no quality loss; converting stereo to mono later loses spatial dimension and risks phase cancellation between the channels.

For MIDI and Instrument tracks:

1. Click the MIDI Input dropdown. On a MIDI track this is in the I/O column; on an Instrument track it lives in the Instrument section at the top of the channel. The default is “All,” which captures any connected MIDI controller. Leave it on “All” unless you have a specific reason to filter to one device.
2. Click the MIDI Output dropdown. Choose either an external hardware synth on a specific MIDI channel, or the input of a virtual instrument you have loaded on an Aux track elsewhere in the session (e.g., “Mini Grand Channel 1”). On an Instrument track, the MIDI is auto-routed to the instrument plugin loaded on that same track—you do not need to set MIDI Output manually. (Glance at the Instrument section to confirm the MIDI input/channel is what you expect—and remember an Instrument track hosts one virtual instrument only; for a second instrument, use a second track.)
3. For Instrument tracks, set the audio Output (the lower slot) to your main stereo output, exactly like an audio track—this is what carries the instrument's sound to your monitors.
4. Open Options from the top menu bar and confirm three settings: MIDI Thru checked (so you hear the instrument respond as you play), Delay Compensation enabled (so MIDI and audio stay aligned in time), and Pre-Fader Metering not selected (so the meters show the fader-adjusted level actually hitting the mix bus, not just the raw input).

If a track records silently and the meters are dead, the I/O is the first thing to check, not the cable. I have lost twenty minutes troubleshooting a “broken interface” that turned out to be an input set to “No Input” from a previous template.

Headphone Cue Mixes (Aux Sends)

Any time you track live performers—and especially more than one at once—each needs a monitor (cue) mix independent of your control-room mix. A single vocalist over a backing track just needs their own balance; but the moment a drummer, bassist, and singer track together, each one needs to hear something different (the drummer wants more kick, the singer more of their own voice), and one shared mix serves none of them. The cleanest way to build one inside Pro Tools is the Aux Send + Aux Track pattern.

1. Create an Aux Input track named “Cue Vocal” (or “Cue Drummer,” depending on who you are tracking).
2. Set its output to a physical interface output that is patched to a headphone amp or distribution amp—e.g., Output 3–4 if Output 1–2 is your main monitors.
3. On every track that should feed the cue (the click, the instrumental, the lead vocal mic), add a Send routed to the Cue Vocal aux. Pre-fader sends keep the cue mix independent of any control-room balance changes you make. (Huber, Caballero & Runstein, 2023)
4. Adjust send levels per performer. Some vocalists want their voice prominent and the music quiet; others want the music dominant and just enough vocal to stay on pitch. Ask. Adjust. Then ask again. A two-minute cue-mix adjustment can save you an hour of bad takes.

Talkback

Talkback is how you communicate with the booth between takes. Without it you are knocking on the glass or relying on the artist hearing you through bleed in their headphones—both terrible. Three standard setups:

• Console-based: large-format consoles have a built-in talkback mic in the master section with a momentary push-to-talk button.
• Monitor-controller-based: Mackie Big Knob, SPL Crimson, Dangerous Monitor ST, Grace m905, Heritage Audio R.A.M. all include a talkback mic and TB button.
• Software/interface-based: many modern interfaces include a built-in talkback mic and a hot-key (Apollo does, and so did the previous-generation MOTU 828es—the current 828 keeps the talkback button but expects an external mic; RME does not—on RME you route an external mic through an interface input in TotalMix). Pro Tools itself has no talkback button—route a control-room mic to the cue mixes with an Aux + send, use your interface's monitoring software, or a utility plugin (Source-Talkback, Muteomatic) bound to a key.

I have run sessions with a $99 SM58 plugged into a spare interface input and a keyboard shortcut bound to mute it during takes. It is not glamorous, but it works. The point is being able to say “one more time, top of the second verse” without leaving the chair.

