The Glide To command lets you change any automation parameter’s value over the duration of your edit selection — and it will work over multiple parameters, giving you a powerful ‘morphing’ tool.
Mix automation isn’t just about fixing mistakes. It can also be a powerful creative tool!
With so many plug‑ins and virtual instruments competing for attention in our DAWs, it’s possible to underestimate the attention‑grabbing potential of simple mix automation. Changes in level, pan position or space can be every bit as potent as any processing. Pro Tools’ automation system offers a degree of precision and flexibility that allows these basic mix parameters to become creative devices in their own right.
A recent example came from an experiment I auditioned for a short promo with one of the bands I play in. During a recording session in our tiny rehearsal space, I’d set up a couple of cameras to capture the session, mainly to create some social media footage. After completing the stereo mix and sync’ing it with one camera angle, I began to wonder whether I could recreate the sense of being in the room by building an Atmos binaural mix instead.
The idea was to have the listener’s perspective change with the camera, as though turning their head in the space. There are immersive formats such as Ambisonics and other VR workflows that handle that kind of spatial movement elegantly, but as I’d already started an Atmos mix, it made sense to stay there. The challenge was to move each instrument’s pan position across the soundfield to match the new visual angle, and Pro Tools’ Glide To automation feature turned out to be the most direct and elegant way to do it. In this month’s article we’ll examine this and the related Write to and Trim To features of the Pro Tools automation system.
While this particular experiment took place in a Dolby Atmos session, Glide To automation with pan data is just as useful in a conventional stereo mix. It’s an efficient way to manage movement, whatever the delivery format.
Gliding High
There are essentially two contrasting approaches to creating automation in Pro Tools. The first is to write automation in real time, moving controls on a surface or in the user interface. The second approach is to click automation points in with the mouse. This is very precise when you know exactly what you want, but it removes the immediacy of hearing parameter changes as you make them.
The Trim To and Glide To functions sit neatly between these two extremes. They provide a way to change existing automation values to new, exact levels or positions without having to re‑record automation or manually redraw curves. In that sense, they act as a kind of halfway house between the two, retaining the precision of drawn automation, but with the speed of a real‑time workflow.
Because of the large number of parameters involved, the Dolby Atmos pan example shows very clearly where Glide To comes into its own, but the technique applies to any form of automation in Pro Tools. Glide To automatically creates a straight‑line change between a starting and an ending automation value across an edit selection.
To use it, the automation playlist in question must already contain some active automation. A quick way to generate those starting values is to use Write To All Enabled (Option+Command+/ on Mac, Alt+Control+/ on Windows), which writes a breakpoint for every automation type currently enabled on the selected track. I often use this as a fast way to establish a baseline automation state before setting up a glide.
Once that’s done, the process is simple. Make an edit selection that defines the duration of the transition. Move the parameter or parameters to their desired end positions, then choose the appropriate command from Edit / Automation / Glide To. For pan automation specifically, the Glide Pan Only command is particularly handy, though Glide To Current and Glide To All Enabled are also available depending on what you want to affect.
Assuming you have the correct automation playlist visible, you’ll see Pro Tools automatically insert breakpoints at the start and end of your selection, joined by a linear ramp between the two. You could of course draw in a single transition manually in very little time, but the real advantage here is that Glide To can be applied across multiple parameters simultaneously, greatly simplifying the process of creating complex, multi‑parameter moves.
Some plug‑ins include their own morphing features, allowing users to transition smoothly between two sets of values, but Glide To brings that same capability to any plug‑in.
Mighty Morphing Pan Arranger
Of course, pan automation is only one area where Glide To can be used creatively. Another excellent application is with plug‑in parameters. Some plug‑ins include their own morphing features, allowing users to transition smoothly between two sets of values, but Glide To brings that same capability to any plug‑in.
To set this up, first automation‑enable every parameter you want to include in the glide. The quickest way is to enable all the plug‑in parameters by holding Command+Option+Control (Control+Alt+Start on Windows) and clicking the Auto button at the top of the plug‑in window. Next, as with any other use of Glide To, create some automation data on the track to glide from.
From here, the process mirrors the pan example. Create an edit selection defining the duration of the transition, adjust the enabled parameters to their destination values, and execute a Glide To command. On playback, you’ll hear the plug‑in move smoothly from the initial settings to the new ones, in much the same way as a built‑in morph function.
This approach can be musically powerful. Filters and EQs are natural candidates, lending themselves to evolving tonal changes, but time‑based effects such as reverbs and delays can also produce striking results. Glide To can turn any plug‑in into a potential morphing processor.
The Write Stuff
So far, we’ve seen how Glide To can create smooth transitions between automation states, provided some underlying data exists. It’s an edit‑selection‑based process, and several other automation functions in Pro Tools work in a similar way. Among the most useful of these are the Write To commands, which allow you to set and commit new static automation values quickly across a defined time range.
The Write To option is a great way to establish different balances for different sections of your song.
There are two main variants: Write To Current and Write To All Enabled. Both follow the same principle as Glide To, in that they apply changes across an edit selection on the timeline rather than relying on real‑time writing.
A typical example would be establishing static balances between song sections. Suppose you want the guitars slightly lower and the bass a little higher in verse 2. With the Volume automation playlists visible for the relevant tracks, make an edit selection covering that section, adjust your faders to the desired levels, and choose Edit / Automation / Write To Current (Command+/ on Mac, Control+/ on Windows). Pro Tools will automatically create breakpoints at the start and end of the selection, writing the new static levels across that range. If you want to do this during playback, so you can hear the results, suspend automation in the Automation window.
Working this way, you can move methodically through a song, section by section, setting up mix balances before doing finer automation passes later. It’s a particularly efficient way to sketch out a static mix structure that you can then refine in real time.
The companion command, Write To All Enabled (Command+Option+/ on Mac, Control+Alt+/ on Windows) extends this concept by applying multiple parameters at once; for example, writing both level and pan automation simultaneously, or committing plug‑in settings as well. For users comfortable with the workflow, it’s one of the fastest methods available for establishing initial automation passes down the timeline.
Trim To
Another feature tucked away in the Automation section of the Edit menu is Trim To, a command that complements the Glide To and Write To functions. Most Pro Tools users associate trimming automation with Trim Automation mode, available in the higher tiers of the software. In that mode, faders turn gold to indicate a secondary ‘trim’ layer sitting above your standard automation. You can offset existing moves up or down and later coalesce these trim adjustments into the main automation playlist.
However, this workflow isn’t available in all versions of Pro Tools (it’s missing from Pro Tools Intro, for example). Many users thus resort to manually trimming automation values using the Trimmer tool in the Edit window. While this works well for small adjustments, the Trim To command is faster and more elegant.
Trim To performs a relative offset to the automation data within an edit selection, raising or lowering existing values without overwriting their contour. The command can be applied to multiple automation playlists, across multiple tracks, and to different parameter types at once. In practice, this means you can rebalance a group of tracks or a combination of parameters such as volume, pan, and send level in a single operation.
This approach offers much of the flexibility of Trim Automation mode without its additional setup or the need to coalesce layers afterwards. It’s ideal when you simply want to nudge existing automation up or down globally while preserving the detailed work underneath.
Taken together, these Trim To, Write To, and Glide To commands form a powerful set of edit‑selection‑based tools that streamline automation in Pro Tools. They’re easy to overlook, tucked away in a relatively obscure corner of the Edit menu, but they can transform how efficiently you approach both creative and corrective automation tasks.
As for the perspective‑shifting Atmos mix... Terrible idea. It didn’t work at all. However, because of the Glide To feature it only took a couple of minutes to find out that I was barking up a creative dead end.