DAW Basics

This covers the basic functionality of most professional DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) software. It's probably nothing new to anyone already making productions, although some sections might be interesting. This is a quick overview for the noobs.

Timeline View

The default window/view your DAW will display should be the timeline view, also called the transport. This consists of a big empty box (called the timeline) with numbers running along the x axis, either above or below. These numbers indicate the time in terms of measures and/or minutes and seconds - it is literally the timeline for the project. The y axis is divided into rows called tracks, covered below. Each track usually consists of a small track control panel to the left of the timeline. Each track can have multiple blocks or events of audio or MIDI data, as well as envelopes. The events (audio, MIDI) look like rectangles inside the track's row in the timeline, spanning whatever time they consume. Envelopes operate in parallel to the audio/MIDI data, and usually appear as sub-rows under each track row but can be collapsed/hidden inside the track row.

The timeline is usually adjustible, so that you can zoom in/out for either the x or y axis. Zooming out allows you to see a greater portion of your project. For instance, zooming out on the x axis means the amount of time visible inside the timeline gets larger, while the events gets smaller horizontally. Zooming out on the y axis means more tracks are visible, but the control panels and events shrink vertically. In contrast, zooming in allows you to see greater detail per track, making it easier to find audio or MIDI events and edit tracks.

Transport Controller

The timeline may have built in controls, or they may appear in a separate window that can be moved around the screen or hidden. These controls are collectively referred to as the transport controls or simply transport (although sometimes the timeline window is also called the transport). This has standard controls like jump back, rewind, play/pause, record, stop, fast forward, and jump forward. It may have additional features or displays, such as the HH:MM:SS marker for the current point in time selected in the timeline.

Timeline Cursor

The timeline has a cursor that typically appears as a small arrow above and/or a vertical line on top of the timeline, indicating the current place in time. When playing back the project, you'll see it move from left to right. The cursor can be moved using the timeline controller mentioned above. Typically it can also be moved by keyboard buttons and shortcuts, as well as by clicking in the numbered timeline above the timeline window.

Timeline Selection

Click-dragging in the timeline above the track window selects a span of time, often called a region. This selection can be looped, bounced, or processed independently of the rest of the project.

Tracks

Tracks are a holdover from the days of multi-track tape, where each instrument could be recorded (or tracked) indpendently. This allowed flexibility to process each track before mixing them all down into the final stereo or mono mix. Tracks in a modern DAW are much more flexible and aren't devoted to recording audio. For example, a track can contain MIDI data, which is sent to virtual instrument to generate audio. The typical types of tracks allowed by a DAW include:

• Audio (Mono)
• Audio (Stereo)
• MIDI
• Virtual Instrument
• Group Track
• Adjustment

Tracks typically have a control panel with the features below. Some DAW's display limited control panels for every track to the left of the workspace. Others require highlighting or double-clicking the desired track to make the control panel appear.

Record Arm

The most basic feature of a track is to record arm the track. This tells the DAW to record the track when you press the record button on the timeline controller. Tracks that are not record armed will simply playback whatever audio or MIDI data they already contain instead of recording whatever data is flowing in through their specified input. You can record arm multiple tracks to simultaneously record them, even if they use different input sources.

Solo/Mute

The solo button essentially mutes all other tracks. This allows you to focus on that single track, so you can notice imperfections or edit it without the distractions of all the other tracks playing back. You can solo multiple tracks simultaneously. You can still record on any track while one or more tracks are being solo'ed.

The mute button, as expected, simply mutes playback of the track. A track can still be recorded while muted.

Input Monitoring

There is often an input monitor button per track. This sends the input stream from the audio track to the software output when the track is record armed. Essentially, what you hear before you press record is exactly what will be recorded.

Hardware interfaces generally provide a software mixer to control the hardware. This determines where each hardware input is routed in software. It also usually includes an option to enable direct or hardware monitoring of any of its inputs. This routes the audio going into that input directly to the output without having to be routed through the computer's operating system and other software. The advantage of direct monitoring is that there is minimal latency. For non-acoustic instruments that use heavy audio processing like electric guitar, this is a very good thing. Trying to play guitar but not hearing your playing until a 10th of a second or more throws off the feel and timing of the player.

When trying to set up your DAW and track inputs, hardware monitoring can be misleading. The sound from the hardware monitor might be fine, but the track you want to record that audio might be set incorrectly, so that it only records noise, the wrong audio source, or silence. Rather than trying to record a test clip, then play it back; it's often simpler to disable hardware monitoring on the interface and enable software monitoring. This may mean you are hearing more latency, and it is difficult to play in-time while recording; but it will quickly demonstrate if your track is recording correctly. What you hear from the software monitor is exactly what your recording will sound like.