Inserting Plugins and Virtual Instruments

The Insert column is where you place plugins—both effects (EQ, compression, reverb) and virtual instruments—the digital equivalent of an analog console insert point. On an instrument track, the top slot is typically a virtual instrument: click it and select one (Multichannel Plug-in → Instrument → Mini Grand, Xpand!2, etc.). Set the audio output to your main output and the audio input to “No Input” since the sound is generated by the plugin, not received from outside.

For multi-channel virtual instruments, use a stereo Aux track with the instrument inserted, plus separate MIDI tracks routed to trigger different channels—for example, treble and bass clef of a piano on separate MIDI tracks triggering the same Mini Grand patch.

If you load a virtual instrument and hear nothing, the fix is almost always the audio output—confirm it is set to your main stereo output, not “None” or a bus that is not feeding the monitors. I have watched students spend ten minutes hammering a MIDI controller in panic when one dropdown menu was the entire problem. Two more VI gotchas: keep it to one virtual instrument per track, and if you chain effects after the instrument while playing it live, watch for latency—a latency-heavy plugin makes the keys feel laggy. Use low-latency (or AAX DSP) versions while performing, then switch to the full versions for mixdown.

This is where my first session went wrong. The buffer was still at 1024 samples from my own mixing the night before, and the vocalist heard herself a beat behind the music. She thought the system was broken. It was not—I had not switched to a recording buffer.

Buffer Size

1. Open Setup → Playback Engine.
2. Set Hardware Buffer Size to 64 or 128 samples for tracking. Lower means less latency for the performer; higher means more CPU headroom. Drop to 64 if the system can handle it; back off to 128 if you hear pops or your CPU meter complains.
3. Click OK. Pro Tools will briefly stop audio while it re-initializes.

Low Latency Monitoring

Pro Tools also offers Low Latency Monitoring (Options → Low Latency Monitoring), which minimizes recording latency without forcing the buffer down. There is one critical catch the menu does not warn you about: LLM only works on tracks routed directly to physical interface outputs. If your record-enabled tracks are routed to internal buses (a sub-mix, an aux, a stem bus), LLM will not engage on those tracks. Route the record path straight to Output 1–2 (or whichever physical pair feeds your monitors and headphones), and LLM kicks in. Plugins on the record path are also bypassed during monitoring while LLM is active—you will hear them again on playback.

On Avid HDX systems, the DSP hardware provides dedicated low-latency monitoring through HD I/O or HD OMNI interfaces—the same menu option applies, but HDX offers near-zero latency that Native systems cannot match. See Chapter 11 for buffer-size depth and tradeoffs.

Input Monitoring and Live Mode

Input Monitoring is available on Instrument Tracks, letting you hear virtual instrument output in real time during performance—essential for checking patches before the take. Pro Tools also offers Live Mode, a MIDI timing feature that shifts recorded MIDI to compensate for monitoring latency—so on playback, the alignment between your MIDI and audio tracks matches what you heard while tracking. It does not reduce the audible latency itself; that is still set by your buffer size.

MIDI Note Labels let you rename individual MIDI notes in the piano roll to match a specific drum kit or instrument patch. Instead of generic note names like C1, D1, you can label them “Kick,” “Snare,” “Hi-Hat”—invaluable when programming drums or working with multi-sample instruments where the layout is custom.

Sample Rate Match

Verify your sample rate by confirming the audio interface matches the Pro Tools session. I learned this one the hard way. I once tracked an entire full-day session—vocals, doubles, ad-libs, the works—without noticing that the A/D converter's sample rate did not match the Pro Tools session. Everything sounded fine during tracking. The client left happy. An hour later, my phone rang: “Why does the song sound slow and demonic?” The mismatch meant every file was recorded at the wrong rate. I spent the rest of that night re-exporting the audio at one sample rate and re-importing it at the correct one to undo the damage. It worked, but it nearly turned my hair gray.

Check the session sample rate at Setup → Session (Ctrl+2 / Cmd+2 on numpad) and match it against your interface's clock setting before you record a single note.

Arm the Tracks

Click the Record Enable button on every track you want to record. The button turns red when armed; only red-armed tracks capture audio when the transport is recording. To arm every record-enabled track simultaneously, Option-click (Alt-click) any record button.

