I’m familiar with Cubase but not Ardour. In Cubase 10.5, when you copy and paste a MIDI “loop”, by default it does a deep copy. Changes to pasted children loops do not alter siblings and the parent loop.
In Ardour 6.5.0, when I copy a MIDI “loop” and paste it, by default I get a shallow or shared copy. Changes to the parent or any children affect the parent and all children of the parent.
In Cubase both behaviors are helpful. Sometimes I want a deep copy and other times I want a shared copy.
When I am copying and pasting MIDI “loops” in Ardour 6.5.0, how do I specify if I want a shared or independent copy?
You can switch between these modes in Session → Properties → Misc → MIDI region copies are independent. I think it’s good to click “Use these settings as defaults” button here.
As I see in default shortcuts manual there is no shortcut to switch between those two modes and I don’t know and can you create your own shortcut like this, but I found another way.
Right click on MIDI region, hover over first option with it’s name, MIDI, and there you have two interesting options, here’s what Ardour manual says about them:
“Unlink all selected regions: Makes the selected MIDI regions independent, e.g. editing this region won’t affect any other one.
Unlink from unselected: Makes the selected MIDI regions independent from regions outside the selection, but keep the link between the selected ones.”
By default you have Shift+U shortcut to second one, but you can create shortcut to first one:
Window → Keyboard shortcuts → Editor and here you can search for “unlink”, it’s going to be in Region.