This is a little bigger than just plain ardour question but I am wondering about setting up a editing system.
For example now I have ardour and I am using zynaddsub to get sounds, that’s nice.
What are the other essential parts of a music production system?
I think there needs a compressor. Next what about something to make beats like the drum, kick, snare and high hat what’s the tool that I can use to create that part?
Also what else? I don’t want 101 synths I would like to get 1 of each component to put together a track.
This question might seem a bit vague but that’s because I don’t know the names of all the parts of the music production workflow and when I search I just get a lot of advertising about what’s the best.
A compressor is not needed on everything, only where you need to control the dynamic range of a track. If you’re not sure what I mean by this, you should probably read up about what a compressor is/does. http://www.attackmagazine.com/technique/tutorials/how-compression-works-in-mix/
There is a compressor in the CALF plugin pack which is very good.
The other thing you might want to get is a proper audio interface so that you can use a microphone to record any sounds you would like.
You are asking an extremely general question to which there is no simple answer. For one thing you need to think about the type of music you want to produce and how you want to produce it (with recording of live instruments vs using sampler/synths, for example). I would suggest reading a book about music production or using google to find the innumerable websites dealing with mixing and music production. You might start by looking at the material listed in the Support section of this website. Another good site for Linux music production is: http://libremusicproduction.com/
If you want to explore what software is a available and what it does, then it might be easier to just download a Linux distro that is focused on audio production. It will have many of the tools already installed and configured.
One popular distro that is often mentioned here on the forums is KXStudio: http://kxstudio.linuxaudio.org/index.php
Depending on your needs UbuntuStudio might also be worth trying. Some people love it and some hate. It has served me well because I mainly use Ardour and nothing else: http://ubuntustudio.org/
What tools you need depends on what kind of music you are planning to create. For Hiphop you probably need a looper, drum machine, good drum samples, a synth, etc. For acoustic music you need just your acoustic instruments, mics, ardour, eq and compressor plugins for ardour and not much else. If you tell us more about what kind of music you want to create we might be able to point you to the right direction.
I usually play some retro rock / heavy and my tools for this are:
A guitar (obviously
Physical effects processor for the guitar: Line 6 PodXT Live
A mic for the vocals: Rode NT2 A
A physical drum machine: Alesis SR18
Sound Card: Alesis IO4
The style of music I play does not need much processing. I use a eq on vocals, guitars, bass and drums, a compressor and reverb for the vocals. I usually use Tap equalizer, SWH (Steve Harris) SC4 compressor and Invada ER Reverb.
