I’d like to record the drum parts for my songs with my Akai MPK Mini. The trouble is, my finger drumming sucks, so I’d like to do record the part in multiple takes (e.g., kick and snare/toms in one, cymbals in a different take). What workflow would you recommend for that?
If I try to record a second take over an existing take on the same MIDI track, the first take will be muted. One obvious solution is to include two (drum) MIDI tracks, and record each one separately but then the mixing becomes more annoying, especially when I use the fanout option, so I’d like to keep everything on one track if possible. Is there a way to merge two MIDI recordings somehow?
MIDI layers on a single track can be “opaque” (muting the ones below) or “transparent” (allowing the ones below to be played). Before Ardour 7.0, they were transparent by default, but since 7.0, are opaque by default.
You can “record over” e.g. the kick and snare part with the hi-hat part, and later turn off the “opaque” setting of the hi-hat layer in its “Gain” menu (toggle using Alt-0 by default).
I think you can restore the “transparent by default” setting, but couldn’t find an option for it in either the “Preferences” window or the session properties window.
You just need to enable “Sound On Sound” recording, in the Record-Mode pulldown menu.
Then you’ll hear the prior take (kick+snare) while you record the next one (cymbals) and the new take will be a new, transparent region atop the first one.