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Basslint
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Hello!

Post by Basslint »

Hello people,

I've been using GNU/Linux for more than a decade (using Debian right now) and I play guitar non-professionally (I would play professionally but well, I'm not any good at it :lol: ).

I started mixing the two things in the humblest of ways, by plugging my guitar into the line input on my old laptop and recording it with Audacity. Then I discovered Rakarrack, which let me play live with effects and stuff, but the realest of deals came with Guitarix. Finally I could get good tones on my computer!

I use Ardour as my main DAW. I think it is an amazing program, regardless of the fact that it's free software. I use plenty of LV2 effects (shout out to CALF, you people are amazing!).

Why I picked the name Basslint? I was listening to some UK Bassline music and I changed the last name to a t to pay homage to linters, the greatest programs out there (I used to code) :lol:

Nice to meet you all, see you on the other boards!
Last edited by Basslint on Sat Feb 23, 2019 9:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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bluebell
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Re: Hello!

Post by bluebell »

Welcome in your new community :)

You seem to have a simliar setup as mine, which means that you have to struggle with latencies/jack-buffersizes: as small as possible for Guitarix and as long as your Ardour-projects need.

One solution if you can get 2 interfaces:
viewtopic.php?f=27&t=19475

Linux – MOTU UltraLite AVB – Qtractor – http://suedwestlicht.saar.de/

Death
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Re: Hello!

Post by Death »

Hey. Welcome to forum. Ardour is great if you're just working with audio files but it's not too fun or useful when working with midi, tbh. Just a heads up incase you need midi in future.. You might also want to have a look at Harrsion Mixbus which is a modified version of Ardour which basically just replaces the mixer for an emulation of a Harrsion analogue mixer. Just cool if you're into that sort of thing :)
Basslint
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Re: Hello!

Post by Basslint »

bluebell wrote:Welcome in your new community :)

You seem to have a simliar setup as mine, which means that you have to struggle with latencies/jack-buffersizes: as small as possible for Guitarix and as long as your Ardour-projects need.

One solution if you can get 2 interfaces:
viewtopic.php?f=27&t=19475
Thanks, glad to meet you! I will check it out that setup because it might come handy in the future. Right now I mostly record guitar (with no live playing except for practice) so I can align it a little later if needed, but it's not something I like due to the fact that I don't always want to play on the beat.
Death wrote:Hey. Welcome to forum. Ardour is great if you're just working with audio files but it's not too fun or useful when working with midi, tbh. Just a heads up incase you need midi in future.. You might also want to have a look at Harrsion Mixbus which is a modified version of Ardour which basically just replaces the mixer for an emulation of a Harrsion analogue mixer. Just cool if you're into that sort of thing :)
Thanks, nice to meet you as well! And thanks for the suggestion. I too struggled with Ardour's MIDI capabilities in the past but now I think it has gotten it down, that's why I switch to it. What do you think Ardour is lacking right now in terms of MIDI capabilities?
The community of believers was of one heart and mind, and no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they had everything in common. [Acts 4:32]

Please donate time (even bug reports) or money to libre software 🎁

Jam on openSUSE + GeekosDAW!
Death
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Re: Hello!

Post by Death »

Basslint wrote:Thanks, nice to meet you as well! And thanks for the suggestion. I too struggled with Ardour's MIDI capabilities in the past but now I think it has gotten it down, that's why I switch to it. What do you think Ardour is lacking right now in terms of MIDI capabilities?
Well, the piano roll just felt so limited, elementary, slow & clunky to work with when I tried it last (2-3 months ago). You can't see the velocities of midi notes at a glance, for example. In other programs you can see the velocity of notes right underneath them and easily select one or multiple notes and drag the velocity up and down - same with other parameters. Have a quick look at the top picture here to get a visual idea of what I mean: https://www.image-line.com/support/flst ... noroll.htm
And yeh, I'm an FL Studio user which probably has the best piano roll in the game so it's no wonder I think like this :wink: But still, out of all the DAW's I've tried (loads of them), Ardour has been my least favourite for midi. Midi is a new function in Ardour though so I'm not writing it off or anything.

Tracktion Waveform is probably my favourite native Linux DAW I've tried so far (it's possible I'd like bitwig studio better if I spent more time with it but I'm not even interested as the pricing/upgrade plan is too much for me). Tracktion 7 is free so you can always get that, but I think the newer "Waveform" versions are better as I like the piano roll better in those versions: https://www.tracktion.com/products/waveform
Like bitwig, Tracktion also do this "new major version every year" thing which I hate. It's purely a business practice to keep reselling the same product every year and just doesn't make sense for any other reason. A new version shouldn't be forced out every year, only when a new version is really ready and has some major updates rather than small, incremental changes and bug fixes. Their software is pretty buggy too. It wouldn't be as bad if you didn't have to buy the new version every year (assuming you want the latest updates), but that's not the case. I do pay for software and never pirate anything so it's not that I don't want to pay, I just don't like that kind of business model. That said, Tracktion Waveform is fairly cheap so it's not as bad as other DAW's with this subscription like model.
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bluebell
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Re: Hello!

Post by bluebell »

Basslint wrote:I too struggled with Ardour's MIDI capabilities in the past but now I think it has gotten it down, that's why I switch to it. What do you think Ardour is lacking right now in terms of MIDI capabilities?
Ardour's Inline MIDI editor is a matter of taste. I prefer Qtractor's MIDI editor where each MIDI clip is opened in a separate window. It has other goodies as well.

Linux – MOTU UltraLite AVB – Qtractor – http://suedwestlicht.saar.de/

Basslint
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Re: Hello!

Post by Basslint »

Death wrote:
Basslint wrote:Thanks, nice to meet you as well! And thanks for the suggestion. I too struggled with Ardour's MIDI capabilities in the past but now I think it has gotten it down, that's why I switch to it. What do you think Ardour is lacking right now in terms of MIDI capabilities?
Well, the piano roll just felt so limited, elementary, slow & clunky to work with when I tried it last (2-3 months ago). You can't see the velocities of midi notes at a glance, for example. In other programs you can see the velocity of notes right underneath them and easily select one or multiple notes and drag the velocity up and down - same with other parameters. Have a quick look at the top picture here to get a visual idea of what I mean: https://www.image-line.com/support/flst ... noroll.htm
Got it, I think you are right about note velocity not being shown being pretty serious. I use very few of Ardour's MIDI capabilities (back when I first tried Ardour, I don't think it had a piano roll at all!) so I was genuinely curious.

LMMS does have a better piano roll. There is also a pretty advanced (I think) standalone MIDI sequencer called seq24 which implements a more comfortable piano roll.
The community of believers was of one heart and mind, and no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they had everything in common. [Acts 4:32]

Please donate time (even bug reports) or money to libre software 🎁

Jam on openSUSE + GeekosDAW!
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bluebell
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Re: Hello!

Post by bluebell »

Some impressions from the Qtractor MIDI-editor with a "ramp"-tool to generate velocity ramps:

http://marzen.de/tmp/qtractor_midi.jpg

Linux – MOTU UltraLite AVB – Qtractor – http://suedwestlicht.saar.de/

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