How I feel about MIDI in Ardour 6.0
Vložit
- čas přidán 6. 09. 2024
- --- SUPPORT MY WORK:
/ unfa
liberapay.com/...
--- CHECK OUT MY MUSIC:
unfa.bandcamp.com
/ unfa
--- ORDER OR PRINT YOUR OWN MERCH:
teespring.com/...
github.com/unf...
--- GET IN TOUCH:
mastodon.socia...
/ discord
/ unfamusic
--- LIVESTREAMS:
- Next event:
www.youtube.co...
- Past events:
• unfa live
- Submit music:
forms.gle/pLDe...
--- TIMESTAMPS:
(none)
--- LINKS:
- My thread about this video on Ardour forums:
discourse.ardo...
- Paul Davis interview:
libregraphicswo...
--- OTHER INFO:
This video was produced exclusively with open-source software and GNU/Linux.
- Software used in the creation of this video:
manjaro.org
www.kde.org/pl...
www.olivevideo...
obsproject.com/
www.blender.org/
inkscape.org/
www.audacityte...
---
Now go, make some music!
It turns out *Ardour 3 was released in 2013* , not 2011, so we've had MIDI in Ardour for 7 years, not 9.
Still a lot, but not quite a decade.
Do you think I should correct that and re-upload this video?
Keep the video as it is, but pin your correction. IMO
please don't touch it. I'm sure nothing will change :)
Just insert a subtitle that corrects it in the right place! :-)
7 years or 9 years, it really doesn't affect the point. What can they say " *_only_* seven years to fix a core feature?"
Well you seem quite pleased with Ardour 7.
Ardour 6 *does* bring some nice improvements to the MIDI workflow like the virtual MIDI keyboard, and dynamic input mapping, but what I really wish was to see the old bugs go away first.
hey unfa... I totally agree with you.. I've gived a try (for some pieces) to qtractor and my feel i'ts... not to bad what do think? have you tried it?
It took a long time till I get adapted to ardour midi workflow (before I used a cracked ableton live in windows) but thanks to this channel I could make some musical experiments using zyn fusion and other open source synths. I was happy with ardour 5 and I didn't know it! Now some notes disappear and it breaks often. I though it could be a manjaro problem or something but now I see I am not the only one. I'm gonna try zrithm, and I would like to know what do you think about qtractor for midi. Thanks!
> but what I really wish was to see the old bugs go away first.
Don't worry they will with Ardour 7.0. Fixing most of those require some overhaul of MIDI (which was planned for Ardour6 but didn't happen).
Does Ardour 6 fix the issue where if you move MIDI clips it moves plugin automation with it as well? I noticed that in Ardour 5, MIDI controller modulation would actually move with the midi clip, but plugin automation would not.
Are bugs repeatable in a consistent way or are they random? For a given bug, is there a series of steps from an empty session that will produce the bug? As a programmer that is what you want in order to fix a bug. Random bugs are much harder to fix.
I agree, Ardour's persisting MIDI problems are astonishing. The problem is well known and even the cause. But I think the developers were focused to fix the lots of other problems under the hood for version 6. And even this took over two years. So we have to wait for version 7. In the meantime, MIDI 2.0 specifications are out now. This will be another challenge. And what about CV ? Hope Paul, Robin and the others will successfully manage to fix / implement it soon. They did a really good job beside the problems you mentioned. Keep it up!
as said in the video , the engine overhaul that should fix the midi problems isn't fully in place yet. I think that will be Ardour 7.0. However @7.05 is *so* relatable ...
75/5000
Great! I don't have time for another dozen years of waiting. I use what I have
I've never used Ardour regularly even though I've contributed to the project for years, because there's a certain level of MIDI/automation support I need, and I will continue to hope it gets there. I've never really understood why this support hasn't been considered essential, because it makes Ardour crippled compared to all it could be.
Ardour 7's out and might now have what you are/were looking for.
@@glomerol8300 Thanks!
I do hope this gets fixed soon. Ardour's a great piece of software, great routing capabilities, lean UI, video support etc. but having notes disappear, overlap, etc. and having to do black magic tricks to overcome that is certainly not encouraging nor appealing to anyone. Neither is having to scroll the piano roll and deal with the lack of velocity bars. The mousewheel is great for single values, if you want to crescendo or diminuendo parts on multiple notes... it's not ;) Whether the notes are for a snare or a string section.
I recently used it exclusively for a short sound design/scoring of a scene from a little horror film due to its video features. Nice experience, client was extremely happy and satisfied. And it all originated from another great open source project: a casual synth jam I did on VCV Rack.
As I mentioned in other comments, MIDI has been driving music creation in the past almost 40 years well beyond sequencing and beat making in electronic music (which encompasses hundreds of 'genres'). It's not just 'Hey synth, play 2 middle C crotchets at 140 bpm then stop', it's program changes, other CCs, etc. to control effects units and so on, vastly used in 'real' instruments situations both in studio and on the stage. Music is great ALWAYS, and I love playing and recording in many styles, software and hardware, piano, guitar, synths, samplers... whatever. One does not exclude the other. MIDI, DAWs, etc. are just tools, like mics or even instruments themselves, let's get rid of this stigma electronic music = easy to make, second class, no talent, no study, only MIDI painting on a screenm only 4 on the floor and 'proper' music = guy playing acoustic or electrc instruments recorded with a microphone. They're both great, do both if you can.
Unfa, you are absolutely right and thank you for making this video. I've abandoned Ardour 6 and returned to 5 because midi was unusable in 6 IMHO. I play guitar and use midi instruments and both need to work well with a DAW. I really appreciate Ardour but midi is very poor.
tnx for this... I always thought those dropout notes were my fault.. that's gotta be fixed.. (and I even paid!)
