You probably all already know about this, but I only found out about it recently while perusing the mailing list on Nabble (which is another recent, and cool, discovery that I made), so here it is for any other newbs…
I’ve only been using Ardour for about 6 months and I must admit that I had trouble getting my head round the idea of playlists. I saw a topic on the list about doing multiple takes for a track and suddenly playlists not only make sense but it’s a really useful feature.
When doing, say a guitar solo, or a vocal part, I used to just record loads of times into one track, layer upon layer. It was a pain having to re-arrange the layers to be able to listen to them all to find the best take.
Using the “p” button on a track in the editor you can create new playlists, rename them or select different ones to play. By recording each take in its own playlist you can quickly change which take you hear. I number the layers e.g. Solo 1.1, 1.2 etc and if I try doing something differently I might use different numbering, say from 2.1. Using the comments box from the mixer window can be really useful for adding notes (“this take is rubbish!” etc.) – it’s just a shame you can’t call up the comments from the editor window (I tend to leave it open and Alt+Tab between it and the editor).
This is a good feature for multiple takes involving single tracks, but becomes cumbersome when a take involves several tracks (i.e. drumkits) - then you have to name each playlist for each track in a way that relates it to the same take for other tracks, etc, and it gets pretty confusing and slow to jump between playlists (takes) for each track.
It would be great if Ardour had some concept of grouping tracks for playlists, so you could more easily do multiple takes involving several tracks… and ideally, also make it easier to combine different sections of different takes into the final version (i.e. you want to use the end of the third take, the start of the second take, and the middle bit of the first take in your final song).
Finally, if the process of creating a new playlist for a new take could be streamlined, so that all was required was a single keypress to create a new playlist with auto-incremented name, and set all the tracks in the playlist to record enable… if that could be done, the power of Ardour would be UNSTOPPABLE.
These are just a few workflow/interface issues that I’ve been thinking about while recording drums…
You can select multiple tracks and then press “p” on one of them and select “New” to create a new playlist for all selected tracks.
To record enable all tracks, you can ctrl-shift-click on the “r” button to arm each and every track. The same clicking method also applies to mute and solo buttons.
We are planning a “take” system in the future for playlist management. Currently there is no easy way to (for example) select a certain take for a number of tracks.
I know it’s a year since the last post on this topic, but maybe someone will read this here:
The idea of selecting
‘multiple tracks and then press “p” on one of them and select “New” to create a new playlist for all selected tracks.’
is good, but how can I switch all selected tracks back to the old playlists?
E.g. If I record take 1 of the drums, then switch all drum-tracks to a new playlist, record take 2, and the want to switch back to take 1… How do I do that?
To quote myself: “We are planning a “take” system in the future for playlist management. Currently there is no easy way to (for example) select a certain take for a number of tracks.”
Another useful feature with regard to takes would be a friendly way to do “comping”, that is using the best part of each take to compose a “perfect” track. I didn’t find to date an easy way to do this in ardour.
One small issue that is current with group selecting and creating a new playlist is that the rename dialog does not appear, it just automatically increments a name for you.