When actually recording, I recommend turning off software monitoring and using your device's hardware monitoring to remove the disorienting nature of latency. If your interface has very low latency, however, the difference may be negligible. Then, software monitoring is preferable, as it makes sure you don't accidentally record a difficult part perfectly only to later find out you weren't properly set up to record it. If both hardware and software monitoring are enabled, you may get a phasy or comb-filtered type sound because both sources will be sent to output. They will be slightly out-of-sync, causing the unwanted effect. Make sure to use only one or the other.

NOTE: Modern DAW software is equipped to know what the audio latency from your input source is and time-shift the resulting recording so that you never know it existed. When recording, you should play in-time with the click track and/or other tracks.

Input/Output or Send/Receive

Each track allows input/output selection, also called send (output) and receive (input). Possible inputs/outputs are set up in your DAW settings and should correspond to your physical input/output connections on your hardware audio interface. This includes audio and MIDI I/O's. Mono tracks will allow stereo inputs (such as S/PDIF) to specify either the left or right field. Inputs/outputs can be set to other tracks or busses. For instance, most tracks by default are set to output to the master output bus. If you look at the master output bus track, its output is the physical output. This would allow you to add an effect on the master bus such as reverb that would affect the final mix of all the tracks.

Inserts

Inserts are algorithms (virtually always called plugins) that process a track's audio or MIDI events. For instance, you can apply a reverb plugin as an insert on audio track to add reverb to it. The insert functions indpendently of the track events. For example, you can change the reverb settings later without affecting the audio events in the track, or you can edit or replace the audio events without affecting the reverb settings. Each track is usually capable of having numerous inserts, which process in a serial order.

Audio

Audio clips in the workspace are typically called audio events. Each audio track may contain a number of audio events, even overlapping ones (although only one of them will playback in this case). Each event appears as a colored (or themed) rectangular box with a black or white visual representation of the audio waveform inside it.

Fade/Trim

Most DAW software provides quick ways to fade or trim audio events. A fade typically involves click dragging from top corner at the beginning or end of the audio event towards the other end. This usually creates a linear fade over that time, which is visually represented by a diagonal line on top the audio. There is often a click point in the middle of the line allowing it to be warped into a curve, changing how the fade processes. More advanced fading is typically available through a specialized fading tool.

Trimming is simpler - just click drag from the beginning or ending edge of the event, not on the corner. This will cause part of the audio to seemingly disappear. The DAW is not actually shortening the underlying audio file; only the playback inside the DAW is affected. If you click-drag the opposite direction, you'll see the trimmed audio reappear.

Level Adjustments

Similar to quickly editing fades and trims, an audio event can be click dragged from a click point at the top of the event directly at its center. This adjusts its volume, capable of quickly normalizing your events visually, regardless of their source. Each event can be edited independently, even if they reside on the same track. Further track-wide volume adjustments can then be fine-tuned in the mixer or through automation. NOTE: if your peaks are visually exceeding the event box, you likely have digital clipping in the recording. Lowering the event's level will not remove the clipping but make it less noticeable. Clipped recordings should be deleted and re-recorded with proper levels - they cannot be fixed.

Plugins

Plugins are software algorithms designed to process audio or MIDI, similar to stomp boxes or fx units. Plugins are more flexible, however, since they can be altered after the original audio recording and automated by the DAW. They are most often found as inserts for tracks. Plugins cover the same ground as most guitar effects:

• Compression/Limiting
• Noise Gating
• Distortion
• Modulation (Phaser, Flanger, Chorus, Tremelo)
• Pitch Shifting (including the infamous auto-tune)
• Delay
• Reverb

Yet others cover grounds related more strictly to audio production:

• Dithering
• Noise Reduction
• Mastering
• "Glitch" Effects (bit crushing, reverse, slice/stutter, cutoff filters)

Many plugins come with their own graphical user interface (GUI), which often resembles their real life counter-part. For example a plugin simulating a specific distortion pedal may use a visual mock-up of the pedal with virtually knobs and switches that rotate and switch via click dragging.

The term VST is often synonymous with plugin. VST stands for Virtual Studio Technology, which is one of the most popular API's for programming plugins. However, there are other types of plugins, such as Audio Units (AU), Real-time Audio Suite (RTAS), and Rack Extension (RE). For a complete list of plugin format compability with DAWs, see here. Also, a piece of VST software may be a synthesizer rather than a plugin, although these are technically called VSTi's.