@unfa Why don't you try Qtractor? It is pretty mature DAW at this point. The least you will see, where it stands compared to LMMS and Ardour. And who know, you might be plesently surprised!
yes I make a try with qtractor .... not bad at all
Qtrackotor works great but you need to setup first a good workflow or it crash
This is sad to hear. I have a Yamaha MIDI drum kit, and I've never really been into writing until just recently. I've had a hell of a time getting my Presonus interface and my Yamaha drum kit working well in Linux. Sadly, when I open Logic Pro X, everything is just recognized and works out of the box (besides some trigger/note mapping one time). Logic has built-in drummers, a library of MIDI drum loops, a great sound library for my MIDI drum set, and it can even make MIDI tracks out of analog drum tracks for easy sound replacement. I don't want to rely on Apple, because they're going to drop support for my 2012 Mini soon, without notice. I want to be a 100% Ardour user before that happens. I contribute monthly to the project, so I truly care about Ardour, but I sit down to play music so infrequently, that when I have those few moments of inspiration, I don't want to sit down to a busted-ass setup. It makes me really sad. In my experience, it's literally easier to play Windows games via Proton on Linux than it is to use Linux-native audio tools in Linux.
Much of that has nothing to do with Ardour specifically. Your presonus interface: caused by your distribution's build of the ALSA stack (they work excellently on most distributions, but we definitely hear of deep problems with them on some distros). MIDI stuff: this is likely your choice of audio/MIDI backend. If you tell Ardour to use it's own ALSA audio/MIDI backend, all those devices will be "just recognized and work out of the box". Yes, Ardour has no builtin drummers, or sound libraries, because we're an open source project and do not have the resources to do that, and in addition we tend to believe that 3rd parties typically do this better than DAW manufacturers.
We cannot control the total experience you have on Linux. If you want an it-works-out-of-the-box experience, you need to use a distribution that at minimum doesn't actively screw up the pro-audio/music production workflow, and at best actively supports it. This means, generally, not using the most popular ones (e.g. Ubuntu). All distributions can be made to work, but some are zero work and some require a lot.
Thanks for your continuing support of our work. I hope the future will bring you easier experiences.
@@pauldavisthefirst - Sorry if it sounded like I was blaming Ardour. I don't. It's the audio experience on Linux in general. I love Ardour. I just can't get my hardware to work in Linux without hearing a bunch of crackles and pops, and Jack sometimes doesn't recognize there are MIDI ports present. Is there a distro that you suggest (or heard works better) for using Presonus interfaces? I have tried Ubuntu Studio, Kubuntu, and A/V Linux. The audio quality is/was terrible with all of them. P.S. - I decided to create a thread about this on the Ardour Discord, just in case.
@@bradleypariah Try Unfa's Manjaro setup video - you really need to dig deeper for Linux to work well < but once it does is crazy solid and really low latency = excellent audio quality - I am a 20 yr logic user - love it to the end = but the Linux world calls us - she's more flexible and free - Audour sound quality is really really on point great stuff. (might be Linux in general but whatever) one you get it sorted you will have fewer reasons to run back to logic
I switched from reaper to qtractor because I want to use calf and some other native plugins(kinda sick of using wine). I love ardour but it's just so heavy and lacks so many functions. Qtractor is lightweight and has everything I need. I think I'll stick to it for a while.
Interesting! What functions does Qtractor have that Ardour lacks?
@@unfa00 separated piano roll
Doesn't Qtractor crash too often? I'm trying it out and even simple things like changing some of the track properties causes it to crash. What version are you on?
Hey Unfa, just upgraded my Mixbuss 32c it seems that they are starting to work on the midi problems. The Ardour gods are listening.
Qtractor. It's Linux, does audio, works with a wide range of plugin types, can use Carla for instruments and effects in instrument tracks and busses, has transport function with other software through Jack (if you desire to get complex or score to picture)... and... It absolutely KILLS on MIDI because it is built as a full DAW for MIDI and Audio integration. It is also maintained and updated very regularly (every couple of months). It can be downloaded and run directly from Appimage format without compiling/building and depending on other repositories. While it runs on Jack, it has the ability to start/stop the Jack server all on its own when the application loads and closes.
Come on over and join the party Unfa! Heck, you can even run your LMMS session as an instrument/FX rack directly from Qtractor!
Thanks! I've heard about Qtractor many times, I've even tried it a few times, though I'm so used to Ardour (and it's MIDI flaws) that learning a completely new environment would set me back a lot. Ardour is not just the tool for my own projects, it's also my daily driver for sound design and music production for clients. And honestly switching wouldn't make sense for me unless I wouldn't be able to do my job any more. Thankfully I can, and Ardour is slowly improving.
I wish I could explore Qtractor and make a fair comparison to Ardour etc, though with my limited resources it's a very low priority.
@@unfa00 I hear you. For what it's worth, I am working on a Qtractor from app download to finished music project walk-through so that Linux folks can get a fuller picture of the application in comparison with others. I mostly do orchestral mock-ups, but I will cover electronica and audio in attempt to hit all interests. Like you, I came out of LMMS (and still use it for special needs). But after evaluating Ardour and Qtractor simultaneously, I found that Qtractor (for all of its aesthetic deficiencies and small following) just ran better and did more of what I needed. I'll share the tutorial/walk-through with you when it's done. Take care!
@@unfa00 Here's the run down on important functions in Qtractor. Grab a cup of coffee and take a look when you have a bit of time to kill: czcams.com/video/iYyeHomJCUQ/video.html
I know this video came out 2 years ago, but I still experience midi weirdness. lol I'm amazed at how many of your complaints still ring true for me. I don't really mess around with electronic stuff (yet), I mainly record rock/metal and I run EZdrummer through carla+wine (no room for a drum set + mics), so there's another demographic to make improvements for! One thing I've been dealing with on one of my projects is the damn drum track forgetting my edits! I'll move some notes around in the midi region, save, quit out, come back later, none of my changes are there :(
I did find a way around this by exporting the region to a .mid file then I just plop it in next time I load the session. Luckily the imported sequence remains after a save. Lol sorry for the long rant, I just appreciate that someone else experiences the same jank that I do. Love the vids! Still love Ardour too!
Thanks for this video. I was trying Ardour 6 as an alternative to other DAWs that I'm using and I thought I couldn't figure out the MIDI workflow. Turns out its almost non existent.
Well, I wouldn't go so far - it's there and it's usable, but it's a bit strange and has some rough spots.
