Monday, February 4, 2008

How to Punch Record in Ardour

Punch recording is a very powerful tool. It allows one to record within a certain selected range without deleting the surrounding track. For example, if you recorded a flawless bass track except for one wrong note, you can simply select the region where the wrong note is and record over it without destroying the rest of the take.

This tutorial explains how to punch record in Ardour specifically. Firstly, a punch range must be made. This is done by clicking and dragging the cursor within the loop/punch ranges selector. After the mouse button is released a window appears saying set loop range and set punch range. Select set punch range. Your screen should now look like the figure below.


The red punch markers can be moved around as necessary. Everything which falls between these two makers will be recorded over. Before you click record, you need to ensure that the Punch In and Punch Out buttons are selected. These buttons are seen in the figure below (Green means that they are selected).

With Punch In selected it will start recording when the first punch marker is reached. If Punch Out is also selected, it will stop recording when the second marker is reached, otherwise it will record until you stop it.

I would recommend that you delete whatever you're recording over before you punch, otherwise it will remain underneath the new recording and make things messy. Also, to speed things up, you can select the Snap to Beat option in the Snap to dropdown found in the View menu. This will make any ranges you make snap to the nearest beat.

Other posts you might find interesting:
Beginner's Guide to Ubuntu Recording
Multiple Outputs for Hydrogen
Normalisation...Never Heard of it!
Interfacing JAMin with Ardour
What Exactly is Mastering for?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

How do you delete what is within the punch brackets?

Brian the Lion said...

Hey Rich,

I'm unfortunately not in front of my Ubuntu Studio PC right now, so I can't give you an in depth answer.

I normally just select and delete the area within the punch range before I start. That way when you punch over the section it will make a new recorded "zone" which can be easily selected and deleted.

I'm sure there is a simpler way but I'm going to have to investigate first. I will then get back to you as soon as I find out.

Later,
Brian

sonictwin said...

I do all my hydrogen sequencing in rosegarden

Is it possible to hit play in rosegarden and have ardour start recording?

This would help tremendously

Brian the Lion said...

Hey SonicTwin,

There is most definitely a way of doing this. You need to synchronise JACK with Rosegarden, hydrogen and Ardour.

Here is a link to tutorial which shows you how to sync Hydrogen with Rosegarden: http://rosegarden.sourceforge.net/tutorial/supplemental/hydrogen/

A similar process is used to sync Ardour, you just need to find the jack sync/transport option under the various menus and select it. Sorry I can't help more than that, I'm not currently at my Ubuntu machine.

Hope it helps,
Later,
Brian

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