Ardour 6 Quickstart (recording, editing, mixing and exporting)

[@tux7k]

5:02 I love how he just did the coolest jazz solo with his mouth and just said "ok, now we have some basic audio"

[@FrimcX]

After his Jazz solo I went down immediately to find this kind of comment! hahahaha

[@bassistguy]

I have been using Ardour for years. I don't think people realize the capabilities they have with Ardour. The fact that it's free and has all of these features is beyond great.

[@WarrenPostma]

They have made it impossible to download for free now. What a crappy move.

[@unfa00]

The official binaries were paid for as long as I can remember. It costs $1/mo minimum to have access to the newest official builds and nightlies. And if you won't/can't do that - on Linux every distribution packages Ardour. Though these unofficial builds sometimes give me some strange issues I can't reproduce in the official ones.

[@WarrenPostma]

@@unfa00 that is pretty decent. $1 is affordable for a poor kid.

[@unfa00]

​@@WarrenPostma You can also just do a one-time payment, and hold onto that binary you get. Ardour doesn't get updates that often nowadays. The next expected one is 7.0 that should fix some MIDI problems among other things. But we'll see.

[@nyanlauncher7350]

@@WarrenPostma its free if your compile it yourself, but I don't think there's documentation for compiling on windows, and potentially mac

[@AlTerego816]

This has been incredibly useful, without any unnecessary bloat or annoying Ums & Ahs which so often blight these types of introductory/showcase explanatory videos. Very well done.

[@unfa00]

Thanks! I try to eliminate annoying non-verbal uncontrolled sounds. It's harder to do live. It's way easier to do when talking a bit slower, which also makes it easier to understand. But it's hard to do live, maybe because I'm always trying to do as much as possible in the limited time.

[@batlin]

This is seriously mindblowing. I've been using Audacity for years, but didn't realise until now how good Ardour was and how easy it is to use. I've ordered a cheapish USB cardioid mic and am excited to try multitrack recording now. Thanks so much for this tutorial!

[@ivakimaki]

OMG, I think I'm in love with this DAW! It looks so really easier and intuitive for me after using FL Studio for 15 years till now. And no more need to run Windows as well. I think Ardour is a real pain relief I've been thinking of. That's what caught me up on the site. I'm truthfully inspired and will move onto it! I believe musicians are gonna feel what I mean. Thank you for the video, bro!

[@luiggiibanez]

Unfa your content is always top tier. Ardour 6 is amazing.

[@luiggiibanez]

@Juelz Davion unfa please delete those spam comments

[@William_sJazzLoft]

@@luiggiibanez you have to report them

[@codergeek42]

This is exactly the sort of "quick start" I was looking for to use Ardour for doing basic podcast editing, and was incredibly helpful. Thanks so much for doing this!

[@unfa00]

Awesome! I thought podcasters would really benefit from switching from Audacity (which as it seems they often use) to Ardour, but they usually struggle with figuring it out, so I made this to give such people an easy way in.

[@LilaoftheWind]

Recently switched to Linux and started using Ardour. This is an awesome tutorial! Thank you. I've subscribed.

[@unfa00]

My pleasure! I hope you'll like it - I'm working on a *huge* MIDI Tutorial for Ardour - so far I'm releasing chunks to Patreon supporters, but it's gonna go public once I've reached the end of the editing process.

[@jimle22]

Me too!

[@gregokeefe4657]

I've been studying this video in detail for weeks, reproducing all the stuff Unfa does. Just a very helpful leg-up into the world of Ardour. Great stuff!!

[@unfa00]

Thanks! I am glad I managed to pack so much in such a relatively short video :) I think an issue with many of my earlier videos was that every time I'd start from the very basic things and that meant the videos were very long and it was difficult to get to "the good stuff". I think both tutorial types have their place. This was a quick start guide, so I had to avoid going into details and it was heavily scripted to make sure I don't go on tangents. The Ardour MIDI Masterclass is a different thing, as there's way, way more information and I do intend to cover all of it in a digestible manner. That one is probably material for months is study if one would want to get the maximum from it.

[@FrancisFurtak]

Hey, old school here (analog tape) Thanks so much , a good place to start. More than enough! Good job.

[@unfa00]

I'm honored to be helping people with such experience!

[@sixro]

Thanks for this intro. I found your channel thanks to a post on reddit and I have to confirm that you explained Ardour in a very good way. Thanks again and I hope you'll fix your current issues 🙏

[@unfa00]

Thanks! I am getting better :) BTW - I'm curious - can you link me that post on Reddit?

