Record Audio in Ardour 3.0
I’m going to show you the way I use Ardour. Ardour is a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) that runs in Linux and Mac Os computers. It’s an open source application you can get for free and, in fact, you can participate in its development. Let’s go!
What will you need?
- DAW: Ardour 3.0
- Drums: Hydrogen
- Bass guitar
- Electric guitar
Step 0: Configuring Jackd
Ardour is a jack-aware application so before use it you need to configure the jack sound server (something similar to the ASIO thing). I use qjackctl to configure jack settings and launch it.
Step 1: Setting the Tempo and Countoff
- Set tempo: edit the red marker at the tempo line. I’m going to set it to 138,00
- Set the countoff: Ardour lacks of countoff feature so I usually start recording after 2 bars
Step 2: Preparing the Tracks
I’m going to use five mono tracks, named as follows:
- Bass drum
- Snare
- Hi-Hat
- Bass guitar
- Guitar
To add a new track you can go to the track menu or use a shortcut.
You can set the inputs of your tracks using the I/O matrix. To get the matix you have to click in the button under the track name, in the vertical strip.
Step 3: Recording drums
I use Hydrogen as a drum machine. Once you have created the drum pattern you have to activate song mode and jack transport (blue buttons will turn on) to set the priority of the transport to Ardour.
To start/stop recording on a track you have to click the big red button at the control bar and the track record buttons of the tracks you are going to record on.
When the tracks are armed you can start/stop recording with the space bar. Ardour adds a red background to the tracks being recorded.
Step 4: Recording Bass and Guitar
To the bass and electric guitar I record real instruments trough the audio interface. If you want to know how I do it you can have a look to my previous assignment, below theese lines.
Bonus Tip
If you use a laptop running Linux, pay atention to cpufreq-set. It allows you to set the cores of your CPU at its best performance. So open a linux terminal and type:
``sudo cpufreq-set -g performance -r``
It will make the trick.
Final Thoughts
Although Ardour 3 lacks of some features it is a nice piece of software. It is being developed constantly and users can help to improve it because developers are very receptive to user comments.
I know that a screencasts could be more ilustrative to the entire process but I’m dealing with the screencasting software, the limited muscle of mi laptop and the uglyness of my own voice. But I promisse to overcome all the obstacles to the next assignment.
To the kind reviewers, thanks for your time. I hope I’ve exposed the topic in useful right way but let me know what to do to improve. Enjoy.