I am collaborating with a friend, and we are using Ardour as a mutual meeting place. He usually uses LMMS on Linux and I usually use Reaper on Windows. We are using the 32 bit version of Ardour on Windows with mostly free and open source plugins.
I have been frustrated because I am used to working fairly quickly when ideas strike. I’m an Ardour newbie, so I recognize that a lot of this is just due to a new environment. I’m going to highlight a few working methods and ask how to do these in Ardour. Please bear with me.
1.) In Reaper, I’ll start out with a one or two bar idea, loop it while working on parts, then glue and slice when I want variations (in other DAWs, this is ghosting) Glue is in the menu and slice is just a highlight and the “s” key. Then when I want to move sections, I just grab the MIDI clip and place it wherever I want it, locking it if necessary. How can I quickly loop and unloop, glue, slice, replicate and move clips in Ardour?
2.) From a compositional standpoint it is often useful to be able to move blocks of MIDI around quickly and easily, whether from track to track or multiple tracks to different areas of the project. How can I move sections from multiple tracks in Ardour? I guess this might be covered above, but here I mean multiple clips.
3.) It is often useful to simply insert space. This can be as simple as a beat or two or several measures or longer. In Reaper, I just highlight the area I want to add space to, then right click and choose insert space. Often I’m not even to the point where I know what or how much I’ll need so I can add however little or much I need. How can I do something similar in Ardour?
Thanks in advance!