Usually I use MuseScore for the MIDI stuff and Ardour to add the Audio. With Jack synchro, it works (It did not try tempo changes yet ..) and with the reborn of the session managers, it gets even easier to add more applications like hydrogen. I believe that having better session, and integration between applications would be more successful than a big application doing everything.
Tru
Hey Bruno, have you tried your setup with tempo changes yet?
@@evillano Not yet, actually I am slowly migrating each session from Ardour5 to Ardour6 ... I guess I could do it with a script that would change all sessions config, but well anyway, not much time with all activities restarting after the vacations
@@BrunoVernay thanks!
LMMS for MIDI. Ardour for audio.
Thanks for the insight unfa, great to see somebody actively showcasing the possibility of using libre software for music production / audio, greetings from Colombia!
8:57 immediately paused the video and googled Zrythm ... that frustrated I am
You may want to watch my last month's livestream where I've been attempting to make a track with Zrythm:
czcams.com/video/2kyfOW82StU/video.html
I did the same
This will hopefully inspire a very soon mega-update for midi in Ardour!
I hope so :D
@@unfa00 I'm afraid that that will not be the case. If you searcht the forums on ardours website on midi and read the comments of Paul Davis, I fear that the problem is not the implementation of midi but ther personal views of Mr Davis. And with the relaese of v6 acutally the whole midi implementation took an even further step back as it is for the moment not possible to sync external midi devices either external or internal like Hydrogen.
@@Drpiwi I wouldn't be so sure. As someone who's following Ardour's development day by day I can tell you that Paul is close to have a proper MIDI re-implementation. But the decision was made to let it for Ardour 7.0 rather than postponing Ardour 6.0 release. My guess (certainly my hope) is that Ardour 7.0 will be released much sooner than Ardour 6.0 was (~4y after Ardour 5.0), and, I would anticipate, will be probably an epic release.
@@Drpiwi Which comments? Which personal views? It is still possible to sync to external devices.
on their webpage, ardour.org/, they do have the following quote so I am not sure if it is such a subconscious bias against MIDI, more of a mission statement:
"Musicians
Being the best tool to record talented performers on actual instruments has always been a top priority for Ardour. Rather than being focused on electronic and pop music idioms, Ardour steps out of the way to encourage the creative process to remain where it always has been: a musician playing a carefully designed and well built instrument."
To be fair, I completely forgot about that when writing this video.
I remember that. Too bad that since 1983 MIDI can and has been used in ways that have nothing to do with 'electronic and pop music idioms' whatever they may mean. Besides, having notes eaten up would equally drive up the wall Beethoven as well as the worst beat maker on the planet ;)
I actually respect that stance quite a bit, because I pretty much despise pop music, but in all fairness, my Yamaha electric drum set is a carefully designed and well-built instrument. Roland V-Drums are carefully designed and well-built instruments. *_but,_* I think most people would agree it wouldn't make a great album if you just recorded the headphone output of either set. You've gotta record MIDI. I'm not arguing with you, of course. I'm just saying, these days, even the metal/progressive/djent music I prefer is being made with MIDI drum sets. Look at TesseracT, you know? I don't think anyone in their right mind would think their music only took as much effort as making pop with loops. MIDI is just plain important. Animals as Leaders wouldn't exist without synthetic drums. They didn't even have a human drummer for the first two years. Ack. Sorry for rambling.
Yikes. Old man yells at cloud much?
I rely heavily on midi and I play them REAL INSTRUMENTS MUH REAL MUSIC OOGABOOGA as well.
This sort of elitism doesn't fare well with its userbase. I really wanted to support ardour but I end up frustrated anytime I try to use it.
Inb4 the devs replying to me stating that it's my fault and ardour is perfect
I first discovered Ardour through you and only recently found you again because I got into audio again. Thanks for your stuff!
Thanks! I'm happy my work has been of value to you :)
Unfa, i feel like you never gave Qtractor a real chance (at least in the channel), you tried making a track in Zrythm but i have never seen anything like that for Qtractor, and it has been around for years!!, give it a chance please, it is also in a point between LMMS's midi and Ardour's midi
I understand and agree what you are saying, that MIDI is not that mature in Ardour as it should be. Their main focus is and always been the audio workflow as it seems, but MIDI workflow nowadays is a must as most of the music now is sequenced, don't get me wrong, I my self very much prefer doing live recording, I like music that is professionally recorded rather than sequenced, I'm a huge metal music fan, Opeth is favorite band among many others progressive metal and heavy metal bands, but there are other genres as well apart from just rock, metal, jazz and all(you get the idea), like electronic music which requires some form of MIDI workflow. I my self make electronic music like dubstep, trance, deep house etc and it is essential for my workflow.
Not being the main focus is one thing, being the neglected child beaten in the corner is another one ;) MIDI has been around since 1983, I was 12 back then. MIDI is not used only for paiting in notes for electronic music, as many seem to think. Reamining in the realm of notes, it is used on a daily music for film scoring and similar stuff. It can be used to change presets in synthesizers, drum machines, guitar pedals and effects unit, even for lighting, and the list goes on. And now we'll have MIDI 2.0 but... Ardour still has major bugs with 1.0. Things move fast these days.
@@DarkSideofSynth Good point, there are other stuff as well that Ardour lacks, which I have tried to post bugs and threads on Ardour forums and bug report site, like automation curves, not able to move VCA tracks up or down in the editor view, vertical scroll, file/sample browser much more. But lets not turn this comment section into a forum. Ardour is very powerful for what it is but some basic and important features are still missing. :/
I used LMMS on windows, but on linux it cannot use LV2/Linux VST (only with Carla, and I cannot use them as FX). Ardour is weird, can't really get around it. Zrythm crashes, and sometimes the recovered project crashes on loading, but it is still has big potential. So I stick to Reaper, not FOSS, but it is good.
You nailed it!
(Although you forgot the one where invisible midi notes are sounding that you cannot delete or overwrite :D)
I also use lots of midi and nevertheless just purchased Ardour6 to support them (that was 6h before I saw your video). Seeing your video made me feel disappointed that MIDI is so unimportant for the developers. But still, I don't think the developers are done with MIDI and I hope that they will pick it up for the next release, as so many people hope desperately that this gets fixed. Ardour does many great things and many things great. Maybe for MIDI, another approach has to be chosen to make it fit, which means starting from scratch (?).