Set Levels at the Source

Set the preamp or DI gain so peaks sit around −12 dBFS—where the meter's green meets yellow, roughly halfway up. This provides ample headroom. (Owsinski, 2017) The sum of all tracks approaches 0 dBFS during mixing, so recording too hot leaves no room. One of the biggest mistakes new engineers make is setting input levels too high, often because they think louder sounds better. It does not. It sounds clipped.

If the performer cannot hear themselves over the backing track, do not turn the record input up. Turn the backing track down in the cue mix (or their own voice up)—and turn their overall headphone level up so they hear more of everything, with their voice still sitting on top. The goal is balance in the cans, not a hotter recording. Flip “Pre-Fader Metering” (Options menu) on to read true input while gain-staging, then back off for mixing.

A bad headphone mix produces bad performances—if the vocalist cannot hear themselves, they will push too hard; if the music is too quiet, they will sing off-key without realizing it. Spend the time on the cue mix before you spend it on takes.

Printing Analog Processing

This is also the moment to commit to any analog EQ or compression being printed to disk—an LA-2A on the vocal, an 1176 on the bass, a Pultec on the kick. Remember: analog processing recorded to disk cannot be undone. Commit only if you are confident in the sound. The corollary is that committing during tracking is also how veteran records get their character—you cannot recreate “the sound of the gear hitting hard” inside a plugin chain without going through the gear. My own approach during tracking is light—I'll run a vocal through an LA-2A or a Pultec just kissing the signal, capturing a little of that analog character without committing to heavy processing. Then I run back through the gear harder later, once I'm sure of the sound. You get the bit of analog that carries into everything downstream, without painting yourself into a corner on the way in.

Pre-Roll and Post-Roll

Pre-roll and post-roll give performers context before and after the recording point. Enable them in the Transport window—click the Pre-Roll and Post-Roll fields and enter a value (e.g., 2 bars).

When recording or punching in, Pro Tools plays the pre-roll amount before the record point engages, letting the performer get into the groove before the red light comes on. Post-roll plays a short section after recording stops so the performer does not cut off abruptly.

Pre-roll and post-roll are useful but not mandatory. Some engineers (myself often included) just start playback a couple of bars ahead and punch in by hand. Note that in normal record mode Pro Tools does not capture the pre-roll—it's a run-up for the performer, not recorded audio. Post-roll is handy so a held note or ringing chord isn't chopped the instant you stop, but if you'd rather not risk the recording cutting off the tail, you can skip it and just stop manually.

Pre-roll has a sibling worth knowing: the count-off. Enable the Count Off button in the Transport (numpad 8; set its length under Setup → Click/Countoff Options) and Pro Tools plays one or two bars of click only before the transport starts moving—no track audio, just “one, two, three, four,” which is exactly what a band cutting a song from the top of bar 1 wants, since there is nothing recorded yet to roll into. Pre-roll is the opposite tool: the timeline itself rolls early, so a vocalist punching into the second chorus hears the song approaching the punch instead of a bare count. One catch: the count-off speaks through the click (Options → Click on, click track feeding the cue sends), so if the performer's headphones do not carry the click track, their count-off is two bars of dead air.

The performer is ready, the levels are set, the cue mix is dialed in. Hit Record.

Transport Essentials

Record: Click the record button on the Transport, then click Play—or press F12 or numpad 3. The transport turns red and audio writes to disk.

Stop: Spacebar or the stop button.

Play: Spacebar to play back what you just recorded.

Undo: Ctrl+Z (Cmd+Z). If a take is not a keeper, undo it immediately. Undoing a take removes the audio file from disk—saving space over time. But be careful: once you record over a region or move on, that undo is gone.

Save: Ctrl+S (Cmd+S). Save after every good take. I have seen power outages, system crashes, and one memorable incident where a studio cat walked across the keyboard and closed Pro Tools mid-session. Save frequently, even with auto-backup enabled.

Duplicate Tracks: Select a track, then Shift+Alt+D (Shift+Option+D). Copies the track's routing, inserts, sends, and settings to a new track—useful when you need an identical setup for a double or a harmony.

