Drums in Ardour

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dchurch24
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Drums in Ardour

Post by dchurch24 »

Hi all,

I've just discovered the AVL drum plugins for Ardour.

Am really impressed. Great sounding drums.

So I set about having a play and getting used to them, after watching the intro videos on youtube (usually I'd use Hydrogen and link it through JACK), and got some really good beats going, but for some reason I can't seem to loop them properly, and I figured I'm probably doing something wrong.

Are there any videos or tutorials on how to program drums through Ardour?

I've googled but I keep coming across the same 2 intro videos.
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Re: Drums in Ardour

Post by tavasti »

In short:
- Create midi track
- From that track header, with right mouse button, context menu 'Note mode -> Percussive'
- Add plugin that plays your drum samples, or connect midi to hydrogen

Linux veteran & Novice musician

Latest track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycVrgGtrBmM

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Re: Drums in Ardour

Post by bluebell »

dchurch24 wrote:Hi all,

I've just discovered the AVL drum plugins for Ardour.

Am really impressed. Great sounding drums.

So I set about having a play and getting used to them, after watching the intro videos on youtube (usually I'd use Hydrogen and link it through JACK), and got some really good beats going, but for some reason I can't seem to loop them properly, and I figured I'm probably doing something wrong.

Are there any videos or tutorials on how to program drums through Ardour?

I've googled but I keep coming across the same 2 intro videos.
In Ardour, Qtractor an other DAWs there are no patterns that can be arranged as with drum machines. You have to copy the patterns on a linear timeline. Some DAWs, e.g. Qtractor, "know" that they are copypasted and if you change a note in one of them then all copies get the change.

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ufug
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Re: Drums in Ardour

Post by ufug »

Since you like these kits (as well you should, they are fantastic, especially Red Zep!), I think it's worth noting that both of of them are also available as Hydrogen kits as well as other formats.

It's great that the kits we made into LV2 plugins, but editing MIDI in Ardour can be... frustrating. I may be wrong, but I don't think you can loop record MIDI in Ardour without creating a new layered region every go around (which is what I think you are asking about). Makes sense if you're recording audio, but not so great for making beats.

Sounds like you are already adept with syncing Hydrogen to Ardour, and that's going to be a much better experience than using the plugins (loop recording, drawing velocities, song arranging etc in Hydrogen are miles ahead of anything Ardour can currently do).
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Re: Drums in Ardour

Post by bluebell »

ufug wrote:
Sounds like you are already adept with syncing Hydrogen to Ardour, and that's going to be a much better experience than using the plugins (loop recording, drawing velocities, song arranging etc in Hydrogen are miles ahead of anything Ardour can currently do).
MIDI editing in Qtractor is great, too. That's the reason why I use Qtractor and not Ardour.

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Re: Drums in Ardour

Post by empowerg »

dchurch24 wrote:Hi all,
Are there any videos or tutorials on how to program drums through Ardour?
Well, I use Muse for drum programming and DrumGizmo for the actual sound, then transfer the finished MIDI to Ardour.
As for video tutorial, I made some of them, the principles can be easily used also for the AVL Kits:

http://libremusicproduction.com/tutoria ... and-ardour

or

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXDCTmc ... mq9tgpsCkz

lg,
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Re: Drums in Ardour

Post by zoco »

In ardour i drum with soundfonts over midi.
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Re: Drums in Ardour

Post by Nachei »

For what is worth, I got kicked out of drums editing out of frustration from Ardour (surrealistic behavior, instability proved in 20" after failing to perform the simplest operations), and Qtractor (more stable, but lacking very basic functionalities, and having the nerve of DESTROYING your work when you have a piece with several time signatures). I found content with Reaper (which you can test for free). The way it does things feels a bit strange sometimes, but its MIDI editor is rock solid and the features it says it has, it actually does have them.
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Re: Drums in Ardour

Post by zoco »

I drum on keyboard. But with editing i have not that big a problem either. Ardour has many nice features to help you editing. Find those.
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Re: Drums in Ardour

Post by rncbc »

Nachei wrote:... Qtractor (more stable, but lacking very basic functionalities, and having the nerve of DESTROYING your work when you have a piece with several time signatures).
sounds quite serious! had you the nerve to report the problem upstream is and it would probably be fixed already.

care to explain your worries and findings?