What about qtractor?
When midi notes touch tail to head, Samplitude and Digital Performer display exactly the same behaviour.
Of all the audio editing tutorials in a DAW, synchronizing music phrases in tracks to correct timing imperfections by musicians with quantization is the least discussed...by far. The Time-stretch tool in Audacity does a good job (if the edit points are kept on the y-axis, but the process is soooooo time-consuming). But I see that Ardour includes a quantizer. Since you are gifted in clearly articulating complex steps, I'm hoping you might post a tutorial on the subject.
It's not just 'the kids making bleeps and bloops' Trying to use a sampled orchestra for contemporary classical / filmscore work is just..... painful.
I am actually making orchestral tracks (for clients) with sampled instruments using sfizz in Ardour. I guess I've just accumulated enough experience with Ardour I can find my through it.
Thanks for the nice video. I guess for the longest time the mindset was that people who want to produce electronic music would use QTractor, Rosegarden, Seq24 or a tracker none of which you mentioned. Those were the common options before Ardour had MIDI. Feels like yesterday that Ardour 3 was released.
I use master tracks pro and Cubase 2 in Hatari emulator synced to ardour
i used "Master Track", from Passport, on my C64 ! old days, midi came 1st. CPUs/throuput 2 weak 4 audio. then Mac w/DECK (one of the first) DA 'multitrack'. Then came interfaces (... and we were off to the races! You kids!...stand on the shoulders of others before.... (grumble grumble...) For seq, I used Rosegarden synced w/jack early on... "I don't care what it is, I just play the damn thing!"
John Hricko lol I think I tried rose garden once maybe 15 years ago and gave up hah
Nowadays I am more into Tracktion Waveform, it's a great tool and it's cross platform on Linux, Windows and MacOS
I recently saw a YT video from @Michael Oswald done in 2017. He did drum editing (using DrumGizmo as acoustic back-end together with Carla) inside MusE. The audio then has been exported and imported to Ardour where he did the mixing.
Never having used MusE myself I think I liked what I saw, all the stuff that is really missing in Ardour. I really could be tempted to change my workflow using such a hybrid approach too, at least for drum editing.
I know this video is old now, but to ignore the midi side of a DAW by the developers is just absurd. It’s not just Rap, Pop, and EDM that rely heavily on good midi implementation, but there is a HUGE industry that gets ignored by the developers of Ardour, and that’s film score and media composers. Do they not realize how much of that particular style of music is produced by a person with a midi controller and a large VST orchestral library. Makes me think of the ongoing feud that has been around for a few decades now between guitar/bass/drummer and keyboard players. Perhaps the developers are primarily a group of guitar and bass players. Keyboardist get knocked a lot (unjustly) because of what they can do using their controller and software. You hear the inaccurate age old argument of “they’re taking our jobs”. A DAW produced today needs to have good midi implementation.
ardour midi is one big chaos, what is needed is effective and stable work with midi
Thank you. (single tear)
I may have posted a comment about my DAW disappointment under another of your videos, but I've spent some extra time with Ardour because is looks like it is the most promising.
I think I may understand it eventually and it is a very feature-rich DAW with a price that is affordable (I'd love to spend $2 a month or so as a subscription).
Any DAW is not a trivial thing to use let alone to build; yet user experience is still something to be desired in quite a few open source projects.
One of my issues may have been a glitch; judging from this video there might be a few.
Have you seen my Ardour Quick start and MIDI Master class videos? They should be a good starting point for learning Ardour.
I didn't have this problem making my first song using EZdrummer2 and Ardour6.2, but since I upgraded to 6.3 (even after downgrading to 6.2 again), dragging MIDI clips from EZdrummer into Ardour causes the first and last notes of the clip to just disappear. You can resize the clip, but the notes aren't there. Making the clips shorter means they turn up empty in Ardour. I've seen your tickets like tracker.ardour.org/view.php?id=8292 and the author of Ardour seems to just deny it exists, even though it's the most heard complaint with Ardour. I'm looking around for alternatives too now.
Unfa now u can return to Lmms,u can delete multiple sequences with one click highlighting region.New snapping feature will open new features like split,merge sequence as u cant do i before coz there was not snapping feature in Lmms.Lmms and Zyrthm are future
Nice! I'm glad LMMS is making progress! However it's not the only stuff that made me switch to Ardour :) There's a lot more - I think Zrythm may get there quicker than LMMS, as it had a clean start, so it didn't have to deal with decades-long legacy.
@@unfa00 Seems Ardour developer still doesnot know 80s era over,today u cant find any good music band who play instrument in concert.I have not seen idiot like Ardour developer in my life,he even doesnot know todays tendency, lives with 80s dreams
If anyone thinks the argument about MIDI being mentioned just once during the first part of the interview is legit, here is some background.
I did not have to ask Paul about MIDI specifically for several reasons.
1. I followed v6 development closely and already knew that MIDI was only partially the focus because larger changes had to happen.
2. I already knew that MIDI would be worked on later in the 6.x or 7.x dev cycle. This is hardly any news for anyone who communicates with Paul and Robin (that includes unfa who is a regular on #ardour IRC channel).
3. I already knew, same as anyone present on IRC, that Paul encourages and probably would even sponsor further work on MIDI. Two full-time devs are not quite sufficient for a project like Ardour, especially with major under-the-hood changes happening.
All in all, I'm not sure why someone who knows far more than "I read an interview and blah" would stick to a sensationalist argument.
unfa doesn't make his videos purely for people hanging out in the IRC channel, so while you may have had this knowledge, many of us did not. Because you did not ask specifically about it doesn't mean he couldn't have mentioned it. Again, there exists a larger world outside of the IRC bubble. Also, him being aware that MIDI will be focused on later doesn't change his argument that he believes it should receive a bigger focus.