Virtual Instruments

Virtual Instruments or VSTis (Virtual Studio Technology Instruments) are software algorithms that act as synthesizers or samplers. They usually take MIDI information as input and require an independent track in the workspace.

The most clear-cut application is to act standalone synthesizers, with selectable/editable waveforms, cutoff filters, resonance, and envelopes. However, their use in studios also created some strong incentives to develop complex yet simple-to-use samplers. Multi-sampling instruments at a number of different pitches and volume points and interpolating allows samplers to successfully emulate real instruments. Piano, orchestra, drum, and bass virtual instruments are exceedingly common. Orchestra VSTi's are particularly welcome, as the cost/space necessary to record an entire orchestra is far beyond the budget of most productions.

MIDI

Like audio, DAW's feature MIDI tracks and events. MIDI events are blocks of classical musical notation, with each note being described by pitch, duration, and velocity. Additional data such as pitch bend or modulation can also be recorded.

MIDI input is often assisted by a piece of hardware called a MIDI controller. This typically has at least a small keyboard and pitch and mod wheels. It may also include vertical sliders, drum pads, knobs, a ribbon controller, a touchpad, or other specialized controls.

MIDI events can be recorded from a midi controller (or the compuer keyboard acting like a keyboard (although this approach will not capture note velocity)).

MIDI can also be edited directly inside the DAW's (or an external) MIDI editor software. This typically appears as classical musical notation with a 5-line staff and a clef and the notes taking whole, half, quarter, etc. form. It can also appear as a piano roll grid where the y axis appears like a piano keyboard turned sideways. Each row corresponds to a specific note and each column is a unit of time. Notes appear as rectangular blocks (similar to events in the DAW workspace), whose length indicates the note duration. There may also be a specialized piano roll for drum editing, where notes appear as small diamonds, since duration is meaningless. Below the grid is often a small view for velocity, representing how strongly each note is struck. Click dragging is used to select multiple notes, which can then have their pitch, timeline location, duration, and velocity altered at the same time.

Quantization

Most DAWs feature quanization of time, in terms of tempo, attempting to keep everything lined up with the beat. This essentially means that timeline selections and MIDI data are snapped to the nearest unit of time instead of being placed exactly as specified. For example, if I set quantize to the nearest quarter note and try to set the timeline cursor a bit later than the 1st beat of a measure, the DAW will actually set the cursor to directly on the 1st beat. If I click a bit after halfway in the 1st beat, it will set it to exactly the 2nd beat, which is the nearest quarter note. This affects moving and slicing audio events as well.

MIDI recordings can be quantized as well. So if I'm playing in a slight swing feel but have quantize turned on, the recorded MIDI will not reflect the swing feel - those slightly delayed notes will be snapped back to their non-swing locations. The same will happen with editing MIDI using the mouse or keyboard.

Quantization is a very useful feature to make sure everything lines up to the beat, but it can occasionally be too rigid. In this case you can decrease the size of each quantized block, for example switching from quarter notes to eighth notes. Or if you need a tuplet (such as a triplet), there are options to quantize in terms of fractions of the beat, like 3:2 (common triplet) or 5:4 (complex tuplet). When you are dealing with audio, quantize may actually prevent you from getting an event to line up directly on the beat. For instance, consider a sample of a jet sound then an explosion. You want the explosion to line up on the beat, but the jet sound doesn't fit perfectly into your project tempo. So quantize is lining up the beginning of the jet sound instead of the explosion, and the explosion never lines up with the beat. Here's a case where it's best to turn off quantize and do what you need to do, then turn it back on.

DAWs often have features to automatically create timing offsets on MIDI data. So for instance, you can take a straight on-beat MIDI event and choose a swing-feel feature, then adjust the lag of every note that occurs on the 2 and 4 beats. There are also randomize features to "humanize" virtual drums.

Automation

Automation is a way to automatically control over some editable parameter. This is usually done using an automation track, which is often tied directly to an audio or MIDI track. The automation track uses an envelope to control the parameter, which is essentially a series of points with varying magnitude connected by interpolating lines. For example, I can create an automation track as a child of my audio track with an envolope that has a starting point of 0 and an end point of 100% that controls the track volume. When I playback my track, the audio will start inaudibly low and gradually get louder and louder until it hits max volume when the audio ends.

