Hey guys, today we’re going to talk about how to use Ardour.
Ardour is a free and open source digital audio workstation for Linux, and it’s one of the
best and most used programs for making music on this operating system.
This program has support for multitrack audio recording and MIDI, but for this tutorial
we’ll only be covering the audio capabilities of it.
We’ll talk about using it for MIDI in a future video, so don’t forget to subscribe
to see it.
To get Ardour up and running, you’ll first need to have jack installed.
This is included with Ubuntu Studio, and it is installed with the program.
You will however, need to set it up with your audio interface.
This is fairly simple, but it is beyond the scope of this video, and it’s especially
easy if you’re using qjackctl.
Once it’s configured, the rest of the signal routing for Jack is handled within Ardour,
and setting up tracks with their inputs and outputs is really straightforward with the
interface provided.
Though Ardour is open source, they do ask that you pay if you want updates and the installer.
Instead, you can either use Ardour4, which can be downloaded and installed, or build
Ardour5 as shown in a previous video.
For this tutorial, we’ll be using Ardour4 in Ubuntu Studio, which is a Linux distribution
that includes various audio and video production programs.
We’ll first get started with what you see after starting a new project.
The interface will open, and all you’ll have is the master bus.
This is great, since we can easily add new tracks and customize our project for exactly
what we need, depending on how many instruments we plan on recording.
So now we’ll go ahead and add a few new tracks to our project.
At the top menu, click on Track, and then Add New Track or Bus.
There’s a few options we need to consider now.
Our first option is how many tracks you want to add.
You can add more than one at once, but make sure you consider that all the tracks you’re
adding at once are the same kind.
Therefore, if you need 10 mono tracks and 1 stereo track, you first need to add the
10 mono tracks and then add the stereo track separately.
You also have options for a MIDI track, but we won’t be using this right now.
Finally, we can add a bus.
I like to use this to group tracks, or as an effects send for reverb.
That way groups of tracks can be processed together, which makes everything lock together
better in your mix.
If you select a simple audio track, you’ll need to choose between mono and stereo.
Most of the tracks we’ll be using today are mono, but we’ll also be using a stereo
track for our drum overheads.
You can also select the order for this track, relative to what other ones are currently
selected.
This isn’t a very big deal, since tracks can be reordered by holding down the Control
key and using the arrow keys.
Now that our track is created, we’ll rename it so we can keep organized.
This is especially important when working on larger projects with many tracks.
To rename the track, just double click the track name and type something in.
Next we want to actually record something on this track.
We’ll record something simple for this demonstration, then we’ll use a multitrack project file
after for the rest of the tutorial.
To arm the track for recording, we have to press the red circle.
This tells Ardour that we want to capture the selected input on this specific track
once we start recording.
By default, the audio input is set to input number 1 of our audio interface, but we need
to change it to 2 because that’s what we have our microphone plugged into.
To change the input, we need to open the editor mixer.
Click on the view menu at the top and select Show Editor Mixer.
This gives you one mixing strip on the side of your DAW.
It’s has all the options of the full mixing view but its specific to this track.
If you want to use another track, just click it and the mixer will change to the settings
of that track.
To change the input, click on the 1 at the top of the mixer.
Change this to your desired input for your audio interface.
Now we turn on recording, so that when we hit play the audio is captured.
To actually start recording, press the play button in the transport.
Then press stop to finish recording.
The recording will automatically disarm, but the selected tracks will remain.
We just recorded a quick clapping sound and some background noise to test the microphone.
Now we can play it back.
If you want to work on a large project, you can easily add and record on multiple tracks
at once.
This is especially important for anything involving multiple performers or a drum kit.
We’re going to set this up as if we were recording a drum kit with 4 microphones as
an example.
We’ll have two mono tracks; one for kick and the other for snare.
We’ll also have a stereo track for the drum overheads.
We’ll select the inputs separately for each track in a similar way to the previous example.
When setting the inputs for the overhead, you’ll be using a stereo input, so make
sure your inputs are paired correctly on your audio interface.
Now just arm all the individual tracks and start recording like we did previously.
Once you have a few tracks recorded, it’s time to start editing.
We have a selection tool we have use to make a time selection.
Then you can delete sections of a track, or any waste recording that is just noise at
the beginning or end.
Next we have the split tool.
You can cut the track at a precise time point.
Then, delete sections of a track or slide them around individually.
Then there’s the time stretch tool.
You can shorten or lengthen a track, and this preserves the track’s pitch as well.
Finally, another important tool is automation.
This can be used to adjust the volume fades automatically for a song so that they are
saved into the project.
After all your tracks are recorded and have been trimmed down to remove noise, it’s
time to start mixing.