@@travis.gooden I appreciate that you had to use bold words like "IRC bubble" to _really_ get your point across. However your tirade is almost entirely lost on me because, while I also appreciate your strong spirit, I can't help myself noticing that you don't appear to have the ultimate qualification to write most of that, which is that you don't appear to be unfa.
This is really simple, when you actually sit down and think about it. The entire point I made was that unfa, that is, the author of the video we are both commenting on, knew about both ongoing and planned work on MIDI. _He_ was/is inside that "bubble". It's about _his_ choice what to do with that information from inside that "bubble" when making a video for someone like you who is outside that "bubble". That he chose not to disclose any of that info in his rant is the entire reason why I wrote that parent comment above.
I don't mind admitting that I, too, would like MIDI to be worked on in Ardour at a larger scale. However, I also know that the fixing of some of the bugs that we ( you, me, and that person over there) run into have what I would call prerequisites. The one where the first note in a region isn't played, for instance, is ultimately caused by developers of Ardour not merging the nutempo development branch. Which essentially means that, no, they effin worked on fixing this and quite a few other MIDI bugs. They worked on it quite a lot, in fact. And it still needs fleshing out. How about that?
I've heard that the MIDI fixes are coming somewhere after 6.0 release, and not much more. I'm not actually frequenting the IRC (I've recently proposed also giving users an alternative platform like Rocket.Chat for instant communication - to help the non-IRC people like me participate more).
Also - I've seen that there's a second part of your interview still waiting to be seen, and I expect that possibly we'll hear something about MIDI there, bit since it's not out - I've cut my speculation.
Oh wow, looks like he didn't have this knowledge you claimed he did. Maybe there can be different opinions without it being disingenuous after all.
@@unfa00 i've seen you around enough times to draw that conclusion. Personally, Ii don't mind rocketchat although in my hands-on experience, if doesn't improve things all that dramatically. The second part is not waiting to be seen, it was published yesterday :) Still unsure how that first part is indicative of anything, but given corrections and clarifications in the forum, I think you already see a few problems with this video.
I think MIDI in itself is the problem... I have worked in so many DAWs and there are always stuck/dropped/out of sync notes. Sure, Ardour may be worse, but I wish the whole MIDI thing was developed right from the start.
I guess this might have something to do with no new videos on the Ardour youtube channel for so long? I got really excited to watch your videos over there, and then they stopped coming. :(
also. it's too bad Davinci Fairlight doesn't do much with Midi. I thought of test driving it as a DAW (it's part of Resolve), and it also has a native Linux client. But apparently it has very rudimentary midi capabilities.
Actually this has nothing to do with my decision to stop the videos there. I've answered that question on Ardour forums:
discourse.ardour.org/t/the-ardour-youtube-channel-is-here/100534/27?u=unfa
Totally agree with you. Zrythm looks amazing, I've tried it out but it's not stable enough yet, but the UI looks amazing. I know you want to stick with GNU/FOSS but I ended up moving from Ardour to Reaper, I just don't think there is a GNU/FOSS DAW that can compete with Reaper. That said, I am still a fan of Ardour and interactions with the community, including Paul and Robin themselves, have been very positive.
I feel you. I really hope they can (and want to) finally fix these long-standing issues and get MIDI to work reliably like the rest of Ardour does.
Very helpful video. Thanks for the insights! I've been trying out Ardour for the drum programming work I do for music libraries for the past week and the workflow is just too clunky.
I'm supporting Ardour development, even though I haven't used it for years. I moved to Reaper (I support open source software, but for me learning on a good DAW is more important).
Either way, I've always been struck by the way developers respond to improvement suggestions.
I really liked the polish flag you included in the background for 0.5 seconds
There was also a prejudice against creating monolithic applications, the idea being that musicians could chain several apps together using Jackd. Of course musicians coming from a proprietary background aren't used to working like that and few people have systems powerful enough to run several apps at once.
I think a big part of the problem is that far too much effort has gone into making proprietary apps and plugins work via WINE rather than developing native solutions. So it is up to younger EDM producers to put some energy and focus into developing the features they need rather than expecting some ageing punks to do it for them.
My main issue with the "modular" workflow of using multiple jack-enabled programs is that loading and saving your work without making your own script fro each project is not going to work well. For the sake of productivity I've been keeping everthing I can in a single DAW session.
Also: if I'm gonna be dealing with software crashes and updates, I prefer to have just one program crashing or having updates making things incompatible, and not have to worry about more than one doing that. I do use a modular setup for my streaming and video capture, but I use a custom script to run and set that up - none of the session managers really cut it for me. I thin the modular setups are good for live performances, and for messing about, but for music and sound effects production, I much prefer to have everything in an Ardour session.
@@unfa00 That's a really good point. Ideally you should be able to choose the workflow that's best for you rather than have it dictated. In practice I don't chain Rosegarden or Hydrogen to Ardour, I export MIDI or audio. This works for me because I compose and pre-produce before assembling, but having watched the way you work (which is a revelation to me :D) I can see why that wouldn't work for most EDM producers.
One of the factors here is that top coders often don't use their own software in mission-critical settings, so very much rely on community submitted patches and bug reports. So this means more EDM producers need to get involved in Ardour development.
That problems actually make ardour unusable in my opinion. Tried to use it for several months but those midi notes disappearing, and the suddenly invisible notes that I cannot edit for whatever reason makes it A LOT longer and tedious to work on every single project, having to spend a lot of time trying to get pass through these issues that shouldn't be there in the first place. Then I switched to Reaper and my workflow times were significantly reduced, no MIDI bugs at all... Also faster loading times and better VST support (not crashing randomly, not having to reload presets manually when re-opening the session as it occurs in Ardour with some plugins). I hope this things get fixed, I really like the ardour project and mixing/mastering capabilities, but with that amount of bugs I just can't use it, it is too much time wasted getting around that stuff.
It pains me to watch this video, but thank you for the warnings.
I'm a guitarist, but I started out as a hobby electronic musician. I compose music backwards compared to how most guitarists compose: I compose as an electronic musician but record/track the guitars AFTER I've written all/most of the notes down. I was hoping that Ardour would be up to the task, but it would seem that I'll have to look elsewhere or stick with FL Studio.
