This free video tutorial brought to you in association with Avid is the fifth in a series, aimed at people who are new to recording or new to Pro Tools. We follow the development of a demo recording from the point of view of someone with no prior experience of recording.

In part 4, we looked at overdubbing additional instruments over the guitar and vocal parts in "Rosaline", a song written by Jess, a singer-songwriter and needs guidance through the recording process.

Part 5 - Tidying Up

In this video, we look at a couple of techniques for fixing mistakes by combining the best bits of multiple record passes or by copying and pasting from within one pass to patch errors.

An essential part of the recording process, Comping is a way to create a "perfect" take from all the best bits of seferal recording passes. Pro Tools has an intuitive and flexible comping system. To see more on this try this premium video tutorial, if you aren't a subscriber you can still see it for free by signing up for a free 7 day trial. 

Tab To Transients is a way of using the tab key to move the edit insertions point from hit to hit on a track containing percussive material such as drums, bass or guitars.

Playlists allow you to load up "fresh tape" on to a track so you can record several versions on to the same track. This gets really useful when you start comping different playlists together.

Although we chose to collaborate with a real drummer for "Rosaline", using Virtual Drummers can give excellent results. Pro Tools ships with Boom, a drum machine virtual instrument and drum loops are available in the library of sounds Pro Tools ships with. There are also some very useful and often overlooked loops available in Xpand! 2 but if you want to see the current state of the art for drum VIs then take a look at Superior Drummer 3 from Toontrack.

What Will We Cover In The Rest Of This Series?

Over the coming weeks, we will cover...

• MIDI and Virtual Instruments
• Mixing and Bouncing  

Part 6 - MIDI And Virtual Instruments

Come back for part 6 in which we overdub some Virtual Instruments.