[Ardour-Users] Workflow for capturing improv

[Bill Gribble]

I have been musicking with a small Eurorack modular synthesizer lately.  Super fun.  Also as a side note the Euro manufacturers are a really interesting bunch and there's a very cool spirit of independence and creativity that is very reminiscent of the Linux/FLOSS world.

What I'm doing is really unstructured and I'd like to keep it that way -- I don't really start with a concept of a song, or what I'm doing at each step, just patching away and hoping something cool comes up.   

I have yet to really put together any recorded pieces from this process and I'm trying to figure out how to use Ardour most effectively.  I'd like to basically just record a bunch of raw material, then edit it all down to a song.  This doesn't sound that crazy, but I'm having a hard time breaking out of my recording-a-band mentality to figure out how to set up the session.  

So let's say, simplest case, I'm doing everything with my one instrument, all audio (no midi at all).  I decide my song is going to be 8 sections of 30 seconds or so each, where each section will have different sounds and musical themes.   Each section will probably be edited down to a dozen or so source tracks of audio to mix, but I don't really know what before I start.  Each track will itself be comped and  edited down from assorted raw pieces. 

So how would you guys set up (1) the recording of the improvised raw material (layers/takes on one track? Create a new track for each time I hit record?) (2) the overall management of the raw material so as not to get mired in an unindexed mess where I can't find anything?   

Any particular features of A3 (which this is my first nontrivial project with) that suggest certain ways of working?

Thanks,
Bill Gribble