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Re: Drums in Ardour

Post by j_e_f_f_g »

Nachei wrote:Qtractor ... DESTROYING your work when you have a piece with several time signatures
Yes, I noticed that QTractor has severe problems with time signature changes. Muse handles them properly.

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Re: Drums in Ardour

Post by j_e_f_f_g »

rncbc wrote:care to explain your worries and findings?
It appears to be a bug in the code that saves the data to a MIDI file on disk. What is written out is mangled if there are time signature changes. Otherwise the program seems to handle time signatures up until the data is saved to disk.

There's a similiar problem in your midi reading code. It misreads the time sigs in a valid midi file with changing sigs. But although the time sigs are incorrect, once loaded it seems to handle these "wrong values" ok.

Offhand it sounds like you're not reading/writing Standard Midi File's (SMF) Time Signature (and maybe even Tempo) Meta-event correctly.

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Re: Drums in Ardour

Post by rncbc »

j_e_f_f_g wrote:It appears to be a bug in the code that saves the data to a MIDI file on disk. What is written out is mangled if there are time signature changes. Otherwise the program seems to handle time signatures up until the data is saved to disk.

There's a similiar problem in your midi reading code. It misreads the time sigs in a valid midi file with changing sigs. But although the time sigs are incorrect, once loaded it seems to handle these "wrong values" ok.
care to show an evidence of the so called bug or severe destructive behavior?
please show with some concrete examples, screenshots, session files, whatever maybe in another thread or some other place. i'll be much obliged and thankful to fix it as soon as i'd understand what's real bad and wrong.

meanwhile give me a chance to give you a brief of the most important parts of the more than a decade old qtractor model re. tempo/time-sig map and MIDI files (SMF) that are the back-store of all MIDI data going in and out of the program:

- the global tempo/time-sig map do override and take precedence to any, if any, tempo and time-sig changes that might be in a SMF file; IOW. all "intrinsic" tempo/time-signature changes that are in a SMF are "converted" to current (global) qtractor's session tempo/time-sig timeline, across the time range a MIDI clip is therefore positioned.

- the only moment that the SMF tempo/time-sig sequence of MIDI meta-events is read and effective to set the global session timeline tempo-map is when first importing a SMF into an empty brand new session from scratch; at ALL other times, the tempo-map that is provided by a SMF is simply ignored.

- when exporting MIDI tracks, merging or recording MIDI clips to SMF, the (global) session tempo-map is always honored: that's when tempo and time-sig MIDI meta-events are written to file.

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Re: Drums in Ardour

Post by j_e_f_f_g »

rncbc wrote:the SMF tempo/time-sig sequence ... is read ... when first importing a SMF into an empty brand new session from scratch
That's exactly when/how I noticed the problem.

I'm not a QTractor enduser. (I use Muse). But when I was first evaluating numerous linux MIDI sequencers to see which one I'd adopt, I loaded one of my own midi compositions (that happens to contain time sig changes) into each sequencer. It was then that I noticed QTractor messed up the time changes (during import).

I then resaved the file in Qtractor, and loaded that altered file back into Muse. The time sig changes were messed up in Muse. (Muse had no problem with the original file).

Attached is one of my midi files. It starts in 4/4, changes to 7/8 on measure 14, and back to 4/4 on measure 15. (There are many additional time sig changes after that.) QTractor doesn't import them correctly.
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Re: Drums in Ardour

Post by rncbc »

j_e_f_f_g wrote:Attached is one of my midi files. It starts in 4/4, changes to 7/8 on measure 14, and back to 4/4 on measure 15. (There are many additional time sig changes after that.) QTractor doesn't import them correctly.
which bars or measures are not correct? i do see 4/4 at bar 1, 14 is 7/8 alright and 15 on 4/4, exactly as you say... are the ones that follow that are wrong? or am i seeing something that you don't or is it the other way around?

puzzled.

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