manual/include/non-linear-workflow-principles.html

<p>
	The Cue window allows working with music ideas in a non-linear fashion.
	Instead of navigating the timeline and placing regions of audio and MIDI
	data at a particular point in time, you deal with short clips that contain
	rhythmic and melodic patterns and can be triggered to play a certain amount
	of times, then automatically trigger another clip to be played.
</p>

<p>
	The concept has been introduced and popularized by Ableton and since then
	found its way into many other applications. Ardour draws many ideas from
	Ableton Live, as well as from several other digital audio workstations,
	and adapts them to Ardour's specifics. If you are familiar with Live, you
	will find many aspects familiar, but you should not expect the Cue's feature
	set to be a 100% copy of that from any other application.
</p>

<p>
	Here are some basics concepts of the non-linear workflow shared by multiple
	applications including Ardour.
</p>

<h2>Grid and scenes</h2>

<p>
	All clips are organized in a kind of a grid. The grid provides an overview
	of all the musical ideas, all the rhythmic patterns, short melodies, and sound
	effects that you can use in a composition.
</p>
<p>
	One dimension of the grid, usually represented by a track, would accumulate
	clips played with roughly the same kind of an instrument, e.g. all drum
	patterns, or all basslines etc.
</p>
<p>
	The other dimension, usually called scenes (or cues, in Ardour) would
	organize these clips so that you would be able to play multiple clips at
	the same time by pressing just one button. So if you want a particular
	bassline played along a particular drum sequence, you would place them in
	the same scene.
</p>

<p>
	Ardour specifics are explained in the
	<a href="@@cue-window-elements">Cue window elements</a> chapter.
</p>

<h2>Slots and clips</h2>

<p>
	Cells in a grid are usually called slots. They are a kind of a container
	that can hold an audio or a MIDI clip. Typically, a clip can be loaded
	into a slot from a disk by pointing the file selector to it, or loaded
	from a pre-recorded library of reusable clips, or recorded in place.
	You will find more information about that in the
	<a href="@@populating-the-cue-grid">Populating the cue grid</a> chapter.
</p>

<h2>Launching</h2>

<p>
	In a non-linear workflow, a clip can be triggered to play in multiple ways.
	Most of the time it's either pressing a corresponding silicon pad on an
	external grid controller attached via MIDI, or scrolling the mouse wheel
	downwards over the slot that contains the clip, or just clicking a 'Play'
	button next to clip's name.
</p>

<p>
	Usually you can configure a slot to respond to some ways to trigger clip
	playback and ignore others. We'll talk about it in the
	<a href="@@clip-launch-options">Clip Launch Options</a> chapter.
</p>

<h2>Follow actions</h2>

<p>
	A clip can play in a loop until you stop it directly, or it can play
	a user-defined amount of time and the trigger another clip in the track.
	Say, you start a composition with one rhythmic pattern played four times
	and you want the next rhythmic patterns to play eight times, then move
	to a third one.
</p>

<p>
	This is typically achieved through so called follow actions. In an example
	above, for the first clip (or, rather, slot) you can set a follow count
	(4 times), and use the follow action usually called "Next". This will get
	the clip in that first slot to play 4 times then trigger the playback of
	a clip in the second slot.
</p>

<p>
	Every application has its own set of follow actions. Most common ones are
	repeating the clip indefinitely, triggering the previous/next slot,
	or jumping to a slot in a particular scene.
</p>

<p>
	You can read more about follow actions in Ardour
	<a href="@@clip-follow-actions">here</a>.
</p>

<h2>Musical time and stretching</h2>

<p>
	In a non-linear workflow, all work is happening in musical time: both audio
	and MIDI clips are measured in bars and beats.
</p>

<p>
	By default, an application that supports a non-linear workflow will attempt
	to estimate beats per minute in an audio clip and then stretch or squeeze
	the clip so that it would match the bpm of the session and wrap neatly around
	bars. That way, a clip that originally has a different tempo that the one in
	the session would stay in sync with other clips.
</p>

<p>
	Stretch options in Ardour are explained
	<a href="@@clip-stretch-options">here</a>.
</p>