Pro Tools is the industry standard DAW for professional mixing, mastering and production and having comprehensive knowledge about all that Pro Tools has to offer enables you both creatively and professionally. Understanding the inner workings and full functionality of the program is not be taken lightly as Pro Tools is not just a mixer, a MIDI sequencer or a tape recorder but all these things combined and then some.


Resources

There are many valuable resources to aid you in developing professional skills to set-up and work with this DAW.  Blogs, YouTube channels and websites are full of very helpful tutorials to help you learn a lot of the program’s features but if you are just starting out I really recommend taking a look at the official book that AVID (the company behind Pro Tools) distributes, called Pro Tools 101: Pro Tools Fundamentals I.

Pro Tools 101 Book

101This very comprehensive book that is actually the official Pro Tools 101 course support material covers everything from the program’s history to setting up sessions, file structure, MIDI, recording, mixing and a whole plethora of other subjects – I wont list them all as it is a pretty huge book, 303 pages long to be exact.

It comes with a CD with exercises and sample sessions to work on and two bigger projects that complete the 101 level training.


Pro Tools Courses

As I mentioned above the book is the support material for an actual course that you can take – and there are actually several courses that you can choose from that can take you from having no idea what Pro Tools is to an expert in a very reasonable amount of time. Click here to take a look at the full list of courses you can take that are offered by AVID.

At the end of each course, you also receive a certificate of completion. Just to get an idea, the two fundamental courses, Pro Tools 101 and Pro Tools 110 will be more than sufficient for basically everyone that will continuously work with the program as they lay a very vast foundation. However, if you feel that you need more, there are 200 and 300 level courses that you can take to complete your learning.

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The World Wide Web

There are so many amazing free resources spread across the web that can help you learn Pro Tools that I would not know where to start if I was making a list – you are reading through one right now. Like our website, there are tons of blogs, sites and YouTube channels that are extraordinarily well structured and provide with correct and valuable information. Among the very useful articles on our website there are a lot of things that a beginner might be interested in such as:


Pro Tools Hardware

pro tools hardwareApart from all the knowledge you need to learn in order to use the DAW like the pro’s do, you will also need specific hardware in order to build a Pro Tools setup that works correctly.

In the most minimal set-up you will need a desktop computer or a laptop that corresponds to at least the minimum specifications the program requires to operate, a set of monitors/ speakers/ headphones and an audio interface. In order to plan for building your setup I recommend doing some tedious research – we have some great articles to guide you through the process right here on our website:

Apart from these essentials, there are a lot of peripheral hardware than can facilitate your workflow greatly. Read all about it here:


Final Thoughts

Learning Pro Tools takes time, some people need more time, some less depending on their previous experience with a DAW. Nevertheless, do not get discouraged as there are so many resources out there that you can master this very powerful tool in no time if you have a little patience and willingness to learn.