There's a lack of Qtractor video tutorials..

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Death
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There's a lack of Qtractor video tutorials..

Post by Death »

Qtractor is a Linux DAW that I want to give more of a chance before I finally decide whether or not to stick to using my Windows DAW in Wine, or make my full transition into Linux for music. The problem is, there just seems to be such a lack of good video tutorials for it. I've checked out everything I could find on the forum and whatever I could find from web searches. There doesn't seem to be much around and what I have found is a bit bloated and just isn't very good to be honest. I'm mostly interested in a comprehensive Midi tutorial covering midi clips and most importantly - all the piano roll functionalities. Does anyone know of any good ones? If I end up sticking with this program, I'm gonna have to make a tutorial series myself! Cheers all :wink:
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Re: There's a lack of Qtractor video tutorials..

Post by bluebell »

Death wrote:Qtractor is a Linux DAW that I want to give more of a chance before I finally decide whether or not to stick to using my Windows DAW in Wine, or make my full transition into Linux for music. The problem is, there just seems to be such a lack of good video tutorials for it. I've checked out everything I could find on the forum and whatever I could find from web searches. There doesn't seem to be much around and what I have found is a bit bloated and just isn't very good to be honest. I'm mostly interested in a comprehensive Midi tutorial covering midi clips and most importantly - all the piano roll functionalities. Does anyone know of any good ones? If I end up sticking with this program, I'm gonna have to make a tutorial series myself! Cheers all :wink:
The most important thing is the edit setting. If set to "off" then you can't draw new notes, only shift and modify them.
edit.png
edit.png (53.02 KiB) Viewed 11928 times

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Death
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Re: There's a lack of Qtractor video tutorials..

Post by Death »

Ok. I will keep that in mind! Do you know if there's a keyboard shortcut to toggle that on and off?

I'm just reading through the user guide, btw. I'm going to give this program a good shot as I really want to ditch using Wine for music stuff and Qtractor has been one of the most appealing programs on Linux so far. Cheers.
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Re: There's a lack of Qtractor video tutorials..

Post by bluebell »

Death wrote:Ok. I will keep that in mind! Do you know if there's a keyboard shortcut to toggle that on and off?

I'm just reading through the user guide, btw. I'm going to give this program a good shot as I really want to ditch using Wine for music stuff and Qtractor has been one of the most appealing programs on Linux so far. Cheers.
Under Help -> Shortcuts there don't seem to be entries for this. So probably ... no.

But you can make a feature request at https://github.com/rncbc/qtractor/issues

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Re: There's a lack of Qtractor video tutorials..

Post by Death »

I did notice that shortcuts section yesterday. Maybe I can just add my own shortcut there. Not sure.. I'll try and just learn the program first I suppose, then worry about these things later :P Cheers.
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Re: There's a lack of Qtractor video tutorials..

Post by Linuxmusician01 »

I think that the series of Qtractor video's from 2017 by Demonic Sweaters on Youtube are very good. Link. I don't know if he covers the piano roll good enough for you. Good luck with Qtractor: it's a really great program! :)
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Re: There's a lack of Qtractor video tutorials..

Post by Death »

Linuxmusician01 wrote:I think that the series of Qtractor video's from 2017 by Demonic Sweaters on Youtube are very good. Link. I don't know if he covers the piano roll good enough for you. Good luck with Qtractor: it's a really great program! :)
Yeh I've already tried watching those ones. I didn't find them too good to be honest. Thanks anyway!
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Re: There's a lack of Qtractor video tutorials..

Post by rncbc »

bluebell wrote:
Death wrote:Ok. I will keep that in mind! Do you know if there's a keyboard shortcut to toggle that on and off?

I'm just reading through the user guide, btw. I'm going to give this program a good shot as I really want to ditch using Wine for music stuff and Qtractor has been one of the most appealing programs on Linux so far. Cheers.
Under Help -> Shortcuts there don't seem to be entries for this. So probably ... no.
wrong.

shortcuts are in as Edit/Select Mode/Edit On, Off, Draw.

note that this applies to the MIDI clip editor (piano-roll) windows, NOT the main application (tracks) window.

hth.
cheers
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Re: There's a lack of Qtractor video tutorials..

Post by bluebell »

rncbc wrote:
bluebell wrote:
Death wrote:Ok. I will keep that in mind! Do you know if there's a keyboard shortcut to toggle that on and off?

I'm just reading through the user guide, btw. I'm going to give this program a good shot as I really want to ditch using Wine for music stuff and Qtractor has been one of the most appealing programs on Linux so far. Cheers.
Under Help -> Shortcuts there don't seem to be entries for this. So probably ... no.
wrong.

shortcuts are in as Edit/Select Mode/Edit On, Off, Draw.

note that this applies to the MIDI clip editor (piano-roll) windows, NOT the main application (tracks) window.

hth.
cheers
I stand corrected. Thx.

