Step sequencer

Hi,
now that Ardour is MIDI-capable, it would be great to add a step sequencer / playlist system … maybe even a live mode.
This would allow me (and probably many others) tu use Ardour not only for recording/mixing, but also as a real composing tool.
I think this would be especially usefull for those of us who produce all kinds of electronic music, or hip-hop, and many more …

I could make Ardour my unique DAW if it allowed at least to :

  • create patterns (at least MIDI)
  • program these patterns in a playlist aside other regular MIDI and audio tracks

And it would be even greater if :

  • patterns could contain both MIDI and audio data
  • there would be automations in patterns
  • the pattern playlist could also be recorded live as in Ableton Live

There are no plans at this time for a pattern/step sequencer inside of Ardour. I would prefer to leave that to plugins, who can do everything that is necessary including having their own GUI. There are many different approaches to step sequencing, and the idea that Ardour will have “The One” that makes everyone happy is not realistic.

I prefer a good sequencer/editor/recorder off-live. Ableton live is the opposite of a traditionnal sequencer. Maybe one day you’ll have Bitwig for that.

@paul Can you recommend some plugins that are currently able to provide this functionality?

@bukkits: nope. I didn’t mean that they exist, I meant that they should be written or ported. If I had more time I would port Softwerk (my own decade+ old pattern/step sequencer to LV2). I was differentiating this from the “build it into Ardour” approach.

drobilla has a couple of step sequencers in his lv2 plugin set… reports an error on starting on myt system. so I can’t comment on how useful it would be …
[ERROR]: LV2: “16 Step Sequencer” port 0 has no known data type

of course you could always sync something like non-sequencer or seq24 and send it to a MIDI track in ardour… (just a thought)…

cheers

[ERROR]: LV2: "16 Step Sequencer" port 0 has no known data type

I get same. Any ideas?

That plugin (ported from the LADSPA blop collection) is a step sequencer in the modular synthesizer sense, i.e. it has 16 control outputs (not MIDI output). It does not do anything meaningful in the context of Ardour.

thanks dave…

so VvSurLeRiddim, my suggestion until someone writes a step sequencer plugin is use the piano roll style editing of ardour3 or use seq24, non-sequencer or even hydrogen (0.96 - using MIDI output) as your step sequencer synced to ardour via jack transport…

the beautiful thing about using open source is about combining a number of tools that do their thing very well to create an ecosystem of your own to do your own thing very well… just like the old hardware production days :slight_smile: through jack everything talks to each other

Are there some news on an LV2 step sequencer? I think I want one. :slight_smile:

Not sure how well they play with Ardour, but QMidiArp modules are available as LV2 plugins, including the step sequencer module.

Second this, the EDM market is immense and it will certainly up the Ardour install base. There is a reason why FLstudio is the worlds most popular DAW and it also tops the DAW list in terms of Google searches. Though I am totally ok with a good plugin for this and I can understand it might at this stage require to much manpower to implement this in Ardour natively. Noob question…can you “rewire” LMMS into Ardour?

LMMS supports jack, so you can just connect the outputs of lmms to the track inputs on ardour.