The mixing process in Ardour is actually pretty simple once you get used to it, and there
are definitely plenty of effects that you can use to adjust the audio during mixing.
For this tutorial, we’ve opened a pre-recorded multitrack file.
This tutorial isn’t so much about the mixing process, it should be considered more of an
orientation to show you how to use this DAW, and where all the various tools are.
So we have various tracks all setup on the side here, and they’ve all been labeled
so we know exactly what they are.
Keep in mind that we’ve already mixed a lot of this song, so we’ll be discussing
where all the tools are and not the process.
First, we’ll just click and drag the end marker to the end of the track.
Use these to select the start and stop points for your recording, especially if there’s
a lot of noise at the beginning and end.
Once again, we’ll pull up the editor mixer to process our track, except this time the
goal will be for mixing instead of signal routing.
We’ve already talked about the first option, which is input selection.
This isn’t necessary at this stage.
Below this, you’ll find a phase inverse switch.
Use this is tracks, such as a snare drum or acoustic guitar, if they are out of phase.
That way you can preserve the tone without destructive interference, especially if the
tracks are played back in mono.
To select an effect, all you need to do is right click on the effects section of the
mixer and choose an effect from the drop down menu.
This kick drum track we’re using has two of our most important effects on it.
We’ll start with the compressor.
We used this to do some leveling.
It’s great to add more punch to your drums, or to smooth out an inconsistent vocal or
bass track.
This compressor has all the basic settings you would expect, such as attack, release,
threshold, ratio, and makeup gain.
There’s also a meter on the side that shows the gain reduction in real time, so you can
visually see how much it’s being reduced when the compressor is active.
Finally, if you click green dot beside the compressor item we pressed earlier, you can
select to bypass it.
Then, you can test to see that your effect actually made an improvement, or use it to
match the volume to the pre-compressed signal.
The next important effect you need is the equalizer.
The built in equalizer has a bunch of different volume levels at the top for frequency ranges
that can be adjusted individually.
The specific boundaries of these frequency ranges can be adjusted in the bottom half
of the effect.
For example, we’re working with a kick drum, so we decided to boost slightly in the low
frequencies, cut out the cardboard box sound from the mid-range, and boost again at the
high end to get a distinctive snap.
The next thing you’ll need to know about is the pan control.
Below the effects is a slider.
Just slide it left or right to pan the track.
Below that, we have our mute and solo buttons, which are great for trying to work on individual
tracks during mixing.
If you need to adjust the volume of a track, all you have to do is pull up or down on the
grey slider below, but monitor the meter and make sure it doesn’t peak as you do this.
Now we need to talk about signal routing.
In some cases, you’ll want to send a track to your master, a bus, or an auxiliary send.
In this case, we’ve created a reverb bus track that we’re using as an auxiliary track.
The original tracks, such as the snare and vocals, are still sent to the master output,
but they’re also sent to the reverb bus so the effect can be added to all of them
together.
We’ve already covered how to add the bus track.
To send a signal to this track, we click on the button at the bottom.
If it’s only send to the master output, this button says master.
Otherwise it could have numbers.
If we select Ardour busses on the side menu, we can see that there is a green dot in the
master left and right, and in the reverb in.
This means that the signal for that track is passing to these other channels.
To add or remove them, just click inside their respective boxes.
When we solo this track, we can hear part of the original signal as well as the reverb
effect, but this will depend on your wet/dry mix settings.
Another thing you should check out is the mixer view.
Select this at the top under the window menu.
It basically opens a new window for Ardour, so you can switch between them through the
taskbar of your operating system.
The mixer view is basically an expanded look on the individual track settings we saw earlier.
All the same options are available, but they can be seen all together.
This is definitely helpful during the mixing process, but it can get annoying to switch
back and forth between the windows to change the position in the song.
In this case, having your system setup with two monitors would be a real advantage.
There’s also the meterbridge view.
This shows the level of all the tracks, so you can see if any are obviously two high
or low.
You can also monitor them all the see if they’re peaking, or check to see if a track is active
at a certain point in the song.
Finally, the only thing left to do is to export the project.
The export options are found under the session menu at the top.
We’ll just be exporting as the CD settings, which are 16-bit and 44.1 kHz.
We’ll save the same file to a folder on our computer, let it export, and we’re all
finished.
The export process for Ardour is reasonably quick, but it will depend on your hardware
and how many tracks and effects you have in your project.
Thanks for watching this introductory tutorial on Ardour for Linux.
We hope you enjoyed it and found it useful.
As always, don’t forget to like the video, subscribe to the channel, and check out our
social media links in the video description.