The 13 Best Pro Tools Keyboard Shortcuts

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Good morning children! Today, we're going to talk about Pro Tools shortcuts.

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Notice on the other DAWs: they're wonderful of course too, but we know Pro Tools very well, so we'd thought we'd share.

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Why are shortcuts important? Because everything you can do with your mouse, you can do 5 to 10 times faster with a shortcut.

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Think of it as touch-typing for Pro Tools.

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You can choose to type with two fingers for the rest of your life, or you can learn to touch-type and be much faster and able to focus on what's important. So here we go! Our favorite shortcuts! Pro Tools has some pretty powerful zooming shortcuts which you should have as second nature.

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There's a lot of them, here's the one that you're susceptible to use the most.

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If you have a clip selected and you really want it to be big, Option+F, and that's huge.

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Now if you're lost in your session and you don't really know where you are, then I would say Option+A, for All.

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And then your entire session is now zoomed for you.

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So again, Option+F focuses on what you're working on, Option+A gives you a bird's-eye view.

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Between the two of them, you can really know where you are very quickly.

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That's very nice.

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You can also use the traditional ones, Cmd+[ or ], or R and T, but I think it's very nice to be able to just go: I'm working on this, or I'm seeing the whole song.

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Very nice.

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Also, very crucial. Check it out.

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The key command for zoom is Cmd+1.

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Fair enough. You hit it, you see it switch up there, you click, it zooms.

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You can select a range, and it zooms to that range.

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If you hit Option, you can zoom out.

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But it goes deeper.

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Now I can select Single Zoom.

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What that does is it turns the tool into a zoom for one click, and then switches back to where you were before.

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For example, say if you're in Multi-Tool and you're doing selections.

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Then you want to focus on this one thing here, you can hit Cmd+1, zoom on it, and then you're back in the Selection tool without having to switch out of the Zoom Mode.

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That is incredibly practical.

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Of course if you get lost, you can hit Option+A to see the whole song. A for All.

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Pro Tools has interesting ways of displaying waveforms.

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You actually have two considerations: Track Height, and Waveform Height, and they're independent.

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So for Track Height, you have Ctrl+Up or Down arrow, and you can change the Track Height really quickly.

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You don't have to use the little menus there, they're slow.

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Like everything in Pro Tools, if you use the Option key, all tracks will follow suit. Very nice.

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For the Waveform Height, you can change it by using Option+Cmd+[ for smaller, or ] for bigger. Pretty simple.

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Now, if you made a mess and you do not know where you are, it's easy, you just hit Ctrl+Option+Cmd+Up arrow, and Pro Tools will shrink everything down vertically as much as possible to fit everything on the screen.

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Combined with Option+A for the horizontal version, and now you have a bird's-eye view, in two clicks.

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So you can really go from here...

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to here... in no time at all.

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If you don't have a control surface, or you're working on a keyboard laptop, it's very nice to be able to access all the controls of a track when it's selected. So for example, say if you have...

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this Master selected.

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I hit Shift+M for Mute, Shift+S for Solo, Shift+R for Record, and then if you have Pro Tools HD, Shift+I will activate Input Monitoring.

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If you do not have Pro Tools HD, Option+K will do that, but only if the track is enabled for record.

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Now, think about it this way.

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If you combine this with the P key command, and the ; key command that lets you change the cursor from track to track, now, say I'm on my main, here...

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I can mute it, and then I can hit P a few times hit my Bass track, and mute it too.

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I do not have to grab a mouse.

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Those key commands are P for up, and ; for down.

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I suggest you put a little sticker on those because you could use them all the time.

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Pro Tools has some very extensive grouping features.

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Here's what you need to know to get started quickly.

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To create a group, you select the tracks you want to be in the group, hit Cmd+G, and then name the group.

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Now, if I'm doing drums, current wisdom says that I should actually call the group Drums.

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Also, if you want to make it easy on yourself, why don't you select the shortcut for the group to be a 'd', for example? You know, 'd' for Drums! So there you go. Now I'm here, and I can, without thinking too much, turn my Drum group on and off by hitting the 'd' button in my Mix window.

