I have decided to revert back to Jitsi. The Odysee live stream didn’t go as well as I hoped. People couldn’t leave messages unless they had an Odysee account, and in the end I didn’t manage to save the live stream. I know the latter problem is my own fault but for the sake of simplicity I’m reverting back to Jitsi.
Thus, for the time being, the appointment should be:
Hi, I am another so far silent reader, who would really love to see the tracker interface in Ardour.
Unfortunately I can’t make to the Jitsi meetings most of the time, but since you were mentioning recordings: Are these available somewhere to watch later or did I get it wrong. From skimming through the thread I found the one video from end of January, but nothing newer. I didn’t look very thoroughly though, my apologies, but I would be glad if someone could (re)post the link to past recordings in case they do exist.
Hello, I am pleased to announce I have finally fixed the biggest remaining feature of the Tracker Editor which is the full support of automation of plugins.
I thought it would take months, it took years. The reason it took so long, beside the fact that I have little time to work on this project, is that it required a cascade of changes up to almost the very heart of the code base. The good part is that it has resulted in a nicer code. Yet, if I had known it would take so long I might have given up thinking “after a few years, an AI will probably be able to write that code in an instant, so why bother”. Well, I don’t think an AI can write that code today, let alone in an instant, so it was good to believe that it would take a few months.
So, the Ardour Tracker Editor is getting close to what I consider “The Tracker of my Dreams”, but that isn’t to say that there is nothing left to do (and that I do not need help), quite the contrary. Here is a sample of what remains to be done:
Fix limitation of max 8 columns for notes and automation. This limitation has never been a problem for me because it is a per track limit, which I have never reached. Nonetheless it should be addressed, especially for those into the occult art of black MIDI magic.
Add shortcut keys. Except for entering notes and automation, everything else is done with the mouse, this is not the tracker way! Changing octave, step size, etc, should have shortcut keys.
Optimize! It should be as responsive as Protracker running on an Amiga, which is far from the case. Fortunately I have refactored much of the code to facilitate such optimizations.
Improve stability. Well, it is stable for me but as soon as you guys use it, you are probably going to crash it.
Implement and fix the unknown unknowns. That, as everyone knows, or perhaps doesn’t know, is the most consuming part.
I believe the code is getting close to be mergeable upstream. I need to do more testing and cleaning before that. In the meantime, if you wish to compile it you may follow the instructions below
I will keep you up to date on the progress. Now, go track some music!
Trackers are cool. It’s invaluable to have a set of different good tools to get things done. Thanks for your great work, I saw the video and really look forward to the addition!
Just wanted to provide some updates. I consider that I have reached a major milestone in the development of the Ardour Tracker Editor, and I now need to thoroughly test it before I allow myself to submit it to the Ardour team. To that end, and because it has been a major motivator for me to make music, I have resurrected the Libre Music Challenge and you are of course very welcome to participate.
After this period of testing and fixing, I intend to create a pull request with the hope to get it merged upstream. Then there will still be a bunch of work needed for polishing and optimizing.
Hey Nil,
i’m glad to hear back from you. Great job on the effort, please let us know how can we contribute - if there is a way. Thanks!
Looking forward to it.
Thanks, dspasic, in terms of help, I think testing it and reporting bugs and crashes would be super helpful.
User experience is less important as this stage because it has not been the focus so far, for instance there are almost no shortcut keys, it is slow, lacks contextual menu, it is not particularly pretty, etc. I was trying to get all the functions in there first, which I think I have basically accomplished. So now it is the testing phase of these functions.