[@sixro]

Sorry @@unfa00 I answered to you, but probably because I put an URL in comments, it has been deleted.

[@AndreaTorre_andtorg]

I owe you a huge thanks, unfa. This tutorial put me on the right path to record a backing track from youtube, and mix it with an audio track recorded with my bass guitar. Meanwhile I managed to sync hydrogen drum machine with Ardour. In the end I mixed in Kdenlive the audio exported from Ardour with a videoclip recorded with an action cam. Without your help I was still pushing random buttons in ardour ui 😁

[@unfa00]

Glad I could help!

[@kishoreshreedharan541]

Came across this channel after moving to Linux recently. I must say this is a life saver for people like me.

[@guinogueira7]

You're the type of channel I subscribe by watching just one video. I already know everything else will be good.

[@ToniLinkNull]

The best Ardour introduction tutorial, I always come back here.

[@fh404]

This should go on the Ardour KZbin channel as well!

[@unfa00]

Thanks! Thought I think more people will see it here :D

[@cyanlos01]

Not a musician, but this was exactly what I needed for sound-mixing for videos. Thanks!

[@terokontkanen5050]

I just installed the program and this was first video I found in KZbin. Dude you made really, really good tutorial video. Everything is so simple way explaned and I love the guide to quick buttons, cause I tend to use them all the time with windows and other programs. Awesome job 10/10!

[@unfa00]

Fantastic! That's exactly what I hope to deliver :) Thank you!

[@dstinnettmusic]

Your videos are really helping me get started in music production. I am trying to learn piano all at the same time, so probably a little much, but I want to be able to record what I'm learning and make stuff at the same time, so oh well I followed your setup guide for Manjaro and was like ”okay, I managed to record some awful audio through my webcam mic, but my computer won't actually play that sound.” and now I think I know why from this video, I never told ardour to output through my system audio.

[@unfa00]

Hey! I've made a video about initial Ardour configuration - it should help you get the audio back-end going: kzbin.info/www/bejne/qGGzhquYi89ob68

[@dstinnettmusic]

unfa I need this, because I'm still having an issue with getting audible sound when I have the jack server running. I'm sure it's very basic, like if I was video chatting with someone who knew what the were doing they could be like ”oh just do x and y” and I would be good to go but so far it's been frustrating lol. Ill check that video out tomorrow and see if it his with my current issues.

[@CraigCalabrese]

thanks good info got it up everything works great recorded a guitar track today i have pipewire jack alsa a interface and had issues yesterday had the inputs and outputs wrong on master and audio SO MANY jack connections I JUST HAD ONE TWO MANY CHECKED OFF going OUT on AUDIO found it wrote the right set ups down

[@ate_a_radio]

i’m making the leap from garageband to ardour and this helped me a lot, thank you!

[@bmuxbeats]

Thank you so much for this informative video/tutorial. I never would have believed that Ardour is such a powerful - and free - software.

[@soundegis]

Thanks Unfa, always interesting your videos and your clear and precise explanations. Greetings from Italy.

[@3L3V3NDRUMS]

I can't thank you enough! Until now i recorded all my drum covers with Audacity! I'm only 13 years but thanks to your Ardour videos including midi masterclass, I was able to get it work in Ardour and using a real DAW! And I already tried to start composing using your tutorials for midi with guitarix plugin an so on!!! Amazing! You're a real genius! 👌🤘👍So within the next weeks there will come drum covers recorded with Ardour 👍👌💪after I upload the already recorded ones 😉

[@unfa00]

Awesome! I'm really glad my work could help you on your musical journey! If you're not already there - you may want to join my community chat - it's a good place to learn, get feedback and help with solving issues. You can even talk to the software developers there! chat.unfa.xyz

[@dododeltaRgw7]

Its amazing to see the FOSS ecosystem pickup with DAWs. Ardour is amazing. Please make more detailed tutorials for mixing & mastering with Ardour.