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Very practical.

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The other thing you need to know is you can suspend all groups by hitting Shift+Cmd+G.

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Why is that important? Say for example you're working up here on the drums, and you have your Group on.

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Anything you're gonna do is gonna select the group.

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If you just need to select the bass drum for a second, you hit Shift+Cmd+G and now you're just selecting the bass drum, and then turn your Groups back on and do whatever you want.

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For duplication commands, Avid has had the good taste of choosing the letter D, and we're grateful for that.

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For example, if you need to duplicate a track, you hit Shift+Option+D, and then you have a nice little menu that lets you choose what you want to duplicate.

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Say you're in the situation where you just tracked a badass bass line and you want to have a double of that.

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You can Shift+Option+D it and say: I want everything, Sends, Group assignments, everything but not the Active Playlist, so I can track a new track.

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And there you go. Very quick.

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If you're in the Edit window and you like this little bass lick right here, you want to duplicate it... Cmd+D.

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You want to repeat it many times, Option+R like Repeat, say 4 times.

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Boom! Done. Very quick.

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I like to start with a blank slate, so I don't have any template.

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So I spend a lot of time creating new tracks in Pro Tools.

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Here's a good way to do that.

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With the combination of Shift+Cmd+N to open the dialog, Cmd+Right or Left arrow to select from Mono and Stereo, and the Up and Down arrows to select what you want to do, you can create tracks really quickly.

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For example, do I want 4 Stereo Aux Inputs, and then, Cmd++ adds a field and then I create 8 Mono Audio Tracks.

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Boom! Gone. And here they come! Pro Tools has some nice cleaning up key commands and concepts.

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Say I like this bass edit right here, and I want to commit to it.

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I select it. Shift+Option+3 will consolidate it into one chunk.

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Now say I'm happy with this and I want to export it somewhere else to use it elsewhere, maybe in a sampler, or archive it.

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Shift+Cmd+K will let me export it and gives me lots of options on what to do with it.

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As a way to remember this, if you select any region in Pro Tools, it gets selected in the Regions window down here. 'pBass.' Then you can go to this menu up here and Export Regions as Files...

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What it does is take this virtual representation of your audio and turn it into a solid file wherever you want on your drive.

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It's very easy to export stuff out of Pro Tools and keep it tight.

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Also, in the same category, to clean up the mess left by 6 months of working on the same song across 4 systems, to remove all unused files, you can use Shift+Cmd+U for Unused.

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You see here, on the right-hand side in the Regions bin all the stuff that's unused.

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And then you use Shift+Cmd+B for... I don't really know what, I call it Blast Off, and you hit Remove.

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Here's a trick. If you hit Option+Remove, it won't ask you every single time all the complicated questions: Do you want to get rid of this? Do you want to get rid of this? And this one, do you really want to get rid of this one? If you hit Option, it'll just remove everything.

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Pro Tools is a 2-window environment.

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Don't try and torture into a 1-window environment, it's a waste of time.

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The key command you need to know is Cmd+=.

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It doesn't get any faster than that.

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If you feel you have too much stuff on the screen here and you want to see more, Option+Cmd+M makes the Mixer windows a little smaller, so you can have more on the screen at one time.

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Also you can open and close sidebars at will, just with one click.

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Like this. That's very practical, you can see a lot.

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Pro Tools lets you see one plug-in window at a time by default.

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If you want to see several, all you have to do is hit Shift, and now you have 2! Or 3! Pretty simple.

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If you're starting to fill up your screen with too many plug-in windows, real men do not close their plug-in windows with the little button up there.

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Real men use Option+Cmd+W. And everything goes away.

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As far as navigation goes, the way Pro Tools works is it always starts from the same spot, unless you tell it not to.

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It's very practical if you're focusing on one thing.

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For example, these first two beats of this verse.

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I don't have to relocate every time I want to hear the same thing.

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It's also very practical if you have people on your couch you don't like while you're mixing, you can do this for 5 minutes, and then leave.

