I saw a video somewhere or somebody doing this in some other DAW. He hit record in a loop, then laid down the kick, then built on snare and cymbals afterwards.
Can you do this in ardour? This is recording MIDI notes I mean … so I suppose this could just as well be somebody recording the left and right hand of a piano into the same track in a sort of loop.
Ardour does not “add stuff” to existing MIDI regions when you record “over” then. Consequently, this style of loop recording will appear to work, but you will actually have 1 region per loop iteration, which you’d need to flatten/consolidate after the fact.
Could this type of MIDI workflow be implemented within Ardour’s current architectural design, or is it a non-starter for technical reasons? If it isn’t a feasible future feature, what does the consolidation of MIDI tracks to put the layered pieces together entail? Is there a page in the manual I should be slapped upside the head with via a cold link with no commentary other than a RTFM caption? Lay it on me.
Being a stringed player since childhood, I do very little MIDI work, but the idea of looping a MIDI region and recording layers atop one another live would interest me, precisely for percussion (i.e. drums and piano) where my understanding of those instruments exceeds my performance chops.
I would suggest a sequencer for this. Whilst Ardour does support MIDI, it doesn’t have a classic sequencer interface.
You could use something like Hydrogen for Drums, Mamba or Seq24, etc. for more generic stuff.
For piano, if you want to record each hand separately, you could create a separate track for each hand.
Cheers,
Keith
I second this as a need to implement feature for MIDI drum work…
A recent cautionary tale… After many years of working with real drums I had a huge stack of new demos I just wanted to flesh out and get the ideas documented for future work, I was very thrilled about Ardour’s recent MIDI improvements (lollipops etc.) so I set out to program drums within Ardour and I even purchased an AKAI MPD 218 to facilitate not having to do all mouse-drawn drum patterns and immediately hit a brick wall when Ardour didn’t do MIDI overdubs without adding layers with each pass, I tried consolidated the layers etc. but concluded this was the most non-musical kludgefest way to try doing drums and would take far longer than simply drawing with a mouse… I was irked so I went to look at other options and tried Reaper… well as it turns out Reaper does MIDI overdubbing but I have always been somewhat baffled by Reapers interface and the reams and reams and reams of Context menus, I know it’s a fabulous program but I just cannot make myself love it and I don’t want to switch away from all of the Ardour stuff I love for Audio work… I desperately grabbed the demo of the latest Tracktion Waveform and although it’s interface is pretty bizarre compared to Ardour I had high hopes that it would accomodate my need for MIDI overdubbing and perhaps I could use it for that and work downstream with Ardour… Well no-go there either, on my maiden voyage I loaded up my own AVL-Drumkits LV2 Plugin and watched with morbid fascination while Tracktion improperly drew one small corner of the UI briefly and then hung like a dog’s balls until forcibly killed… Sure, I googled some solutions and none of them worked, apparently JUCE in Waveform doesn’t like LV2 much… Well, @Largos at Linuxmusicians suggested I try the latest iteration of Seq24 (Seq66…?) so off I went only to discover it isn’t in Debian, it’s very outdated in KXStudio and I’d have to compile it which I avoid like the plague but desperate times call for desperate measures so I fired up the old C compiler and ran into several QT5 related errors even though I had the correct QT development libraries installed so I gave up on that and with a slow tear rolling down my face I put the MPD 218 in a cupboard and dejectedly reached for my mouse…
I can’t help but wonder how something so simple could be so incredibly difficult in Linux when it has been a trivial given in Win/Mac for 20 years or so…
TBH, i don’t even know whether seqXX is suited for what you are after, but we compile seq66 for Arch Linux and haven’t run into major problems. You may see our recipe for building here:
Thanks, very thoughtful of you!
Like you’ve mentioned, I’m not sure that it (seq66) is a satisfactory solution and although I do know my way around compiling things once I saw it wasn’t going according to plan I didn’t force it and continue. I’m really not a ‘modular’ Linux user so the thought of connecting a sequencer separately to a drumkit plugin or library hosted by yet another host makes me want to run screaming back to Windows TBH
Again, simply working with MIDI overdubs is a very low hurdle to set, quite unbelievable to me that it is so difficult.
Maybe a 4th recording mode, extending “Sound on Sound” [SoS} (which seems the most conducive), which would do the same as SoS, but then automagically merge the regions when you hit stop? Or someone could script that in LUA? Just looking for the easiest short-term solution.
Balls I had hoped to try this is Hydrogen if it failed with Ardour. Sounds like I can forget that as well then. Oh well, may as well just keep doing it with the mouse. Good job Novation thing didn’t cost much 
Well, try it…
I’m using H2 1.2.2 on AV Linux 23 (based on MX-23/Debian Bookworm) and I’m running PipeWire 1.2.2. I did try the ALSA backend in H2 which should have taken PipeWire out of the picture though…
I’m hoping there isn’t a bug this obvious in Hydogen and that it’s some sort of a ‘me and my setup problem’… Anyone else tried H2 overdub looping with a MIDI controller?
