You start working on a song - say few good takes of drums and bass. Then you have an idea for an intro which is 3 bars long, but you only have 1 bar before the first downbeat.
You can move everything forward (adjust the bar numbers if you like), but that won't move the other layers; in other words you're creating a mess.
There is a command in the Event menu which lets you position the song start wherever you like, or I think you can simply pick it up and drag it. But that won't create extra empty space before the start of the song, if that's what you're asking.
The way I usually do this is by finding an empty part of the song (say, to the right of all the material you've recorded), then clicking and dragging in the timeline to select the required number of bars. Make sure the selection spans the entire Edit window vertically. Hit Copy, then switch to Shuffle edit mode, click in the timeline where you want the extra bars to appear, and paste. Everything should shuffle along to make room for the empty space.
Then you can move the song start if you want to renumber the bars.
For some reason the only thing that doesn't move when you do this are the markers, so if you're using the marker track, you'll need to move these manually.
Thanks both! It turns out there are three ways to do this: 1. the shuffle edit way 2. Event>time operations>insert time 3. Event>time operations>move song start
Still the problem remains - only the visible playlist moves. So you lose the ability to do quick edits from previous takes.
I wonder why when PT moves the song start it won't move ALL the playlists.
Yeah all the time. It's really annoying that there isn't an option to cut and move all underlying playlists. I mean, it's not a drama if you're pretty much there with something and you've got everything comped already, especially if you're moving a fixed amount like 2 bars. That way it's always obvious what's been done if you do ever need to hunt in the playlists for a replacement word or something. But there are certainly times when it's a total pain. I'm not sure why they can't add this, but I expect there's a reason why it's difficult.
The Shuffle edit thing at least works across all visible playlists, so I guess you could Alt-click on a track and choose Playlists view to set all tracks to Playlists view, then do the select/copy/paste etc. Bit of a pain though.
Does anyone know a way of getting the marker track to follow these actions too? I find that a complete nuisance.
calmposer a wrote:I'm curious to know how Protools users do this:
You start working on a song - say few good takes of drums and bass. Then you have an idea for an intro which is 3 bars long, but you only have 1 bar before the first downbeat.
You can move everything forward (adjust the bar numbers if you like), but that won't move the other layers; in other words you're creating a mess.
I use Time Event/Time Operation/Move Song Start. Set it to move everything, set the new starting bar to say 3 and hit go.
If you want to move all playlists too, just control click on a track's display type to set it to 'playlist'. Then all playlists will be visible on all tracks and all will move along with the song start.
Sam Inglis wrote:The Shuffle edit thing at least works across all visible playlists, so I guess you could Alt-click on a track and choose Playlists view to set all tracks to Playlists view, then do the select/copy/paste etc. Bit of a pain though.
Does anyone know a way of getting the marker track to follow these actions too? I find that a complete nuisance.
When you use the selector tool, hold down shift. This will do a multi-select and allow you to grab the upper lines (markers, tempo, key, etc.) along with the tracks and audio/MIDI sections you want. Then when you cut and paste this selection it includes everything you want.
If you don't hold down shift, you only get the audio OR the upper lines, but not both.
Nice one DC Choppah
This seems the tidiest way to move everything back
The most interesting point here: rather than move mountains, why not just start earlier? This is something Logic Pro's developers had figured out for years, but not Protools.
