How To Use Fade Shortcuts in Pro Tools

Pro Tools is the premier professional digital audio editing software that allows a person to manipulate, manage, and edit various digital audio tracks or scores for commercial production. This software is what the professionals in the music and film industries use. Avid Technology, the owner and developer of this software has made it possible for a normal computer user to make use of this fantastic application right on the computer, be it a Mac or a Windows based PC.

One of the key features of this particular audio editing program is the ability to fade certain portions of a musical score or audio track easily. The feature is easy to use since a keyboard shortcut is provided that will allow you to identify the portion you want to fade and apply the effect desired to that particular portion. Here is a guide that will show you how to use the fade shortcut in Pro Tools using a computer with a Mac OS.

* Run the program and load the track. Locate the Pro Tools application file and click on it to run the program. If you installed it correctly, the shortcut for the application should be found on your docklet. Once Pro Tools is running, locate the digital track that you want to edit and load it. This will open the track in a session. From here, you can do virtually any edits on the track using the tools menu you will find on top. However, since this whole tutorial is about using the keyboard shortcut provided, disregard the tool menu for now.
* Highlight the part of the track to fade. There is a selection tool icon that you will find on the tools menu. Click on that to convert the mouse cursor into a selection tool. With the selection tool, you will be able to highlight the part or portion of the track that you want to apply the fade on. With a simple click and drag on the track, you can highlight the particular part that you want to edit.
* Use the shortcut. There are actually 2 ways to apply the fade onto the highlighted portions of the track. The first way is to highlight the track portion and then click on the Edit menu. A sub menu will appear. Scroll down to the bottom and select the option labeled Fades. A sub menu will appear again with the option Create a Fade. Clicking on that will apply the fade onto the highlighted track portion.
* The second and easier way of doing it is by simply using the shortcut Apple-F. This bypasses the need to open up the Edit and Fade menu. It is important to remember and use this shortcut especially if you will be editing a lot of tracks or musical scores as you will probably be using it quite a lot.


Now, once you have created the fade, you can actually edit the curve of the fade by pressing Command-F. A window will appear which will show the curve of the fade in a graph. Just drag the curve and move it depending on your preference and how you want the fade effect applied.