Ardour: looping, time changing, velocity editing, cue editing, midi controllers and other stuff

Getting Stuff Done How do I .... ?
#1

Hi,

this is my first post in Ardour forum so hi to all!!
I’m a hobbyst musicians since time, used fruity loops, reason, cubase, ableton in the past.
I took one year to build my linux music pc with archlinux and all tweaks for law latency such as realtime kernel and other configuration.
I saw many video from Unfa and other guys about Ardour and i decided to start using it.
I wrote an album using audacity as a Daw in the meantime but it was too limited and i was attracted to using linux to make my music.

So now i’m using Ardour with pipewire. I read on the forum to understand how to record a jack audio transport from hydrogen or to load a Carla rack inside Ardour. Easy and works like a charm! Thanks so much at developers.

I haven’t so much experience with ardour and can’t understand somethings about gui and features.

I can start with questions to avoid multiple forum questions:

  • I read the manual but can’t understand something
    Inside the timeline can i create a track that loops 2 or 4 times on a wav clip while the other tracks go forward? n this way i havew not to duplicate my loop for the entire song.

  • Can i select different regions and change time of my song? I read something about it in the forum but don’t understand if this feature is available. I’d like to start my song for example in 100bpm in 4/4 then change it to 120 in 6/8 then return to 100 and 4/4

  • There some Daws that show the velocity and pan of single midi note in the base section of the daw. It is more comfortable if you have to edit many notes. In ardour i find only to edit a single note? Is there some other option?

  • I discovered this cue feature, like other Daws, and it’s amazing. How can i map the clips selected in the different tracks and choose whatever start from A then go to D and how can i start them all together?

  • I watched some videos from reaper, for example, with people playing guitar as a midi controller. I’d like to user also guitar to write single note in midi track and play as vst or lv2 plugin as i want. Is it possible in ardour?

I have some xruns vith VCV rack. Have you experienced it?

Thanks and sorry for these many questions? If someone think is better to split them in single queries i will do it.

Thanks for this Daw!
Bye
Gabriele

#2

In order:

  1. you’d need to use the cue page for that, or just duplicate regions.

  2. The Ardour Manual - Tempo and Time Signature

  3. Velocity: The Ardour Manual - Editing Velocity
    Pan: at the MIDI level this is just a MIDI CC controller, so you click on the A button in the track header and make it visible as an “automation lane”.
    Pan: at the audio level, this is just automation, you select it as for MIDI CC automation.
    The Ardour Manual - Automation Lanes

  4. Please see the manual and some of the videos on our Ardour Youtube channel. There are also some from Harrison for Mixbus which apply 100% to Ardour as well. There will be more at some point but not clear when. Maybe start here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQYT5f1Z6FQ or a longer intro here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mC8p8FVY0Z4

  5. From ardour’s perspective, a MIDI controller is a MIDI controller, we don’t care what type of MIDI controller it is. Could be your guitar, a keyboard, a pad controller, a Haaken continuum, whatever. If you have a MIDI track connected to the MIDI device, and the device sends MIDI notes, Ardour can record them.

#3

This can be done in Reaper using a plugin called ReaTune. If you can find an equivalent plugin that works with Ardour, then you could do the same.

The nearest I know of is x42 Auto Tune, but this doesn’t convert the signal to MIDI, so it won’t do what you need.

@x42 this might be an interesting addition to the plugin at some point.

Cheers,

Keith

#4

I thought guitarix has an audio-to-MIDI plugin, but I may be confusing projects.
There is MIDIGuitar-LV2. Someone also reported getting JamOrigin Windows plugin to work with WINE, but running Windows plugins on Linux always seems hit-or-miss.

#5

Hi to all,

and thanks fro your response.

@paul thanks for your suggestions. I’m studying the manual.
I honestly don’t find some things very immediate. I letot your post about using the word intuitive and the difficulties with a new interface. I agree in part, usability is my area of expertise and I work with developers on a daily basis. I understand what it means and really thank you for making this product free for linux (you deserve donations!). I think some things could be worked on, if you like I can contribute.

@Majik @ccaudle
Thanks for your response. I installed and configured Guitar-midi lv2 plugin. It wors well but only at 256 frames for the moment.
The only thing i need to get familiar with ardoure routing. I insert in a midi track the guitar plugin zynaddsubfx and then fader to master.
But can’t really figured out how to work. Then i read the readme of guitar midi plugin and then i understand. With qpwgraph, pipewire gui, i routed the input 2 of my focusrite directly to the ardour input and…it works :slight_smile:
The plugin have some problems with chords progression but is almost accurate with single notes also if you try a fast solo.

Thanks so much!
Bye

Ps: i also installed x42, zam plugins and other lv2. I’m also using last version of wine and yabridge to use vst plugins. I prefer to use only lv2 plugins but sometimes there are specific windows vst3 plugins that are still better, so only in extreme case i will use them!
Bye

#6

I use a SONUUSD G2M Universal MIDI Converter. It was pretty cheap, can’t remember the price. It works fairly well if you play single notes clearly.