ardour-tutorial/content/getting-started/overview-of-the-interface/cue-window/index.en.md

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title = "Cue window"
description = "Basics of Ardour's cue window"
chapter = false
weight = 4
#pre = "<b>1. </b>"
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The _Cue_ window provides tools to set up live performance using Ardour. We are not going to use _Cue_ in this tutorial, so this is just a quick overview to give you a basic idea what all this is about.

## User interface elements

The user interface is pretty much standard for this type of a feature set.

{{< figure src="en/ardour7-cue-window-sections.png" alt="" >}}

Here are the main UI parts:

1. A grid of clip launchers
2. A browser for reusable clips
3. Clip settings

From left to right you get tracks that contain clips (not visible on the timeline when you switch to the _Editor_ window). From top to bottom you get 8 rows called scenes, _A_ to _H_.

The browser on the right allows easily dropping pre-recorded clips onto clip slots for playback. You can use both audio and MIDI clips. Dropping a clip on the empty space will create a new track and automatically fill the first slot (scene _A_) with that clip.

Settings below allow customizing how a clip is played, whether it is stretched to match certain bpm value, whether it triggers playback of a certain other clip etc.

## Non-linear workflow

Working with clip launchers is commonly referred to as non-linear workflow, because it is based on looped playback of pre-recorded clips where you don't have to go from scene A to scene H directly.

You can set up your clip launchers in a way that a clip in a scene B will play 4 times, trigger a clip in scene A that will play 2 times, then jump to clip C and play it 6 times, then go back to clip B, which will repeat the entire cycle again and again until you stop it manually. And all that without ever pressing the **Play** button in the transport to play a composition from start to finish.

## Combining linear and non-linear workflows

While you can play an entire song live without ever getting out of the _Cue_ window — especially when you have a hardware grid controller and all pre-recorded clips you might need — you can integrate clip launchers into regular linear workflow in the _Editor_ window.

Here is a simple example of that:

{{< figure src="en/ardour7-linear-and-nonlinear.png" alt="Combining linear and non-linear workflow" >}}

Ardour plays two bars of a regular MIDI track that uses a sampled instrument, then launches scene A at bar 3, scene B at bar 4, and stops all scenes at bar 5. You can trigger and stop scenes at any time in your otherwise linear project, as many times as you like.

## Continuing

Now that you are familiar with main Ardour's windows, let's jump to the next
section where we create a new track and then import some audio file.

Next: [Creating tracks and busses](../creating-tracks-and-busses)