Trying to understand the basics of Cues/Looping in Ardour 9

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#3

I am in the same situation. Really need to be able to record clips live to make it fit my workflow.

I don’t understand the logic either. Running 9.0 RC2 104

What is more, when I change the clip’s launch style to toggle (which is the most useful one to me), it crashes Ardour. Toggle style worked fine in 8.12.

Trying to control the trigger slots through a midi controller is finicky as well. Sometimes it takes a couple of tries to make it work (right clicking, clicking midi learn and pushing a button on the controller).

The cue track’s record button seems not controllable by midi (no control + middle click midi learn popup) and isn’t synced with the record button from the corresponding track in de editor or mixer window (these ones are midi learnable). The solo and mute buttons on the other hand, are in sync in the different windows (and you can use midi learn in all of them).

I also hoped that by midi learning an empty trigger slot and arming the track for recording, it would start recording when I press the corresponding button on the controller. Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to work yet.

So I’m also a bit confused at the moment and don’t know how to make it work properly.

#4

You might imagine that there are huge numbers of people out there, doing this sort of thing, and so of course we would know this. But you’d be wrong. We can’t fix bugs we don’t know about, and the bug report for this was filed only today …

More replies & info to follow.

[ EDIT: the crash is now fixed ]

#5

Currently, clip control is not MIDI learnable, and that is partly by design, partly by omission. Full control is possible using a MIDI binding map, though the actions are not documented yet. I still have not implemented any hard-coded support for clip recording into any of the surfaces we explicitly support where it would make sense (eg. Push, various Novation devices), that will happen in some 9.x version.

The rec-enable button for a track on the cue-page is not synced to the rec-enable button for the track on the editor or mixer pages because the buttons control an entirely different style of recording (there is absolutely no relationship between them, they use none of the same code, and result in entirely different outcomes).

Clips/cues are documented to quite a reasonable degree, but a lot of that is in the v9 version of the manual, which will not be online at manual.ardour.org until we release v9 (which is imminent).

#6

This seems to be a parallel control to the play or record button against the clip:

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And it seems to function in the same way: if a slot is empty, then you can record arm the slot to record a new clip. If the slot has a clip in it, then only the play can be used.

The difference is that the record/play button against the slot is either record or play. The buttons in the Clip Properties are always there.

As Paul says, this is separate from the rec-enable on the track. I’ve not fully worked out the logic around this yet, but it seems to be that you can record enable the track in the cue page, but only the specific slot that has been record enabled will be recorded. Presumably this means, whilst the playhead is running, you can leave the track record-enabled and just toggle individual slots to record when you want to record into them.

The record-enable on the track at the top of the cue page seems to just be to enable/expose the individual slot record capability. Note that Track record-enable in the Cue screen does not record enable the track elsewhere (e.g. edit screen).

I’m not sure if any of this is correct, or helpful. And I’m certainly not going to comment on whether the design choices here make sense or not, because I simply don’t know.

Cheers,

Keith

#7

What does the “Record:” button do then?

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Cheers,

Keith

#8

It seems not to change much at this stage.

Would it make sense to have the option to sync the recording to multiples of say 1/2/4… bars until stopped?
I mean, you intend to record a multiple of let’s say 4 bars, but you don’t know how many yet. So it could end up being any of 4, 8, 12, 16… bars. Would that be possible now? If not, you really need to plan ahead your live clip recording behavior. That would make it more difficult to improvise.

Cue recording length
#9

So it would be possible to change the session file to include those?

I use some djtechtools devices. Like a midi fighter 64, 16, twister. I even have an old monome 40h lying around but I don’t think I’m able to make it work in linux these days.
If I can be of any help creating any mappings, I will make the time for that! It would be nice to have visual feedback on them.

Wow, that is quick!
I can confirm it is working as expected now! Thanks!