I have H2 1.2.3 with a Korg MicroKEY keyboard, does that count? AVLinux 21 with Jack. Works fine. Or am I supposed to have Ardour somewhere in there?
Well, that’s reassuring! Nope, no Ardour involvement. I’m just using H2 alone. perhaps I’ll dig out my other MIDI controller and see if it’s a hardware quirk…
OK, to clear up any present and future confusion… I grabbed the AppImage for Hydrogen 1.2.3 and it doesn’t crash when doing looped overdubs so it appears in my case that issue was due to something amiss in version 1.2.2, nice to know it was a fluke… I edited my initial post and removed the H2 section…
I love Ardour and Mixbus, but the inability to do overdubs within the same region without having to deal with the layers is the only thing that keeps me from recording MIDI and doing initial MIDI work. MIDI and audio workflow are two different things here IMHO. I can easily see that is excellent in many situations, but not all.
Playing with a MIDI controller and recording drum parts into one or more bars is instantly more natural-sounding compared to using a mouse and after that messing with velocities, this is very important when the aim is a natural and live-sounding result. When working with MIDI, it’s not uncommon to record things such as kick and snare in one take, and after the hi-hat (or the opposite) - of course, a good player can do all this in one take, but I’m not one of them. To be forced to merge the layers after such a recording is very annoying, especially if I’m in a creative mood and need a workflow like running water or have a client hanging over my shoulder.
It would be very nice to be able to work in Ardour/Mixbus only when MIDI is involved. I’ve been ranting (politely I hope) about this for years on the Mixbus forums and have to some degree given up on trying to get a change on this. I understand that for people who are playing with imported loops or the mouse only, and mainly copying and pasting stuff - or gracefully playing and tracking in one take, the current system is sufficient, but if I can speak for myself, I’m not a drummer or keyboard wizard, nor do I only sit and click with the mouse or play with loops, that means I have to use other solutions when it comes to initial MIDI work. Hi-hat, kick, snare, and other items are the same instrument and these parts should not be separated by layers in certain workflows. The same problem also comes when for example doing synth or piano parts, the current system only suits good players or people that use loops or only program with the mouse.
Ah good to know Hydrogen can do it!
i was just thinking what if I made separate Ardour tracks for the drum parts, kick, snare so on, but that’s not going to help is it …
Hi,
Well of course you CAN do that, I think it would get pretty unwieldy quickly. Similarly you can export individual kit piece Audio tracks from H2 and import them separately and work with each separately in Ardour.
FWIW this is what I’ve ended up doing in case it is of interest… I’m using AVL-Drumkits and I also use Addictive Drums 2 running with yabridge/wine. The AVL kits come in H2, SFZ and LV2 formats and all variants use the same samples and keymaps. When I start a song demo I try to decide which drumkit I want and I program and sequence the parts in H2 and then export it as MIDI. When I import the MIDI drums into Ardour I can either use the same AVL Kit I used in Hydrogen as an LV2 or I have created a custom keymap in Addictive Drums 2 that matches the kit pieces between the AVL Kit and Addictive Drums 2 so that gives me more sound options if the AVL kit isn’t turning out to be what I want. Of course the imported MIDI file can still be modified in Ardour but usually I have things how I want already in H2 and Ardour just needs to play back the MIDI drum file. By using the ‘fan out to tracks’ feature in the AVL Kits I can process each kit piece separately or Addictive Drums 2 has it’s own mixing and effects utility…
At this point I’ve resigned myself to mouse editing in H2 and it’s not the end of the world. I do however hope that better MIDI overdubbing capabilities get into Ardour at some point in the near future.
Yup me too mate, it wants some kind of toggle for the recording to say whether to flatten down the layers or not.
Found a video of some bloke doing it on Hydrogen anyway, seems to be the default looking at what he does - Electronic Drums as USB Midi Input Device with Hydrogen - Invidious
I can see the frustration over this matter. I haven’t used Ardour in a long
time and I’m trying to come back up to speed with it now. I too purchased an
AKAI MPD 218 some time back. Mine lives up on a shelf too after I realized what
a hassle it was to fire up the DAW and to simply practice finger drumming. I
later purchased a Yamaha FGDP-50 and am much more satisfied with it. I admit
I’m a pee poor finger drummer. It is self contained with built in sounds and a
small speaker.
The somewhat odd thing about the device is midi and audio travels over a single
usb cable. It took me a while to figure out routing in Ardour. Was simple
enough to get midi data into a midi track. Was a bit more trouble figuring out
how to hear the audio output of the FGDP-50 through my audio interface and
monitors and also get the audio output to an audio track. Hopefully I can
repeat the process without pulling my hair out.