Ardour 7 is coming up, it might solve a lot of the long-standing issues due to a massive overhaul of the MIDI-related internals. Though there is no release date on it.
Rosegarden is best when it comes to Midi tracking. Qtractor is also handy.
I actually am still using LMMS because of this. Ardour's MIDI workflow frustrates the heck out of me and I'm considering a workflow of using both where LMMS is used for composition and Ardour for mixing/mastering.
Man, I'm trying to record notes from a keyboard and can't get them in sync. Weirdly, they're always before the time point they should be. I tried everything, Jack configurations, etc, and suddenly there was I writing a kludge in Lua to push the region some milliseconds forward. Then the first note bug. I recognize that Ardour is a fantastic piece of software, but I have to agree, it deserves some love in the MIDI part of it. And before I forget, in Ardour 5 dragging a note up and down would play the notes, now it looks like this doesn't work like this anymore. Maybe l missed some configuration.
And finally, I have a guitar and I want MIDI. A lot of people will use DAWs to compose music and play their "real" instruments of choice over digital generated instruments.
Playing selected notes is a user-configurable parameter, and defaults to off. It was that way in 5.x as well, but at some point you probably turned it on and then likely didn't copy over your modified 5.x settings for 6.0. That's my best guess.
@@pauldavisthefirst You're probably right, I'll take a look again.
How do you compare midi now in 6.9 and even 7 to the original 6.0 release
Could recording the final midi take to audio be a workaround this? I really just want to use Ardour.
There are various things you can do to workaround these issues. Me and many others are completing work with Ardour MIDI. We've made a collaborative EP using Ardour over Syncthing not long ago.
If you need help, If recommend asking in the #ardour channel in my community chat: chat unfa xyz
Thank you, so I will forget this DAW because I work with MIDI a lot.
Don't be so quick to dismiss it! I work with MIDI all the time, and I manage to so my work in Ardour.
My community and I have just finished and released collab EP made with Ardour.
And also... version 7 is coming out any moment now, having a completely overhauled internal time management, which should finally obliterate a slew of nasty bugs we've been putting up with for so long.
Paul Davis, the author of Ardour has come to my community chat last month and announced he's taking on the task to Make Ardour's MIDI Awesome (MAMA)!
Great things are coming to Ardour's MIDI!
agree with you. due to bugs I couldnt finish any of my midi songs in 20 percent. ardour midi is still in experimental form. things are similar with mixbus
its not to morrow that i 'll leave Reaper...not only the Kids , i am 75 and making my guitar strumming tracks with midi for country songs...
Hello and congratulations on your channel !:
I'm testing Ardor, and Quantization as squaring in Loops, Totally Fail.
I hope they fix it.
I totally agree with you.
It is a shame that a program of these characteristics, and with what it costs to learn, fails in the easiest way, in which none of its competitors fail.
You should put on the batteries and fix this.
Thank you very much for your channel.
Greetings
I agree with you, Ardour 6 is a bit better but sometimes it's weird and complicated. bugs (some of them are very old), missing features, suboptimal workflow..
I agree with you about the improvements and the bugs. Lots of things are changed under the surface. Especially latency handling is completely different compared to Ardour 5.x. And even this is not completely fixed.
@@bmusic9817 What's not fixed ?
@@pauldavisthefirst A special case I recently discussed with Robin. Rubato.
Time/position data are latency compensated in version 6 too. The problem occurs if a plugin requests latency but doesn't use it (to produce a negative delay). In theory, the playback would have to start from a negative position. I know, it's a hard nut to crack.
Found a comment from Paul Davis : Ardour is not centered on making music inside the computer. We are not like Live or Bitwig or FL Studio. Some people do use Ardour this way, but it is currently primarily designed to record people performing on external musical instruments of various kinds. I don't want to dissuade you from trying Ardour, but I do want you have the right expectations.
I wish ardour had the piano roll from lmms.
Yeah! Even if Ardour's developers like it or not... Midi is the most important key to attracting most of the users out there.
Sad to say I have to agree. I've been using Ardour for years now and was hoping to see Midi getting better than the 2nd class treatment it's had. I recently had to move to Windows because I want to use Kontact libraries, and can't be bothered to mess around with Wine. But I stayed with Ardour 5.12. Then 6.0 was released, and I kind of lost patience at that point. I looked at Reaper, and 2 days later bought it. Best $80 I've ever spent. It is so much easier to work with Midi in Reaper. I now think I could have written a couple of albums in the amount of time I have wasted on working around Ardour's broken or missing Midi features. The disappearing notes issue has cost me plenty!
A case in point with Ardour has been the lack of decent velocity editing - the author seems dead set against the lollipop model because it has the limitation of not handling chords well; and that's true, but I'd rather have a lollipop that caters for 80% of cases than what Ardour has. And there are lots of other things missing; piano roll for multiple items, note-chasing, proper midi CC curves and editing, the list goes on.
I was even considering using Reaper for midi, then exporting the audio to Mixbus 5 for mixing, but I'm not even bothering with that - you can freeze midi tracks to audio and mix it that way, for example.
Audio wise: yes Ardour and Mixbus 5 are good to mix with - I especially like the Mixbus UI. But for Midi, I really advise people to look elsewhere until they bring it up to spec. I don't blame the Ardour team - they have their priorities, but it's just not Midi up to now.
Hi , UNFA , when i hear that i want to stay with Reaper Linux , even if i have sometime little Xruns problems , every time i have tried Ardour i have felt like regressing .
honestly on that kids making bleeping noises on synthesizers bit
i did want to get a guitar
still do
just too out of my no budget
so right now im just jammin with whatever free plugins i can find and lmms
also yoo literally all the problems you listed with lmms are problems ive had too
honestly im kinda just trying to find an alternative that suits me right now
In Ardor 6 the midi bug is still maintained when you want to move a single note and delete all those that are in that note?
I am not sure what is the issue you're describing.
Hi, im considering downloading Ardour, how is the MIDI part working now? Is it better than Protools (thats not difficult tho)?
Hey, do you think in v7 we will get new MIDI features/improvements?