#10

After some more exploring, that is what seems to happen if the “follow length” is not enabled. I think the confusing thing is that the Record: option is still active when the “Follow length” is enabled which makes it look like it does something.

When I disabled it, I could use the Record: option to select different numbers of bars or “until stopped” and it worked.

As the Follow Length seems to disable this option, I would suggest that the option to set the record length should probably be visibly disabled in the GUI when the Follow length is enabled.

Cheers,

Keith

#11

This all changed last week in the run up to 9.0.

The duration of the recording is now always determined by the dropdown next the rec-enable button in the clip properties, and follow length no longer plays any roll in this.

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#12

OK, that makes sense.

For reference, I was using Ardour-9.0.rc2.155-dbg

Presumably the Follow Length only then applies to subsequent playback of the recording. I can see that it would be possible to do some odd things like record 8 bars, but only playback 4. But in a live looping context where the initial recording is part of the performance, this may be entirely valid.

I’ll download a new nightly and play again tomorrow.

Cheers,

Keith

#13

OK, so using nightly Ardour-9.0.rc3.8…

Yes, I see the function of the clip record length had changed, and I think that’s far better than it was on the previous version I used.

I was, slightly, surprised that the follow length is tied to the recorded length. So (for instance), even if I set the follow length to 4 beats, if I record 8 bars, the follow length gets adjusted to 32 beats (obviously talking about 4/4 here).

I guess that makes sense and, personally, I’m fine with that.

I have had a couple of odd situations where the clip record seems to have got stuck: the record light in the clip properties is on, but not flashing and recording doesn’t seem to work. It’s not until I toggle the track clip record off and on again that it seems to start working again. I’ve not worked out what triggers this though. I’ll play a little more and report back if I work it out.

EDIT: 0010139: Stop and Forget Capture causes inconsistant state on clip recording - MantisBT

An interesting (to me) capability is that you can arm multiple slots to record across multiple tracks (only one slot per track):
image

This would allow you to record multiple instruments or something like the left and right hand of a keyboard part separately into different clips at the same time.

These also don’t have to be in the same cue:
image

Moreover, it is possible to set the record length of each slot separately. So you could have (for instance) the slot in track 1 being 8 bars and the slot in track 2 being 4 bars. I tried this out and it worked, resulting in a 4 bar clip and an 8 bar clip.

However, most of the time I try this is causes a crash with a segfault.

EDIT: 0010138: Parallel recording of clips with different record lengths often causes crash - MantisBT

Cheers,

Keith

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#14

Is there a way of doing a follow-on recording into another slot?

What I mean by this:
For playback, you have the option to click the play button on a slot in advance and, subject to quantisation settings, “pre-launch” the clip by clicking on the play button, so that the clip plays in the future.

You also have, of course, the follow options.

I wondered if there was something similar for record so that, for example, you could chain slots to record. Clearly there’s no follow option for this, but I wondered if there was a way to pre-arm the next recording slot like you can with playback?

I’m not necessarily saying this is needed, but I just wondered if there was something there I had missed.

Cheers,

Keith

#15

Yes, I haven’t really resolved what the options ought to be for what happens after recording a clip. It isn’t clear from reading the manuals for Bitwig & Live and watching videos of people using them that they have either (though that seems unlikely).

Right now, there are no options; the track drops out of record and the recorded clip starts playing. But I’d welcome input on this.

Keep in mind though: even in Live, clip recording is not a substitute for actual live looping tools, so the goal here is not to evolve things with that as a final goal.

#16

What’s the reasoning behind this? Will it become too complicated?

I personally would love it if this would be so flexible as to become a versatile live looping tool. In combination with all the other features Ardour already has to offer, it would just become the ultimate!

Don’t wake me up too fast plz :upside_down_face:

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#17

I’m taking my cue from both Live and Bitwig, and the way those DAWs, with all their deeply-builtin looping workflows, still tend to push users towards looper plugins (or even hardware) for your typically full-on live looping stuff.

