Avid's Pro Tools DAW has received its first update of the year. Now available to download, Pro Tools 2024.3 arrives with a range of new MIDI tools and now offers support for third-party MIDI effect plugins.
Pro Tools 2024.3 introduces the concept of MIDI Chains, a new way of routing and processing MIDI data within the DAW. As mentioned, this allows you to make use of third-party MIDI effect plugins, but also to quickly and easily create custom MIDI routings between various tracks and instruments.
Avid has implemented three new MIDI plugins in Pro Tools: Note Stack, Pitch Control and Velocity Control. Note Stack is a note generator that lets you stack up to nine notes on top of each incoming note and tweak the probability of the note generation.
Pitch Control and Velocity Control applies transformation to both pitch and velocity of incoming notes and can also be used to apply randomized processing to your melodies, chords and beats to create evolving patterns and textures.
In addition to these three plugins, Pro Tools has partnered with several plugin developers to offer bundled MIDI effects plugins to those on its Artist, Studio and Ultimate plans: these include Modalics' EON-Arp, a creative arpeggiator plugin, Audiomodern's Riffer 3, a sophisticated MIDI sequencer and automatic pattern generator, and Pitch Innovations' Groove Shaper, a rhythm generator.
The latest iteration of Pro Tools also adds support for live re-rendering in Dolby Atmos for the bundled Dolby Atmos Renderer, a tool for rendering and previewing Atmos mixes from within the DAW.
Avid's clip-based app Pro Tools Sketch has also been updated with improve drag-and-drop functionality between Sketch and Pro Tools.
Last week, Ableton released Live 12, a new version of its flagship DAW that also features an expanded array of tools for MIDI generation and transformation.