I think we'll mostly see long-dreaded bugs gone! And that's what I'm hoping for foremost :)
Hi Unfa! Almost 2 years later, with Ardour 6.3 released, do you still have the same thoughts?
Also, I've seen you've produced some very interesting MIDI production videos with Ardour, does it mean these issues does not stop someone from creating good MIDI music, just that it turns the way a lot more painful then they should? Asking as someone who wants to enter into hobby music production.
Hey! The latest stable release of Ardour is 6.9, not 6.3 :)
These MIDI issues are still present, and there's even some new ones related to editing multiple regions at once. For example: you can inadvertantly modify or delete notes from a region outside of your view and have no idea until much later. It happens rarely, but it happens.
Still - this doesn't stop me or others from making music with Ardour, it just sometimes makes it unnecessarily frustrating. I really hope Ardour developers can eradicate these issues and make MIDI in Ardour reliable, if nothing else. After it's reliable, we can start thinking about new features.
It is unfortunately not only Ardours fault though. In fact I blame the movie industry for both the existence of MIDI and it's vanishing from the soundcards when the samples got better, due to faster computers with higher bitwidth on the data bus. In these days, timing shouldn't really be a problem. The greatest problem is the gazillions of C based libraries that has been intermixed since the arrival of C++.
Have they declined/failed to review MIDI patches?
They're fixing the core to allow these fixes to be implemented.
Has anyone noticed that when you add new track to the session it lates a little but if you reopen the session - it becomes normal? How do you fight that?
Wow, thank you unfa. I'm middle-aged and poor and thought this is how free DAWs work these days... buggy :-)
What is this Zrythm you speak of?
They shouldn't!
Zrythm us not production ready yet, but it seems to be a DAW focused more on electronic music production, but with a well thought-through UI and modern design.
Just downloaded the source for Zrythm. Crashes more than your live demo :-) Think I'll leave that one for now, but looks promising.
As far as I recall midi was implemented in a google summer of code project. Can that explain some of it?
I don't know :D
Rant about MIDI in Ardour? Breakfast's gonna be interesting, very interesting ;) I was cussing already in 5.12. I haven't tried 6 yet.
really like ya´ channel Cheers
I still use Rosegarden for anything other than very simple MIDI parts. I know the Ardour team did originally intend to provide fully featured MIDI support and for all I know still do. Rather than being biased against 'kids making bleeping noises' as you put it, I think the slow development of MIDI is more to do with a feeling that it's an ancient tech standard (it's 40 years old) and we really should have moved on to something like OSC by now. MIDI does have some really grotesque limitations, one of which is being limited to 12TET*, making it highly Eurocentric.
*I know this isn't entirely true, I'm shorthanding a complex argument here.
Rosegarden probably isn't the right tool for EDM, granted, but it seriously rocks if you want to write complex orchestral arrangements.
Cakewalk 5.0 from over 20 years ago had better MIDI support than any Free Software DAW out there today. That's just terrible! Thank you for "ranting" about this exact issue unfa. It's unbelievable.
unbelievable story. Cubase 2 Atari 30 years ago had better midi editing. almost 10 years without pianoroll. God, is it really happening?
Ooooh that brings me back. I confirm this. I had that, Atari 1040STe. 1990. Life was good ;)
Setting overlapping MIDI note policy in Session Properties-Misc to 'never allow them' sorts our most of the problems, I find.
Hah, that option is something I overlooked for the longest time and I'm thinking about starting to use it.
@@unfa00 May it help. Still, the looping and other mysterious issues persist. I agree with your sentiment. I accept Ardour as an eccentric genius; capable of vast greatness, but not perfect. Much like any of us. Good luck with the future of your channel!
@@pietervantonder2724 Thanks! Yes, I'm hoping Ardour 7 will bring us much needed MIDI fixes - that's what the developers say, and it should arrive much sooner than Ardour 6, as the core refactoring is already done :)
I really wish ardour had a dedicated window for midi editing tbh. every other daw has one and ardour feels cheap ( even though its not) because of it.
It's a design decision made by the Ardour team. I've tried to make them change their mind on that, but I've given up ;) Check out Zrythm - it's far from stable, but it may best Ardour for electronic music production in a few years.
@@unfa00 it would be cool to see a fork of ardour with more midi capabilities, its sorely needed imho.
So how do you deal with the first-midi-note-not-triggering bug? I am using Mixbus 6.1.22 rather than Ardour but the bug is present there too.
Usually I do this:
1. Extend the region start to the left so I can see the note in question.
2. Shift the note very slightly to the right (using Alt key to release me from the grid temporarily)
3. Bring the region start where it was
Sometimes I just extend the region start to the left and leave it like that if it's not overlapping anything.
@@unfa00 Thx I'll give it a shot. Got to say I am pretty disappointed by this :(
@@kunimitanaka1079 I feel you. This (and other MIDI bugs) stem from the way Ardour converts between musical and real time (bars+beats vs minutes+seconds). Ardour 6 brings a long-awaited core rewrite and refactoring that will allow developers to finally fix these time format conversion errors and remove a whole class of problems. But so far only the ground work is done. The developers say that Ardour 7 will bring the MIDI fixes that we're waiting for. The good thing is - that should arrive *much* quicker than Ardour 6. But for now - we still need to deal with these issues and work around them if we want to use Ardour MIDI. Sorry :(
Qtractor is amazing for midi, but not for audio
Can anyone tell me what the stock EQ plugins are like on Ardour? Is there a solid parametric EQ, or are there free ones similar to the stock ableton EQ8?
I think the stock Ardour's EQ is pretty good in conjunction with the stock Highpass/lowpass filter and compressor they form a pretty nice basis for mixing. The in-line displays are a nice usability bonus IMO.
@@unfa00 Cheers, brother. I'm really close to escaping windows once and for all :)
Man, I think it's time to you try the Waveform free
"They're so used to the way it sucks, they can't use anything else." This pretty much describes what's wrong with *everything* in the world. You probably didn't mean to be that profound, but there it is.
What accent do you use?
