How to use your iPad like a Sound Designer pro!

If you are a follower of my Instagram you know that I've recently found out how to utilize my iPad to work as an amazing tool for using AudioSuite plugins and various other Pro Tools functions that I use very regularly to help with my creative workflow. I'm going to outline a step by step guide as to how you can setup your iPad the same way I have!

Step 1.

Head over to AVID's website to download and install the latest EUCON and Eucontrol programs.

Step 2.

You NEED to purchase Keyboard Maestro in order to make all of this work. Keyboard Maestro is a macro program where you can program various tasks for practically anything you can think of on your computer. Coming in at $35, it's a steal for what it can do.

Step 3.

Once you get the latest drivers/apps installed for EUCON, Eucontrol, PT|Control app (iPad) and Keyboard Maestro; go ahead and open Keyboard Maestro.

Click on the + button in the lower left hand corner. This will create a new folder where all of your new macros for Pro Tools will live in. As you can see in the picture above, I have a folder named "Pro Tools iPad control Plugins."

Step 4.

Once you've created your parent folder, go ahead and press the + button as seen in the picture above. This will create a New Untitled Macro.

Step 5.

From here it's important to remember to name the macro that you intend to use within Pro Tools (i.e. Crystallizer, Decapitator etc.). Go ahead and click the green + button labeled "New Trigger" and select "Hot Key Trigger" within the menu prompt.

Step 6.

Directly after pressing "Hot Key Trigger" in Step 5, you'll need to key press whatever keys you want to trigger the macro you're creating (i.e. Ctrl + CMD + * or Ctrl + CMD + / etc.)

Step 7.

From here we need to tell the macro what action we want it to perform. Go ahead and click the green + button labeled "New Action." This will prompt a menu where you can select what action you'd like this macro to do. We'll be wanting our macro to trigger from a Menu Item. On the Actions menu, Search or Scroll down to select "Select or Show a Menu Item."

Step 8.

Now that we've selected what action we want this macro to perform, we need to direct it to the program where the macro will take place. Click "Select menu in" and a dropdown menu will appear where you can select Pro Tools as the target application.

Step 9.

From here you'll need to fill out the Menu Title, Submenu and Menu Item. The Menu Title will always be AudioSuite for our purposes. The Submenu is whatever manufacturer plugin you wish to pick from. And the Menu Item is the specific plugin of your choice from that manufacturer.

Something to note, you need to make sure your plugin menu is displaying by category and manufacturer. This can be changed in Pro Tools by going to Setup > Preferences > Display.

Step 10.

After you've repeated steps 3 - 9 your macros should start to look like the picture above. I made sure that the macros I created weren't overlapping with any other Pro Tools functions or quick keys.

After you're all finished creating your macros make sure you press the checkmark in the lower left hand corner and there's a big checkmark in the upper right hand corner (pictured above). Pressing this enables/disables whichever folder you have selected under "Groups." This took me about 25 minutes to figure out so please make sure this simple mistake isn't made!

It will look like this if your folder is disabled:

Step 11.

Now it's time to direct all of the macros we've created to EuControl. Go ahead and open EuControl and navigate to EuControl Settings.

Step 12.

In EuControl Settings navigate to the Soft Keys. Click "Section" and a drop down menu will appear where you'll select "Control Touchscreen."

Step 13.

Here we'll need to select Page 148 which is where the user custom Soft Key pages start.

Step 14.

Now go ahead and click "Command."

This is where we'll be bringing all of our macros we created in Keyboard Maestro to speak with EuControl. Within this menu you need to add in the exact key command(s) you setup in Keyboard Maestro. I'll post a few more pictures for examples:

Continue adding each key command within the "Command" menu for each Soft Key with the macros you created within Keyboard Maestro. During this step it's nice to have Keyboard Maestro open so you can reference what key command you made so it matches exactly within EuControl.

Step 15.

You can add an icon in each Soft Key, adjust the Font and background Color. I color coded my Soft Keys to similar manufacturer and if a plugin was specific to mono or stereo. Increasing the font size within EuControl makes it look terrible, but it translates nicely on the iPad:

And that's a wrap! I hope that this can help some of you out there that are looking to incorporate your iPad into your workflow by having these custom Soft Keys setup. It takes awhile to set all of this up, but once you have it working correctly you'll wonder how you ever worked without it!

Special thanks to Joe Cavers over at Formosa Interactive for showing me how to set all of this up!