Using Pro Tools with Windows 7

Got a new laptop with Windows 7. Overall Windows 7 is good. I especially like hovering over the bar at the bottom and seeing a thumbnail of the screens of the apps that are running.

But I digress. I loaded Pro Tools 8 on the laptop (I use MBox2 for interface). Pro Tools does not *officially* run on Windows 7 yet.
Indeed, when I loaded up everything, which took a good chunk of an evening and the next, Pro Tools ran chunky and unusable on the Windows 7 laptop. Uh Oh, I should have bought that iMac...

Surely this can't be right. The laptop has 6 GB RAM and dual core processor. It should be much faster than my single processor PC. Maybe it just needs some tweaking.

Windows 7 tweaking suggestions aren't posted yet. But Digidesign does have Vista optimization instructions here. Although the screens are different, they aren't different by much. The tweaks involve turning off ClearType font smoothing and setting the performance settings to give priority to background tasks rather than programs. This was surprising. I would expect that Pro Tools would want its program to have priority. But this significantly helped performance. And now it is back up and working.

You have been working on this project HOW LONG?

Welcome to Pilgrims Prog. This is a progressive rock project that I started in August of 2006 - almost three years ago. And I have been working on it (minus a six month break in early 2008) for that entire length of time.

This project started as demos for a recording project for my band. Unfortunately the band didn't like it. They thought that some of the early songs were too dark, or too much of the "devil's advocate" spin, or my demos were too extensive and would require too much work to adapt them. So it has remained as my own project.

I use Pro Tools LE version 8.

This project has turned into a series of experiments. Many of the songs started as experiments, either with a technical idea - write a song in 3/4 (Vanity Fair), or 5/4 (Gatekeeper), or in drop D (SOD) - or I got ideas from plug-ins in Pro Tools (such as the XPand intro to Dream). And I get alot of ideas from blogs like Air Users Blog, then I have to go change things. These songs have lots of flaws (such as my voice), but the flaws have taken on a life of their own and represent the sign posts of the journey. The big challenge is that I learn new things in Pro Tools or I get new plug-ins (like Ozone4) and it changes the whole feel of the song, so I have to go back and tweak the old songs.

Please keep in mind that this is a hobby. My studio is my computer room. And these songs are demos, essentially. Although it is my plan for 2010 to assemble a band to play this project live at least once.

Gatekeeper Remix

Remixed Gatekeeper, backing off the electric guitars and focusing more on acoustic, for dynamics. Added my John Petrucci MusicMan guitar witbh piezos for the acoustic in the left speaker.

Access the MP3 from the links on the right