Alexandre Prokoudine
e24b2ffd9f
The Starting Session chapter is gone. There is now a reorganized Getting Started chapter that deals with explaining sessions, covers UI basics and tells how to add new tracks and busses. Then there's new Recording chapter that holds sections on recording audio and explains routing inside and outside Ardour. All the past material on JACK has been removed. The tuturial now mentions the PulseAudio backend and clarifies that JACK is not the recommended backend anymore.
94 lines
4.0 KiB
Markdown
94 lines
4.0 KiB
Markdown
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title = "Creating tracks and busses"
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chapter = false
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weight = 3
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#pre = "<b>1. </b>"
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+++
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## What is an Audio Track?
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An **Audio** **Track** is a place where you can drag a **Region**
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from your **Region List** and where you can record sounds coming from an
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outside source.
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A Region represents an audio clip, i.e., one of your sound files or just a
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portion of a sound file. In the image below, the horizontal strip areas marked
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"*MyTrack*" and "*short-drone-mono*" are Tracks. The rectangles containing audio
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information are called Regions (for example, the Region "*wheels-mono.1*" is
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contained within *MyTrack*).
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## What is a Bus?
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A **Bus** is similar to a track except that it does not contain its own regions.
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You cannot record directly into a bus or drag regions into it. The area marked
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"*Master*" in your session is an example of a Bus. Typically every session has a
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**Master Bus**. All the audio to be **Exported** from your Session will be sent
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to the Master Bus.
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## How are Tracks and Busses Used?
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Audio-processing **Plugins** and **Automation** can be applied to both
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Tracks and Busses.
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Audio tracks can be routed to Busses. In fact, many Tracks can be simultaneously
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routed to one Bus. Busses are traditionally used as a convenient way to apply
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any kind of signal processing to many Tracks at once. For instance, you might
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find it useful to route all Tracks that contain drum sounds to a single Bus that
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you would call '*drum bus*'. Then, if you decide that all your drum Tracks are
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too loud, you can quickly adjust the level of the '*drum bus*' rather than
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adjusting each separate Track that feeds into it.
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Another use of a Bus would be to have a common **Reverberation** Plugin, so that
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any audio Track which requires the Reverb effect could be routed to a single
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Bus.
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## Adding Tracks and Busses
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Right-Click in the empty area beneath any existing Tracks and Busses.
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Alternatively, click on the menu *Track > Add Track, Bus, or VCA...* (shortcut
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"*Ctrl*" + "*Shift*" + "*N*"). The following window will appear:
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**Add** lets you specify how many Tracks (or Busses) you would to like
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to create.
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Choose **Audio Tracks** or **Audio Busses** to specify whether you want to
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create Tracks or Busses. There are also other options such as **MIDI Track** and
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more. Ardour offers different track types depending on the type of data they
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contain. This tutorial will only cover Audio Tracks and Busses. (see the [Ardour
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Manual](http://manual.ardour.org/working-with-tracks/track-types/) for details
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on all track types)
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You can optionally give a **Name** to the Track or Bus being created.
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The **Configuration** drop-down menu allows you to specify how many
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channels of audio you'd like the new Track or Bus to handle. For
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example, if you will be recording your voice on this track using a
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single microphone, choose **Mono**. If you plan to import a clip from an
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existing song and place it on this Track, choose **Stereo**. The choice
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made here will also affect which Plugins you can use on the track (Mono
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tracks cannot use Stereo Plugins and vice versa).
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The **Position** menu lets you choose where you want the new track or bus to be
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placed: first, last, before or after the selection.
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You can safely ignore the other options for now. To learn more about each of
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them, please check [this page of the complete Ardour
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Manual](http://manual.ardour.org/working-with-tracks/adding-tracks-and-busses/).
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Click the **Add and Close** button to create the Tracks or Busses you have just
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configured, and automatically close the Add Track window. The tracks you just
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created will appear as new rows in the **Main Canvas**. If you still wanted to
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add more tracks after this step, you could alternatively have chosen **Add
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selected items (and leave dialog open)** instead.
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## Continuing
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Once you've added one or more tracks, you will want to put some audio material
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into them to work with. Continue on to the **Importing Audio** and **Recording
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Audio** chapters to learn how to do this.
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Next: [Importing audio](../importing-audio)
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