I understand, in order to get PT to loop playback, I have to highlight an area and do the shift-L and play or whatever.

The problem with that is, that as soon as I click somewhere else, or even look at the screen with a dirty-look, the looped-playback stops, and the track just keeps on playing outside of the previously highlighted boundary.

In Logic, and Live for example, you designate the loop-area and its locked-in stone... Is this really not possible in PT?.. and sadly one of the negative's of Pro Tools?

cuz that's a major deal breaker for me... and I can see why its not used for the electronic music writing process... or at least a track that was built on a generally repetitive foundation.

 

This is one of many ways PT is really better as an audio recording/editing/mixing platform than for sequencing & arranging. That said, there are a couple of things that make it easier to do what you're doing. There are two edit buffers in PT, one governing the timeline position (including playback position) and the other governing various editing functions. By default they are linked, so there's effectively only one buffer. but you can unlink them by unchecking "Link Timeline and Edit Selection" in the Options menu, or by unchecking the third button from the right underneath the tool buttons (looks like up/down arrows beside a sideways division sign) (whatever…) Make sure that button AND the "Insertion Follows Playback" button (last one on the right) are both inactive (not blue), and you can do some editing while loop playback happens. You can trim, nudge, drag and delete, but you can't scrub anything - that will stop the loop.

The other feature you really need to know about for loop-based editing is the memory locations. MLs are very powerful in PT, almost anything can be written into one and recalled with a quick number tap, but for looping the most relevant use is just saving a time selection. If you select a passage of time (say a four-bar phrase) and hit Enter, you can save the selection as a ML (make sure it's designated as a Selection and not a Marker, which only saves the start time - you'll understand when you see the dialog box). You can recall it any time to restore the selection, handy if you're looping and something messes you up.

hope this makes your session easier.

 

awesome!!

thats what I was looking for.. I would have been surprised that PT was unable to provide such a seemingly basic feature.

Thank you very much Frubbs!

although, "pressing enter" did not create a memory location, I had to go to the Window/Memory Location to bring up that whole thing... not sure what the differences are between our systems, but I'll figure it out.