I personally absolutely love ardour and a lot of the other open source synthesis and effects plugins. I love the mixer and playlist view and I think it's a really intuitive program. These midi issues, however, (as well as the lack of live looping capabilities) make it so I cannot possibly use ardour for my own workflow. There's a lot of room for growth, however. I think if ardour wants to really improve their midi capabilities, the best program they could look to for inspiration is FL Studio. I've been using FL Studio for years and years and I've never "outgrown" its capabilities. Recently I've moved to ableton because of its better hardware support but there are times that I miss how intuitive FL is. Everything about FL's ui is intuitive and its midi capabilities are damn near endless. I don't know though, that's just my opinion.
discourse.ardour.org/t/reflections-on-intuitive/78335
I liked the way FL handled midi as well, but I hated the way they handle audio editing. Trying to edit in the middle of something you recorded was frustrating having to bounce between in and out of Edison. Being able to handle it so you can compare wav forms visually and play it all together as you make changes is much nicer.
4:15 "The only thing that isn't are the vocals" I advise you to look at VOCALOID, SynthesizerV and UTAU
Hi Unfa! :-D
There are only two DAWs with full MIDI capability without major problems. Those are Logic and Cubase. I actually use Bitwig now and it's fine but just lacks features that you would find in say Logic.
Ardour MIDI is USELESS. It has the classic problems that you find in a DAW that was primarily audio so the timing is not designed in a way to prioritise correct MIDI playback. Reaper actually has similar issues just not as bad. If you use it for MIDI especially if you use hardware, you'll be ditching it for another DAW. Tracktion, the same problems.
For commercial software to be sold as MIDI capable yet be totally disfunctional compared to say Logic is a scam. With open source it's still very bad because you waste the time of users who won't come back to use the software again.
I actually did fund Ardour many years ago but not now.The problem is that it's dropped further and further behind. if you look at say Bitwig, it's absolutely light years ahead.
Some open source software is really good. Darktable is a brilliant photo editor. Inkscape is a brilliant vector graphics program. Blender is really good but good DAWs are non existent unfortunately.
I've been trying to find something to replace my Cakewalk Music Creator 5.0 which is Windows 7 only and obsolete. I built Ardour 6.0 from source on my Raspberry Pi 4B 4GB. I found it very awkward to use for simple MIDI tasks, better MIDI software existed on the Atari ST!
I've also tried the Non DAW applications. I liked it's elegant minimalism but Non Sequencer seemed a bit basic and not any recent development.
What do people think of Rosegarden? The version from the Raspberry Pi repository complains about the system timer resolution being too low. Seems like a royal pain to build a RT kernel for the Pi and keep it updated by hand.
@ARTOFMUSIC Thanks for the tip, I wasn't aware of this software. I've compiled 3.1 and I am putting it through it's paces.
midi in Ardour -thats why i havent finished any song. i never saw worst midi editing in any music program
@unfa agreed! I have been really digging into Ardour lately and have been using Cubase, Logic, Digital Performer, Pro Tools since (2000) lol, and F$%^ Ardour's midi is atrocious... I want it to be good, though, and like you being a well versed live musician as well as a synthesizer tweaking junky (as if they didn't have those in the 70's though?? WTF >>> I really want to slap these old guys a little bit - Midi is mission-critical for F_%^ sake.
Ardour > MAKE IT WORK RIGHT !! @unfa, what about using reaper? is it better? I haven't tried it... but want to remain in Linux now that I long for the routing and freedom
if only ableton supported linux :/
for some reason the full version works fine in wine but not the live intro version...............
There is pretty good alternative called Bitwig which supports Linux of course, but sadly still without LV2 support.
@@lovely-shrubbery8578 I managed to get this working after a lot of messing around, I think I had to update to the most recent version of Wine rather than the version you get from the Ubuntu package repository. That said, I've not used it much and prefer working with the Linux version of Reaper.
@@vpwerok Yeah, I may end up using reaper, thanks for the tips.
ableton live 10 ( free copy with akai keyboard ) works fine on ubuntu 18.04 with wine. Problem is the display takes lots of CPU time compared to any other daw I've used.
All midi problems due to non exsistence of piano roll.Difficult structures always create difficulties,bugs
No, the lack of a dedicated piano roll is just a UI design choice. It has nothing to do with these bugs.
@@unfa00 They even dont want to add zoom knob icon on sequence,it could alter piano roll editor.I dont like idiotism of Ardour developers.
@@unfa00 In short they do everything that can, to push away users.I prefer to sit on buggy zrythm and write music than sitting on Ardour
why not bitwig ?
Thanks I wont be installing the new Ardour, even using multiple tracks or workarounds in midi editing was useless and waste of time. Cuebase is by far the best all around I find, and tons of free synths and samplers just plug right in etc
You have to answer the question what is more important to you - music or ideology. If it's the first one, just buy Bitwig and enjoy the joy of creating using one of the most powerful DAWs on the market, instantly transforming your ideas into music. If the latter, then you have a problem because you may grow old and still not find an open source program whose quality will come close to industry standards. But this way you'll be free - also from maybe your best songs you lost using broken tools.
That's not true. You can make music everywhere, not only on BEST INSTRUMENT, ONE AND ONLY INDUSTRY STANDARD yada yada things. This leads to unbearable level monopolia of that "one and only" and this one only makes me feel uncomfortable. There we discuss technical side, not musical. Your music barely depends on which DAW or plugin you use. You can write it without computer at all.
Therefore, your message is manipulative and hypocrite. Sorry, but I have personal trigger on that. When I bought FGN bass which I tenderly love, they said - WHY NOT WARWICK? I use linux on my desctop more than 15 years and they regularly ask me HAHAHA WHY LINUX HOW DARE YOU! ARE YOU A DAMN SNOWFLAKE? It drives me nuts every time. Answer is easy - I don't like hack soft, it doesn't run on linux and I don't want to pay that much for "BEST OF THE BEST". I let this to apple fans.
But main reason why people use it - it's something more interesting, more deep and custom than get the top level thing and scratch just surface of it. Same reason why people listen to space ambient, metal or jazz, same as any other unpopular things. Diversity is the thing in those cases. Sorry for my rant in previous comment :)