- Hour 3: Basic Mixing
- Task: Place Track 9 Between Tracks 2 and 3
- Task: Color-Coding Your Tracks
- Resizing Your Tracks
- Zooming Horizontally
- Task: Adjusting Track Time and Height
- Controlling Volume
- Panning in the Stereo Field
- Summary
- Q&A
- Workshop
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Task: Place Track 9 Between Tracks 2 and 3
The steps in this task teach you how to reorder tracks.
-
Tracks 1 and 2 are both drum/percussion tracks. Click the track icon for track 9 (this track is also a drum track), and drag it up until you see a dark line appear between tracks 2 and 3.
-
Release the mouse button and notice that the track that was track 9 (BD Crash 1) is now track 3. All the other tracks below it have moved down and have been renumbered so that track 9 is now the Quintessential Belz 2 track.
-
Repeat this process to move Housebass22-02 directly underneath the other bass track, Housebass 22-08. Your project should now look like the one shown in Figure 3.1. Keep this project open; you'll work with it more in the next task.
){kind=link}
Figure 3.1 Drag and drop a Track Header to quickly reorder the tracks in your ACID project.
Color-Coding Tracks
In the previous task, you learned how to change the order of tracks in your project. Another way to organize your projects involves changing the color of a track or multiple tracks. This gives you a quick visual reference of how your tracks are grouped. For instance, in the case of our example, it might be very helpful if both of our bass tracks were the same color but were a different color from the drum tracks.
TIP
We strongly suggest that you get into the habit of reordering and color-_coding your tracks. Further, we suggest that you pick a color scheme and stick with it from project to project. For instance, always make all your drum tracks red, and rearrange your project so that all the drum tracks sit one after another in the Track List. This way, you will quickly get oriented when you open old projects.
To change the color of a track, right-click the track icon in the Track Header. From the shortcut menu, choose Color; from the cascading menu that opens, choose the color square that matches the desired color you want to assign to the track.
Windows Selection Techniques
Before you continue with your ACID lessons, take a moment to step away from ACID. Let's talk about some Windows selection tricks. Some of you know this already, but for those who don't, Windows allows you to make selections in a number of different ways. For instance, you can select more than one thing at a time by combining the Ctrl key with a couple of clicks. Click something to select it. Then press and hold the Ctrl key and click another thing to select it in addition to the first object. Continue holding the Ctrl key and clicking additional items to add those items to the selection. Ctrl+click an already-selected item, and you remove it from the selection group. Here's another trick: Click an item. Press and hold the Shift key and click another item. Notice that the first item, the last item, and every item in between become part of the selection. Keep those Windows selection techniques in mind...they're about to come in very handy.
Because you want both bass tracks to be the same color, use one of the selection techniques discussed in the Coffee Break to select both tracks at the same time. Now change the color of one of them; note that the color of both selected tracks change.
In fact, as you'll see throughout this book, many of the manipulations you make to one Track Header affect all other selected Track Headers as well. These selection tricks work in the ACID Explorer window too, so you can easily add more than one loop to your project at the same time, or put a group of loops into a newly created folder.