Playlists and Comping

The vocalist just delivered an incredible first verse, but the chorus was pitchy. You want to record the chorus again without losing the perfect verse. This is what Playlists are for.

Click the playlist selector (the small triangle next to the track name) and choose “New.” Each take saves on a separate playlist and can be recalled instantly. Record as many takes as you need—they are all preserved.

Modern Pro Tools supports playlist comping—click the Track View Selector and choose “Playlists” to view every playlist as a lane beneath the track. Each lane has an Audition button (speaker icon) for quick A/B between takes. Solo individual playlists with Shift+S, navigate between them with P (previous) and ; (next)—Commands Keyboard Focus on, or hold Control on Mac / Start on Windows—then promote the best sections to the main comp playlist with the up-arrow button (or Start+Alt+V (Ctrl+Option+V)). Finish by adding fades and crossfades across the comp. Both approaches—playlists or takes on separate tracks—work; playlists keep everything in one column with per-lane audition buttons (tidier), while separate tracks lay every take out at once. Use whichever matches how the takes were recorded.

This is one of the most powerful tools in vocal recording. I have assembled final vocal comps from seven different takes—the first line from take 3, the second from take 1, a single word from take 5 that had the perfect inflection. The vocalist walked out thinking they nailed it in one pass. They did not need to know it was seven passes stitched together. That is the job.

MIDI playlist comping is also available—the same lane-based workflow now works on MIDI and Instrument tracks. Loop record MIDI performances and comp the best sections together just like vocals.

Overdubs

An overdub is an additional track recorded over the lead to create a fuller sound. For chorus vocals, I typically record 3–4 overdubs of the same part on separate tracks, then add harmonies in multiples of two—and the reason is panning: with four doubles you can pan two hard left and two hard right for a wide, balanced stack. Pairs let you place width symmetrically across the stereo field. Instruments benefit from the same approach—doubling a rhythm guitar part and panning the takes left and right creates width that a single track cannot match.

Punch Recording: Record Modes

A punch replaces a section of an otherwise good take. Pro Tools has six record modes, switched by right-clicking the Record button on the Transport: Normal, Loop, Destructive, QuickPunch, TrackPunch, and DestructivePunch. The punch-relevant ones are below; Loop Recording gets its own section next.

Normal (the default): You define a record range with the in/out timeline selection (or by hitting Record manually mid-playback). Pro Tools records over the existing audio in that range. This is where pre-roll earns its keep—the performer hears a bar or two before the punch so they can match tone and energy. Punching in cold almost never sounds natural.

QuickPunch: Right-click record → “QuickPunch.” Lets you punch in and out manually during playback by hitting F12 (or the record button). Pro Tools is technically recording the entire pass into a hidden file—when you hit punch, only the section you marked goes onto the visible track. Great for catching a single phrase the artist nails on a passing take.

TrackPunch (Pro Tools Ultimate only): Right-click record → “TrackPunch.” A per-track version of QuickPunch with the added benefit of letting you punch in and out on multiple tracks independently—useful for live band overdubs where you want to punch the bass without affecting the drums.

DestructivePunch (Pro Tools Ultimate only): The original audio is permanently overwritten on disk. Use only when you are certain—there is no clip-list recovery, unlike standard punch which preserves the underlying file in the Audio Files folder.

A word of caution about any punch mode: if you punch in on the wrong section, you record over the original. I once accidentally punched in during the best take of the session because I hit F12 a bar too early. The artist's face told me everything I needed to know. Defense: record the punch on a new playlist so the original take is always safe even if you mistime the trigger.

Loop Recording

Right-click the Record button → “Loop” (or numpad 5). Set a timeline selection for the loop range and optionally enable pre-roll to give the performer a bar or two of click before recording begins (pre-roll plays only on the first pass). Each pass creates a new take stored as a subset clip in the Clip List, numbered sequentially. If a pass is stopped before reaching the midpoint of the loop, that take is discarded.

After recording, Cmd+click (Ctrl+click on Windows) inside the looped region with the Selector tool to open the Takes popup—audition each take, select the best one, or expand all alternates to new playlists or new tracks for detailed comping.

