[ardour-users] Fwd: [LAU] Ardour: fixing errors in a recorded track (was: DAW usability)

[Paul Winkler]

On Sun, Jun 17, 2007 at 10:28:57AM -0700, Mark Knecht wrote:
> On 6/17/07, Jan Depner <eviltwin69 at cableone.net> wrote:
> > > This is probably the biggest reason a moderately skilled player like
> > > me really enjoyed recording in Pro Tools. In PT I could setup a
> > > punch-in range where I wanted to rerecord, basically since my first
> > > take was junk for a certain number of bars. I could loop PT over a
> > > longer range both before and after the punch in points so that I could
> > > get the groove before hand and not cut of my recording at the end. PT
> > > took care of adding and naming a new audio take for each time I looped
> > > over the punch-in range and put them in a play list for me to choose
> > > the one I finally wanted to keep. I might record the same 8 or 16 bars
> > > 20 times to get things sounding good, trying different ideas, etc.
> > > After that it was easy to delete the new takes that I wasn't going to
> > > use and the moderate skilled player ended up with what sounded like
> > > one coherent take.
> > >
> >
> >     I never thought of looping over it.  It seems like it should work
> > though (and it sounds like a very good idea).
> >
> > Jan
> >
> >
> It didn't a long time ago - maybe 2-3 years back. As I say I hardly
> use Ardour anymore so I'm just so out of touch I figured I'd ask.
> Always looking for a way to link up with Linux Audio again one of
> these days.
> 
> If you or someone else has a chance to try it out I'd be interested in
> the results. Pretty important when you loop over and over again over
> the same location is that each take has to get an independent name or
> you cannot find the take you want to hang on to.

I just tried this in ardour2, and it works :)

- in the "loop/punch ranges" timeline, select the range you want to
  punch. When you finish dragging, you get prompted to either "Set
  loop range" or "Set punch range".  Choose the latter.  (The current
  snap-to setting affects the selection, of course.)

- Again in the "loop/punch ranges" timeline, select the range you want
  to hear played back, and choose "Set loop range".

- Enable the "Punch In" and "Punch Out" buttons (near top right).

- Click the Record button, then when you're ready to start, click the
  Loop button.

Ardour will now loop over the loop range you selected, and each time
it crosses the punch in marker, it will start recording a new take on
top, and stop recording when it crosses the punch out marker.

Each take is saved as a new region on top of the previous ones.  It
gets named trackname-x.y where trackname is the name you gave the
original track, and x.y are numbers unique to the take.  You can treat
these regions just like any other region... delete them, rename them,
trim them, move them up and down in the stack, drag them to other
tracks, etc.

I don't know how it compares to other DAWs for ease of use, but since
I've never tried punch-in in Ardour before, and the first technique I
thought to try worked on the first attempt, without referring to any
docs (other than button tooltips), I'd say it's pretty intuitive :)

-- 

Paul Winkler
http://www.slinkp.com