Despite the lack of an overdub feature and the lack any skill at finger
drumming I was hoping to be able to:
get a drum pattern close enough that a little bit of editing will get me to
what I need or barring that focus on the more complicated parts first (hi-hat,
drum fills,) then come back and add the easier parts (kick, snare, etc.)
without so much frustration.
The FGDP has a single stereo output. How difficult would it be to go through
the finished midi track, mute individual midi notes and place drum elements on
separate audio tracks allowing separate processing? Is there some feature to
allow me to mute all notes for a specific drum element on the midi track itself
and not grow old(er) while doing so?
A pointer from anyone would be appreciated on how the create a map where the drum names show up on the piano roll for this particular device.
GRB
Hi,
I don’t have a lot of wisdom to impart about working with your Yamaha in a hardware sense with Ardour but in order to see the Kit pieces appear in Ardour’s MIDI track keyboard you will need to create a “midnam” file. I recently posted one here to match Addictive Drums up to the AVL Drumkits and you can look at it as an example. You mostly need to focus on the Author, Manufacturer, Model and Note sections.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE MIDINameDocument PUBLIC "-//MIDI Manufacturers Association//DTD MIDINameDocument 1.0//EN" "http://www.midi.org/dtds/MIDINameDocument10.dtd">
<MIDINameDocument>
<Author>Glen MacArthur</Author>
<MasterDeviceNames>
<Manufacturer>XLN Audio</Manufacturer>
<Model>AVL Drumkits Addictive Drums 2 Mapping</Model>
<CustomDeviceMode Name="Drumkit Keymap">
<ChannelNameSetAssignments>
<ChannelNameSetAssign Channel="1" NameSet="Names"/>
<ChannelNameSetAssign Channel="10" NameSet="Names"/>
</ChannelNameSetAssignments>
</CustomDeviceMode>
<ChannelNameSet Name="Names">
<AvailableForChannels>
<AvailableChannel Channel="1" Available="true"/>
<AvailableChannel Channel="10" Available="true"/>
</AvailableForChannels>
<UsesNoteNameList Name="Notes"/>
<PatchBank Name="User Patches">
<PatchNameList Name="User Patches"/>
</PatchBank>
</ChannelNameSet>
<NoteNameList Name="Notes">
<Note Number="36" Name="KickDrum"/>
<Note Number="37" Name="SnareSidestk"/>
<Note Number="38" Name="SnareCtr"/>
<Note Number="39" Name="Flexi1/HandClap"/>
<Note Number="40" Name="SnareShallow"/>
<Note Number="41" Name="FloorTomCtr"/>
<Note Number="42" Name="ClosedHat"/>
<Note Number="43" Name="FloorTomEdge"/>
<Note Number="44" Name="PedalHat"/>
<Note Number="45" Name="TomCtr"/>
<Note Number="46" Name="SemiHatB"/>
<Note Number="47" Name="TomEdge/Alt"/>
<Note Number="48" Name="SemiHatC"/>
<Note Number="49" Name="Crash1"/>
<Note Number="50" Name="Crash1Chk"/>
<Note Number="51" Name="RideTip"/>
<Note Number="52" Name="RideChk"/>
<Note Number="53" Name="RideBell"/>
<Note Number="54" Name="Flexi2/Tambourine"/>
<Note Number="55" Name="Splash"/>
<Note Number="56" Name="Flexi3/Cowbell"/>
<Note Number="57" Name="Crash2"/>
<Note Number="58" Name="Crash2Chk"/>
<Note Number="59" Name="RideShank"/>
<Note Number="60" Name="ChinaCrash3"/>
<Note Number="61" Name="Flexi3"/>
</NoteNameList>
</MasterDeviceNames>
</MIDINameDocument>
**What they do:
These files are to properly name the drumkit pieces on their corresponding keys
within the MIDI Editors in DAWs that support midnam files.
(specifically Ardour/Harrison Mixbus in this case)
**How to use them:
Place the midnam files in /home/USERNAME/.config/ardourX/patchfiles/ for Ardour
or /home/USERNAME/.config/mixbusX/patchfiles/ for Mixbus and they should
be available in the dropdown list upon your next session launch.
Please note that you may need to create a folder named ‘patchfiles’ if it
doesn’t already exist…
Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions.
One other question I would like to ask if I may. Do you have any
experience with Linux Studio Plugins’ multi-sampler specifically the
direct out versions? I have a collection of drum samples and the lsp
manual says it will import sfz files. Manual also links to sfzformat.com
for sfz specification. You have any other sources on the specification
you could direct me to? This could save me the headache of manipulating
the midi track to record separate drum elements to separate audio tracks
and give me an alternative to the sound output on the FGDP-50. Again
thanks for the information.
Glynn Black