Clip looping is a related but different feature: select any audio or MIDI clip, go to Clip → Loop, and choose how many times to repeat it or set a total length. The clip repeats seamlessly in the timeline—useful for building drum patterns, bass lines, and rhythmic parts from short loops.

Save After Every Take

Save with File → Save (Ctrl+S / Cmd+S). I save after every usable take—not at the end of the session, not every few takes, but after every single take worth keeping. Hard drives fail. Software crashes. Power goes out. The only thing standing between you and a lost session is your last save.

Auto Backup

Pro Tools also offers automatic backups (Setup → Preferences → Operation → Auto Backup). Enable it, set the interval to 5 minutes, and keep 999 backups. These are stored in the Session File Backups folder inside your session directory. If the main session file ever corrupts, open the most recent backup and lose at most a few minutes of work.

Save Copy In: For Handoff and Archive

When transferring a session between studios—or archiving a finished tracking session for long-term storage—always use File → Save Copy In. This rebuilds the session in a new folder with all referenced audio copied into it, regardless of which drives the originals lived on. The dialog has several options that matter:

• Include All Audio Files — mandatory for handoff. This is what makes the session portable. Skip it and the receiving studio gets a session that points to files on a drive they do not have.
• Bit Depth / Sample Rate: match the destination, not always the session. Usually that means matching the project—but if you recorded at 96 kHz and the post-production house wants 48, deliver what they ask for. Match the target, whatever it is.
• Pro Tools Version: pick the lowest version the receiving studio runs. Some studios sit two or three releases behind the current build—choosing a backwards-compatible target means they can open the session without upgrading.
• Limit Audio File Length (optional) — splits long takes into chunks; useful for archives, irrelevant for normal handoffs.

Before zipping the folder for handoff, do three things: label every track clearly (no “Audio 1” / “Audio 2” garbage), optionally consolidate audio files on tracks where editing is truly final (Edit → Consolidate Clip merges a clip's edits, fades, and crossfades into one new file—but be careful, this locks in your fades, so skip it on anything you might still revise), and drop a session-notes text file in the session folder listing the signal chain (mics, preamps, any analog processing), tempo, key, and which takes are the keepers vs. alternates.

A clean handoff package the next engineer can open without questions is the difference between getting hired again and not. I have walked into too many sessions where the previous engineer's “it should all be there” turned into a half-day of locating missing files. Take ten minutes at the end of every session and you will never be that engineer.

Building a session from scratch every time is a waste of the performer's patience and your time. Most professional engineers use session templates that store track layouts, routing, effects chains, sends, and virtual instruments so they can start recording within minutes of opening Pro Tools.

If you completed the Studio Exercise at the end of Chapter 11, you already have a tracking template saved. This is the moment that template earns its keep. Open it, save a copy with the artist's name and date in the filename, and you are five minutes ahead of where you would otherwise be.

To build a new template from scratch: start a new session, configure tracks exactly how you want them (labeled, routed, with plugins and sends), and save the session. To pull it into a future session, create a blank session and use Import Session Data (File → Import → Session Data, or Shift+Alt+I / Shift+Option+I). Select the tracks, tempo, markers, and window configurations you want to import.

I keep separate templates for vocal sessions, full band tracking, podcast recording, and film scoring. Each one saves me at least twenty minutes of setup—and more importantly, it means the artist never has to sit in the booth watching me click through menus.

After years of running sessions, here is what I have learned matters most:

Vocals: Record leads in mono. Double them on hooks and certain verse sections, but usually not all the way through—a doubled vocal across an entire song reads thick in the wrong way. Background vocals sound great in stereo: record two of each part and pan them left and right for width.

Cue mix: Closed-back headphones every time—open-backs leak click and music into the lead vocal mic and create a mess for the mix engineer. When your interface has the outputs, build a separate cue send per performer. The drummer wants more kick; the singer wants more piano; the bassist wants more click. They cannot all share the same mix.

