With the support of iLok, more tips & tricks from the community. Here are seven from Kyle Moorman….

I work in pop production mainly and have been a daily Pro Tools user for over 10 years. Here are some tips that have helped me a lot… 

1. Setup workflow on computer to make it so you don’t have to move either hand to perform any key commands. This really requires a Kensington trackball with the 4 buttons. I set my top left button to hit enter (to take care of the annoying prompts that come up for fades and other things. Bottom right is shift-m (typing shift m with one hand is a pretty big stretch). Top right is “create new playlist” (works great with tracking vocals and other instruments where you’re doing lots of punches bc you can just hit top left button when prompt for playlist name comes up. Super quick) bottom left is normal click.  
2. Instead of hitting ‘delete’ to delete something I use command-shift-e. may sound in-intuitive but that command lays right under the fingers easily when editing.  
3. There was a time when I used a key logger to record all my commands for a few days of intense editing and then during some down time I went back through and found every way I could to keep from having to take either hand off of the keyboard and trackball. Also found ways to simplify any commands that could be consolidated into one or two commands instead of 4 or 5 etc.  
4. If you have a section of the song where you want all tracks to fade out or cut, use trim automation (hd only) on a track and then copy and paste to all the other tracks. You can have all tracks do the same fade without having to mess with volume automation breakpoints. 
5. For any ITB sound you come up with (soft synth with a plugin chain after it) that you like. Save it as a track preset. I’ve done this for every song I’ve worked on in the last year or so and it makes getting a track together much quicker.  
6. When flying sections of music, use paste to fill area instead of duplicating (when working with loops) this helps when sections of the song are unequal lengths but need the loop to continue. 
7. A Drum programming tip with Native Instruments Battery  I have a track preset for batter that comes up with it already set to a preset that is mapped to my Akai. You can drag and drop samples from finder into the cells and play them from there.

If you would like the chance to win a stormtrooper iLok, courtesy of iLok, then send tips you think no one has thought about. Please don’t just send us a batch of shortcuts (which can be easily found elsewhere), or pull ideas straight from the manual; instead, be creative about your tips & tricks. Please use the Contact Us page to let us have your tips.