Of course, nothing is absolute. If you want to reproduce, say, Elise Trouw’s workflow, that’s in scope. But the sort of workflow you can do in Sooperlooper, or Moebius or a BOSS loop pedal … that’s out of scope.

#18

I do think a lot of people use the Clip capability in Live for Live Looping, and not necessarily using the looper plugin as Elise Trouw does.

Here’s an example:

Some notable things here:

  • The clips do seem to autoplay after recording and I didn’t see any setting which changed that
  • There is the ability to overdub clips, possibly something for a future version

I do wonder if Ardour is poised (with further developments) to offer a hybrid approach which combines the Elise Trouw approach (using a timeline to fire MIDI events at the looper plugins) with clip launching. We already, for example, have the ability to place cues on the time line and launch them in in a linear fashion. Imagine if this could be extended to include markers for recording.

Of course, lots of complexity here and definitely something for v9.x or even v10, but I think it’s worth considering.

Cheers,

Keith

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#19

Don’t want to hijack the thread, but it seems to fit.
In Ardour9.0-rc3.3, after double click on an empty slot, the lower zone midi editor pops up, as expected.
But it is just blank, without a grid to draw anything inside.
Only after adding the first note, the grid shows up.

I guess this doesn’t matter in a recording situation. But for the less realtime folks, it forces to blindly place an event somewhere before doing what I really wanted to do.

Edit: And another question: Is there a way to set the default clip properties and settings such as length, loop length etc.?

#20

I was able to invoke the same behavior.

I cannot get “Record: Until stopped” to work. With midi I see the notes appearing when it starts recording, but all is gone when I stop the recording (how should one do that anyway?). With audio, nothing appears.
In my ideal case, we would be able to set a base to quantise the recording to, like 1, 2, 4 or more bars in combination with until stopped, so that when you tell the recording process to stop, it would stop at a multiple of the set number of bars.

#21

Pretty sure she uses the IAC driver on the Mac. Unless I misunderstand what you mean.

#22

Yes, I’m talking about the whole workflow and implementation. The IAC part is really just the MIDI signal routing.

The important point is that (according to some sources) Elise does NOT use the traditional Ableton Clip recording/launching capability, which would be the direct analogue to the Ardour Cue/Clip capability.

Instead, she uses a separate looper plugin (it’s a bundled part of Ableton Live, but it’s not part of the Clip launching workflow). The direct equivalent in Ardour would be to use a conventional audio track (e.g. in Edit mode) with a looper plugin like SooperLooper or Guitarix GxLiveLooper (if it supported MIDI triggering, which it does not).

She creates multiple tracks with looper plugin added, and configures each looper to trigger its record, stop, and play on specific MIDI notes

She then triggers this using a separate MIDI track which is then connected to the input of the various loopers. THIS is where IAC comes in on the Mac. On Linux, you could either use Jack/Pipewire or, more probably, just route the MIDI within Ardour.

There is, to my mind, a strong analogy between this approach and the Ardour ability to place cues on the normal linear timeline. The difference is that Ardour can currently only trigger playback of cues.

The approach Elise apparently uses is not the only way to do Live Looping in Ableton Live but it works for her style, which is largely about recording and layering multiple audio loops. But the clip launching capability in Ableton can also be used for live looping performances and, I suspect, could also be driven from a pre-orchestrated MIDI track.

From an Ardour perspective, in theory there’s nothing to stop anyone replicating Elise’s workflow using a looper plugin (assuming there’s a decent one), or even a standalone app like Sooperlooper wired into a MIDI track in Ardour using Jack/Pipewire. This could be even be done on older Ardour versions.

But this discussion is really about the Clip launching capabilities and where they are, how they can be used, and where they might go. So, other than the scheduling side which, as I have said, has analogies to placing cues on the linear timeline in Ardour, I think there’s not much relevance to the approach used by Miss Trouw.

Cheers,

Keith

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