Communication: Talk to the performer between takes. Tell them what was great, what needs another pass, and what the plan is. Dead silence from the control room after a take is the fastest way to kill an artist's confidence. Even a simple “That was solid, let's do one more for safety” keeps the energy up.

Know when to stop: There is a point of diminishing returns in every session. After take 15, the performer is tired, the pitch gets worse, and the energy drops. If you do not have it by take 10, the problem is usually not the performance—it is the arrangement, the key, the cue mix, or the song itself. Step back and diagnose before burning through more takes.

Efficiency: Familiarity with shortcuts, comfort with your edit tools, and custom recording templates will dramatically improve your studio workflow. The less time you spend clicking through menus, the more time you spend focused on the music.

“The record is going to be as good as it is when they bring it in the front door. If a band comes in with awesome material, well rehearsed, and they don't take no for an answer, they're going to have a great record.”

—Steve Albini, Tape Op #87 (2012)

There is a saying in audio engineering you will hear in every studio, every classroom, and every mixing tutorial: get it right at the source. It sounds obvious, but it is the most important principle in recording.

You can reshape a well-recorded signal with EQ, compression, and effects. You cannot manufacture detail that was never captured in the first place. A thin, noisy, or poorly positioned recording will fight you at every stage that follows—editing, mixing, mastering. I have spent hours trying to fix a vocal that was recorded with the wrong microphone six inches too far from the singer. The fix was not a plugin. The fix was re-recording with the right mic in the right position.

Master the recording workflow in whichever DAW you choose. Build templates that eliminate setup friction. Develop the habit of critically listening to every take before moving on. And when something does not sound right, stop and fix it at the source—because the further down the chain you go, the harder and more expensive it becomes to fix. The hours you invest in disciplined tracking pay dividends when the mix practically builds itself.

That first session I told you about—the dead condenser, the wrong buffer, the vocalist staring at me through the glass—I think about it every time I set up a new session. Not because it was a disaster, but because it stopped being one. I fixed every problem, we got the takes, and the client came back the next week. Every recording session is a series of small decisions, and the ones you get wrong teach you more than the ones you get right. The goal is not to never make mistakes. The goal is to solve them so fast that nobody in the booth ever knows they happened.

Memorizing shortcuts is one of the fastest ways to improve your studio efficiency. The difference between a session that flows and one that drags is often how quickly the engineer can navigate, punch in, zoom, and edit without reaching for the mouse. I have worked with engineers who almost never touch the mouse during a take—everything is keyboard-driven (a control surface or a touchscreen like the Slate Raven helps), and the sessions move twice as fast. You'll still reach for the mouse, but the less you do, the faster you work. You do not need to memorize every shortcut on day one, but commit the recording essentials (Record, Stop, Undo, Save, Zoom) to muscle memory first, then build from there. Here are the essential Pro Tools shortcuts, written in Windows convention. Mac users: Ctrl = Cmd, Alt = Option, and Start = Control.

Here is the practical curriculum: pick five shortcuts you do not currently know, write them on a sticky note, paste it to the side of your monitor, and use them every session for the next week. By week two they become muscle memory. Then pick five more. By month three you will be driving Pro Tools at the speed of your thoughts. I time myself on sessions: the difference between mousing and keyboard-driving is often two to three hours saved over a long day. Over a year that is hundreds of hours. Over a career, it is the difference between an engineer who finishes on schedule and one who is always running late. Clients notice the difference. Other engineers notice it too. Speed is not flashy—but it is one of the clearest signals of professional command at the console.

The shortcuts I lean on first are the workhorses: Ctrl+D (Duplicate a clip), Ctrl+E (Separate at Selection), Ctrl+S (Save), Ctrl+Z (Undo), and Ctrl+Shift+N (new track), plus Spacebar (play/stop in any window). Tab to Transient (with the toggle enabled in the Edit toolbar) is a powerful navigation aid for jumping between musical events—the next kick, the next phrase—and pairs beautifully with Separate at Selection for fast slicing; it is well worth learning, though I personally reach for Duplicate and Separate far more often in a session. Get these into your hands this week and you will already be ahead of half the engineers working today.