What the Pro Booth is for

The ordinary booth is built around one voice over one song, which is the right shape for singing along to something you have just made. It is the wrong shape for a musician, who wants a lead, a double, a harmony, a guitar recorded on a phone and a part they generated — each with its own level, its own place in time, its own mute and solo.

What it deliberately is not is a digital audio workstation. There is no automation and no bus routing, and drawing knobs that do nothing would be worse than leaving them out. Everything on the screen is real: every fader, every mute and every offset is in the file that comes out the other end.

Naming your tracks

Every lane has a name field with the instrument names in it as a hint. Use it. Eleven lanes called Take 1 to Take 11 is a session you cannot work in, and the name goes into the file when you download a lane as MIDI as well.

Where a lane changes

The blue triangle in a lane’s gutter listens to that lane and marks where the music turns over — a section, a key, a new instrument coming in. The marks appear along the foot of its block with a line down to the exact moment. It costs nothing and nothing is sent anywhere: the measuring happens on your own device.

Taking a sound to another project

Each lane has a Take this lane away menu with a WAV and a MIDI in it. The WAV is the sound as you cut it, through its amp — the level and the pan belong to this song’s balance and do not travel with it. The MIDI is the notes, and the menu tells you which of two kinds you are getting: a lane the booth built from a hum carries the notes it was built from, so its MIDI is exact. Anything else has to be listened to, one line at a time, so a chord comes out as a single note. Use it for a bass, a melody or a hummed beat, and not for a full mix.