[Ardour-Users] Struggling to do anything at all

[Kevin Cosgrove]

On 2 August 2007 at 17:52, Steven Chamberlain <steven at pyro.eu.org> wrote:

> I'm trying to record drums using 8 tracks.  All I need is a
> backing and click track in headphones.  I would like to record
> the song only 8 bars at a time, recording multiple (anything
> from 3 to 50) takes back-to-back, and keeping only the best
> ones.  I will need to stitch each 8-bar section together with
> short overlaps and crossfades, but other than that I don't wish
> to do any fine-grained edits, like moving individual drum hits.

I did that with ardour 0.99.3.  I had many takes, used a guide
mix of the other instruments and a click track.  I did a lot of
editing and punch-ins.  I did some bouncing via export/import.  I
did this with three 5 minute songs.  I had a great time with very
little trouble.  At one point I was auditioning takes in groups
of 8 tracks to determine which tracks were best in each section
of the song.  During that endeavor I had 70+ tracks active, many
muted, which pushed the limits of my disk speed, but had no other
issues.

The guitar player (band leader) was cautious about Linux and OSS
for this task.  He's a laid back perfectionist, has 1-2 Emmys,
took a few music theory classes from Juliard teachers (which
were teaching at his engineering school).  His initial reaction
was that the drum tracks were "surprisingly good".  By the 3rd
song, and after I figured out his expectations and my workflow,
his reaction was "that's excellent, and I didn't have to touch
the tracks at all".  He did a little editing on my tracks for
the other two tunes.  If you're curious about his CDs, check out
debone.com.  Unfortunately the three tracks I play on didn't make
it into the "clips" on the site.  I'll have to have him add one.

Cheers...

--
Kevin