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Works great! If you want to switch back to Logic Mode, where the timeline follows along, hit N.

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And now it'll work in Logic Mode.

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And then, it moves on from there.

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The big N finger syndrome is also an explanation for this...

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If you're a heavy-duty Pro Tools user and you work fast, you tend to make selections here in the timeline, and then you hit Play.

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Then when you hit Stop, if you're in Logic Mode, the selection disappears.

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It can drive a Pro Tools user baddy! The first thing to do is make sure that your finger is small enough and you don't hit N too much.

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Here's a good way to think about Playback selections and Edit selections in Pro Tools. It's a little different from other DAWs.

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You have a Link Timeline and Edit Mode.

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What it means in English is that you can select this and Pro Tools will play this if you're in that mode.

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Which is very practical. Now...

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Of course, every time you hit Play... It's gonna play that.

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If you disconnect your Edit selections and your Timeline selections, by using Shift+/, now you can have this selected, but you can play this instead.

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There's many applications for this. But what you need to know is that the default mode and the way most people work in Pro Tools is just: your selection is what you listen to.

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Unless you decide to do something different.

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That's a good default mode to work because if you're listening to what you have selected, you always know where you are.

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Let's talk about automation.

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The first one you need to know is Ctrl+- which toggles between Waveform and Volume automation.

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To be precise, it will let you toggle between anything and Waveform, and then back to Volume Automation.

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For example, say you have here the High Slope control of my Oxford EQ.

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It's what I am automating.

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Let me do this so you can see what's going on.

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If I'm here and I hit Ctrl+-, I'm on Waveform.

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I hit Ctrl+- again, I'm on Volume. Very practical.

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Another one you need to know is the Ctrl+Cmd+Right arrow and Left arrow, which lets you switch between all the different automation playlists.

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Whatever is there will be used much faster than using this menu here, because, you know... it's a menu.

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Also, as always in Pro Tools, anything you do you can hold Option and it will apply to all the tracks.

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Here's a nugget.

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Say you have this phenomenal, incredibly creative automation pattern right there.

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That's all great, but it's 2 dBs too loud.

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What are you gonna do? Oh my God! All you have to do is select it, select the volume control here in the playlist, take it down to where you want it to be. So we said 2 dBs.

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I'm gonna, say... -6.7 for example.

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And you hit Shift+Cmd+/. Mmm! There's a caveat here.

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If you're on a Mac, make sure you have your Keyboard Preference pane brought up, look to Application Shortcuts, and make sure that the Show Help menu is deselected.

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Otherwise, it won't work.

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For plug-in automation, here's how it goes.

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Hit Ctrl+Option+Cmd, select the parameter you want to automate, and say Enable Automation for... LMF here.

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Now if you want to see that playlist, Ctrl+Cmd+Click on the parameter and it will switch automatically to that playlist.

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This, by the way, works for everything. It works for pan too, it works for volume, whatever you want.

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Ctrl+Cmd+Click on whatever you want to automate. It brings it there.

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If you're lazy and want to automate everything, Ctrl+Option+Cmd, hit this button, and every parameter in the plug-in is now automated, which gives you an interesting automation list right here.

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So if you're automating a reverb, expect a long menu.

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For those of us who enjoy using Pro Tools on our laptops with the built-in headphones output, just because we can, there's two things missing because of the keypad not being there: Loop, and Punch, at least for me, all the time.

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You can get to it by Shift+Cmd+L for Loop, and Shift+Cmd+P for Punch.

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Here's a cool one.

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Say you're on a tracking session and you have a very nice drum balance, and you want to send it to the drummer.

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Or say you're doing parallel processing and you want to use the tricks we showed you in the Parallel Processing video.

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All you have to do is select all your tracks and then hit Option+Cmd+H, and it will let you copy that mix to that Aux.

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So Send A, set the Current Value and the Volume. OK! Now my mix is up here. That's nice.

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These were the Pro Tools key commands we use most.

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You may have some different ones because they're not all in the manual.

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If we missed some, do write to us! Until then... Et voilà!