Of course, automation can do far more than control volume. It can do panning sweeps, swift audio drop-outs (stutter-type effect), and complex fades. And this is just when controlling the track's basic parameters. It can also control parameters of plugins or virtual instruments. For instance, it can control the amount of reverb, create complex pitch shifting patterns, create complex cutoff filter movements, etc.

Automation events can be manually edited or recorded like MIDI. Single automation events can control multiple parameters, or multiple envelopes can control the same parameter. The sky is the limit. Just be sure to stop tinkering at some point and finalize that track before you die!

Mixing Board

Some DAWs feature a mixing board window that can be viewed at the same time as the timeline; others have a dedicated view. This looks like a typical tangible mixing board, with all the tracks laid out side by side with vertical sliders to view and edit their levels. This is most useful for balancing the volumes of the multiple tracks, but can also quickly get to the tracks' inserts, panning, or other features accessible from their control panels.

Panning

Each track typically features panning, which shifts the audio to be more prominent in one stereo field vs. the other. This is useful to create a 3-D effect. For instance, individual drums are often panned differently to give a greater feeling of separation and width. Guitars are often double-tracked and each track is panned in opposite directions, making the guitars sound bigger and wider but not necessarily disparate. Many stereo effects, such as reverb, vary their left/right output to create a 3-D illusion; and panning them full left/right eliminates the effect.

NOTE: When it comes to stereo tracks, panning is not the same thing as balance, typically found on consumer stereo devices. Balance simply adjusts the volume of the left field vs. right field, whereas panning "pushes" the right field into the left when panning to the left and vice versa. In other words, balance full left simply mutes the right field. Panning full left means that the original left and right fields are equally present in the left field while the right field now contains no sound.

Setting	Balance L	Balance R	Pan L	Pan R
Center	100% L	100% R	100% L	100% R
50% L	100% L	50% R	100% L + 50% R	50% R
75% L	100% L	25% R	100% L + 75% R	25% R
100% L	100% L	0% R	100% L + 100% R	0% R

Looping

The timeline controller features a button that looks like a U laid sideways, or an arrow that turns around and points backwards. This button enables looping. With looping enabled, whatever section of the timeline is selected will loop indefinitely. When playback reaches the end of the selection, it automatically jumps back to the beginning of the selection. Playback can start before the selection, but will start looping once it reaches the timeline selection.

Looping is a good way to mix or edit an individual track, so you can listen to playback as you edit without having to keep jumping back to the timeline controller to play the appropriate part of the project.

Bounce/Render

When you playback your project, the DAW software must process each track, with all its required audio synthesis, plugin processing, panning, volume, fades, trims, and automation, as well as mixing all the resulting audio down to stereo in real time. As you start adding more and more tracks and effects, this begins to take its toll on system resources. If the load exceeds the CPU's ability to process in real time, playback will stutter, lag, or otherwise experience undesirable output.

The solution to this problem is to buy a new computer. ...Just kidding, you need to bounce or render smaller parts of your project. Bouncing is recording playback to an output file or a new track. This is how you will get the final .wav or .mp3 file from your DAW to distribute to your millions of adoring fans. But it is also useful to get to that point where your project becomes so big and taxing that it becomes difficult to impossible to keep adding parts or editing. For example, let's say you want to add one more guitar track, but this causes your DAW to reach the CPU limit. You have a virtual instrument track for drums with a lot of reverb and some other effects that takes up a lot of CPU, but you know it's finalized. So you can bounce just that track down to an audio file then replace it in your project. Now your computer only needs to playback audio to get drums in the mix instead of synthesizing and processing the sound. This frees up enough CPU to add at least 1 additional guitar track.

Tempo

Tempo is typically handled one of two ways, selectable by the user. Either the tempo can be set to fixed at a user-specified bpm or the tempo is set by the tempo track. Fixed is simple - just set it and go. The problem is that your song cannot change tempo at any point, which is common for intro's and outro's to emphasize the build-up or climax of the song.

The tempo track looks identical to any other automation track, but it is tied firmly to tempo. The same way you edit any other automation track you would edit the tempo track. So for instance you can set the initial tempo to 60 bpm, which ramps up to 120 bpm.

Be wary of changing the tempo once you have laid down audio tracks. MIDI data doesn't need to change, as it is only tied to tempo and not real-time. Audio, however, is fixed to a length of real-time. To time-shift it to fit different lengths of time must increase or decrease the pitch of the audio. Then to revert it to its original pitch requires using pitch-shifters, which typically leave noticeable artifacts.