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Re: There's a lack of Qtractor video tutorials..

Post by thebutant »

Death wrote:I'm going to give this program a good shot as I really want to ditch using Wine for music stuff and Qtractor has been one of the most appealing programs on Linux so far. Cheers.
I just want to give you a heads up on the idea of giving Qtractor a chance.
Since I first gave it a real chance 6 years ago, I've grown to love Qtractor so much.
I use it every day for all my work, and I find it really intuitive and fun to use. Easy to get started, quick at solving simple stuff, and yet I use it for large, complicated projects just the same. The simplicity of Qtractor makes it possible to solve just about any challenge I meet. It's where I feel the most safe of any DAW or audio program.

Some things are a tad complicated / keep your tongue straight in the mouth, like sidechaining, subgrouping or midi controlling audio tracks, but whenever I stumble upon something I think Qtractor cannot do, @rncbc always proves me wrong. :D

For me this is one of the greatest things about Qtractor - it's simple and totally unbloated, yet anything seems to be possible.
Video tutorials? Can't help you there, I'm afraid.
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Re: There's a lack of Qtractor video tutorials..

Post by rncbc »

@Death: surely you have missed the yPhil series :)
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... qQ9yyihyrz
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Re: There's a lack of Qtractor video tutorials..

Post by Death »

@thebutant - Yeh to be honest, one of the things that attracts me to it is the fact that the GUI doesn't have that bare minimum Windows 95 look that a lot of these Linux DAW's have lol.. I know the look of a program doesn't mean it doesn't function well, but man, it definitely makes it hard for me to use something I'll be spending so much time with if it looks like crap. I'm the same with plugins - I don't like a utilitarian interface, I like on that looks like a piece of analogue gear :D It just inspires me more and that's totally what matters when making music, right?

Aside from that, it seems like it might actually have a decent piano roll compared to the others I've tried. I probably already said this, but that's so important to me as someone who's been using FL Studio for the past five and a half years and is looking for a Linux native replacement.

I am definitely giving it a shot anyway! I'll try making a whole song from scratch and see how I feel at the end :wink:
rncbc wrote:@Death: surely you have missed the yPhil series :)
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... qQ9yyihyrz
cheers
Ah. They look like they might be a bit more like it. I'll go through the lot of them before my next session with Qtractor. Thanks!

Btw, is it possible to make things like the piano roll and plugin windows stay on top of other windows until I close them? It kinda bugs me how I'll have a synth and piano roll on the screen, then when I go to make a quick adjustment on the mixer, the piano roll and synth get lost in the background and I have to bring them back up again. Hurts my workflow a bit :/ Cheers!
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Re: There's a lack of Qtractor video tutorials..

Post by bluebell »

Although Rui might reveal features I didn't know Qtractor has them you can do a lot of windowing stuff with devilspie/gdevilspie.

For example I have a devilspie receipt that places the mixer always on virtual desk 2 and maximises it.

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Re: There's a lack of Qtractor video tutorials..

Post by rncbc »

Death wrote:Btw, is it possible to make things like the piano roll and plugin windows stay on top of other windows until I close them? It kinda bugs me how I'll have a synth and piano roll on the screen, then when I go to make a quick adjustment on the mixer, the piano roll and synth get lost in the background and I have to bring them back up again. Hurts my workflow a bit :/ Cheers!
eons ago it was like so, midi clip editors and plugin windows were considered tool windows and when enabled they would stay on top of each other relative to the main window; much like the mixer window does.

however, that is not an option nowadays, mostly due to disparate behavior across different WM's (window-managers) out there... each WM has its idiosyncrasies and they don't always respect application own options on this regard.

so, as bluebell said, it is now up to the user to rig the WM in charge and relief the application from micro-managing its own top-level windows.

hth.
cheers

ps. also from yPhil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeYHkjlHtTg (Qtractor in one single window!! (with plugins GUIs))
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Re: There's a lack of Qtractor video tutorials..

Post by Death »

I've just started watching that tutorial series. In the first video he showed how you can just right click a window and set it to stay on top. That'll just become default behaviour for me when I open a new plugin now so not a big deal once it's burned into my brain :wink: I don't know why I didn't think to right click a window and see what options were there. I think it's the brain programming that FL Studio has done with its drop-down menus!

Having it all in one window looks interesting too. I work on a single monitor so I'm always about optimising my workspace. I might play with that once I get into this program a bit more! Cheers guys.
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