As I mentioned in the previous post and podcast, if you’re digging around in the menus with any frequency, it’s time to step back and set some shortcut keys.

Almost any task or effect you can think of can be pulled up in record time by assigning it a shortcut key. And, thankfully, you’re not very limited when it comes to what keys you can use. You can even use a MIDI controller or keyboard if you like…something advanced editors will find saves even more time. If you have left Audition alone with the default set of shortcut keys, you’re missing out!

Let’s dig around a little, and maybe get a little dirty.

To see what’s available, click “Edit” and select “Keyboard Shortcuts and MIDI Triggers”. You will notice that it’s a simple dialog: a place to save presets, a way to browse the types of actions/effects, and the area for assigning a key or controller value. As with most settings in Audition, you’re able to save a “snapshot” of your keyboard shortcuts (technically called “sets”), and switch readily and easily between any that are available to you, including reverting to the old default set if you just need to start over.

Next to “Category” is where you’ll want to start by examining your options. By default, you get a list of EVERYTHING. If you want to work from this list, that’s fine, but you are likely to overlook something. So, let’s narrow it down a bit and start with something simple. Select “Effects” from the “Category” dropdown, then un-toggle “Multitrack” and “CD View” so that only “Edit View” is depressed and rendered in light gray (indicating that it’s active). In English, this means the list of available options will be relevant only to Effects in the Edit View. Makes sense, right?

Here’s a list of all the effects you’ve got. Any third party DirectX or VST plug-ins are prefaced with their respective names. Conceivably, you can access any effect with one keystroke. Let’s say, for example, that you want to invoke the “Envelope” effect (under Effects, Amplitude and Compression, if you were to navigate the menus…however in this menu, the “Effects” part is implied). In our scenario, it’s the fifth option down. You’ll see it as “Amplitude and Compression\Envelope (process)”. Simply click it to being editing. Second, click inside the white text box under “Press a new shortcut key” just to the right”. Then, simply press “E”. At the same time you see an “E” appear in the box, you will see the list on the left side of the dialog update with your key in the “Shortcut” column. That’s all there is to it.

Now, let’s suppose you want to assign the “A” key to the “Amplify/Fade” effect, the third option in our list. If you follow the same steps, substituting and “A” where we used “E” earlier, all may look well. But, if you divert your attention to the lower-right dialog box entitled “Conflicting Keys”, you may see that there are now two commands/actions competing for the “A” key, something Audition will not allow. (If you’re working from the default preset, “A” normally changes the cursor mode to the “scrub” tool.)

If you encounter a key conflict, you have two options. You could simple select another key that doesn’t raise a conflict. Or, if the other command/action is something you never use, you could simple remove the shortcut key from it. If, for example, I decide that I want “A” to invoke the “Amplitude/Fade” effect instead of the scrub tool, it’s simple to remove the latter association. First, we’ll navigate to the scrub tool by selecting “Edit/Insert” from the “Category” dropdown, and locating “Tool: Scrub”, which is just near the bottom of the list. Highlight it, and click the “Clear” button next to where you enter the desired shortcut key. You will notice that the “A” disappears from the scrub tool command, and Audition no longer complains about a key conflict with “A”.

(The shortcuts dialog box you’re in organizes commands and actions just like the menu tree does, so it should be easy to find the analog. You switch to the scrub tool in the “Edit” menu, so that’s where it is inside this dialog box, too. Simple, right?)

This procedure is the same if you’re using a MIDI controller. Follow the same instructions, but where you’d normally enter a key on the QWERTY keyboard, simply do what you’d normally do on your MIDI controller (i.e. press a key on a digital piano). If you don’t get the desired result, you may either have the wrong device selected (”MIDI In”), or your device may not be sending the commands on the right channel (”Channel”).

If you’ve been following along, you will probably notice that next to “Set”, we’ve now got something called “[Custom]”, which means we’ve modified an earlier “snapshot” of shortcut keys. This is a nice sanity check to keep you from accidentally over-writing other sets. Once you’ve dug around a bit (remember to use the dropdown box in conjunction with the three toggle buttons), set the keys you like, and verified that there are no conflicts, you’ll want to save your new set. Next to the “Set” dropdown box, simply click “Save As…”, and give your set a new name. Once you’ve done this, it will become selected by default, and will go into effect when you click “OK” at the lower right of the dialog box.

Now What?

- Weaning yourself away from digging in the menus all the time can be a weird mental adjustment. But, give yourself a few days to get used to your shortcut keys, then make any adjustments as you go along. A week from now, you’ll think that digging in the menus is nuts, and that shortcut keys are the only way to go, trust me.

- Try and assign shortcut keys that are easily accessible by your secondary hand. That is, the hand that’s not on the mouse most of the time. I’m right handed, so making “F12″ a shortcut key seems like a lot of movement for my left hand. This is a personal thing, of course, but most of my shortcuts are concentrated and biased towards keys that my left hand can reach effortlessly. You may find that something else works better for you. If it’s faster, go with it! There aren’t any rules here. It’s about setting yourself up so that you can WORK as quickly as you THINK.

- Switching between sets is as easy as returning to this dialog box, selecting a different set from the “Set” dropdown box, and clicking “OK”. (Thinking recursively, if you’re switching back and forth a lot, then you can even set your own shortcut key to bring up this dialog box! The default, though, is Alt and “K”, though I’ve never changed it personally.)

- You’ll want to do a back-up of all your presets, including your shortcut key sets, on a regular basis. I have written an easy-to-understand tutorial on how to do this. There is nothing worse than getting used to settings over a period of months, then losing them and having to re-create them. Plus, you may want to take them with you if you’re using multiple computers for editing (desktop, laptop, etc). This is easily accomplished and explained fully in the tutorial.