[@timschannel247]

to be really honest, I´ve invested a lot of time now to do the same like you on raspi 4 without any commercial software. Why? Because just time is boring, anyhow. Trying to just make a song. As maybe most people, I have a strong Background with building all my past releases or projects via ableton live and reason on a mac osx system. So back in the Linux world I am really still shocked how slow the whole community evolves and after all these years there is still now really cool and fine way to focus to creativity. Sorry for my hard words. Thank you for these great ardour tutorials. You may see the gaps for yourself. From my side. I lose the half day by configuring anything, trying to give live to a frankenstein. To make a final result. All these pieces for example with jack seem to be nice at first from the outside, but nothing is really fitting good together and all is imploding after system restart. You cannot easily recreate a project. There are tools, which try to achieve making a snapshot of your current work state, but lacking to load the main information in relevant tools when trying to reanimate. Lets say, I need a couple of clicks in Ableton to estabilsh a whole drum loop, this is still a mess on all linux applications, ending up in programming on the cli, wasting up a whole weekend with minimal results. So at the end of the day time is expensive and frustration is frustrating. Spending money for tools, which make it an ease to use is better and saves you from pulling out your hair.

[@unfa00]

Thanks for sharing this. I totally understand your point of view. Though I feel like you're not using the right tools for the job and that makes things much harder for you - of course the amount of software is large and it's hard to find out what works and what's a good starting point. That's why I keep making videos - to save people the years and years of exploring everything themselves in this libre audio ecosystem. BTW: if you need any specific help, maybe join my community chat? chat.unfa.xyz

[@elverman]

I watched the whole thing, it never got boring, I liked, and I subscribed.

[@gregorkafkasamsa3188]

Thanks a lot! I just installed ardour and was fooling around with it yesterday. Did get some result but not quite what I hoped. This video is a shortcut for better recordings for me. So I don't have to spend several nights for some basics. I'm gonna check the others later.

[@eggburtdilusia9599]

This video DEFINITELY deserves a "like". Thanks, Unfa! great job !!! :)

[@tonybell1597]

Just discovered Ardour…. Superb! Been using Adobe audition for years… thank you for these, I’ve learnt a huge amount….

[@ChristopherCo]

The best beginner tutorial for Ardour!!! Really appreciate this Unfa!!! 🇵🇭

[@unfa00]

Thanks! It's great to know my work is useful, because that's the point :)

[@ChristopherCo]

@@unfa00 Actually.... You're really awesome! 🤩 Thanks for guiding me in my Linux Journey. Keep safe always and more blessing Bro! PS: Love to hear more of your music! ☺️

[@wavetro]

you are the main reason why I'm trying this DAW out. wonderful video!

[@unfa00]

My pleasure! If you have questions or problems - feel free to hop into my community chat - there's lots of great people there, who can help you almost 24/7 :D chat.unfa.xyz

[@nickfoard7139]

thanks for the video unfa. I have started using Ardour now I have Unbuntu Studio installed which solved all my Jack issues on previous distros. But my question is that now I have Jack running, do I just leave it running for everything, even if I am just watching KZbin or do I stop Jack when not doing DAW work? What do you advise?

[@j.fernandes6585]

Your content is absolutely great!

[@unfa00]

Thank you!

[@fuzzkillington4376]

Thanks man! I will explore your channel to the max. Very cool!

[@TheGruselmops]

Yeah Dude, just the jumpstart I needed. Awesome!

[@unfa00]

My pleasure :D

[@kbsiva]

Great video, unfa. Easy to grasp, entertaining and very helpful.

[@unfa00]

My pleasure! :)

[@EliasDorneles]

Awesome tutorial, just what I needed! I wish I had watched this before!! Thank you so much!

[@lightemam]

Nicely done. Thank you very much. Some of your keystroke and mouse presses went by a little too quickly for me to absorb, so I had to re-watch. A small deficiency. This was a very good quick-start instruction. Again, thanks very much.

[@BekoPharm]

Oh wow, this is exceptional well done 👏 As a kdenlive user I feel right at home with this 👍

[@qwarlockz8017]

This was really one of the best vids on Ardour starting out that I have seen. This is great. I am trying to use Ardour for voice processing and effects outputing to OBS. So this gave me some cool insights!

[@san-ichi]

setup void on my old laptop, wanted to dabble with music creation for a long time, but my laggy ipad with garageband just wasn't appealing to me, so i tried ardour. thanks for the guide, it was very helpful and straight to the point. loved the saxophone

[@leeroyholloway4277]

Nicely done, sir. I have been a SONAR power user for 20 years. My friend has turned me on to LINUX, and I'm not looking back.

[@arcanics1971]

Thanks, just decided to try Ardour (as it comes installed on distro) and had no idea where to start. This should get me going. Nice work, sir!

[@AnMuiren]

I'm a new Ardour subscriber and found this very helpful. Thanks.

[@unfa00]

I'm glad I could help :) If you want to get support, I can recommend joining my community chat on Discord and Rocket.Chat. Lots of Ardour users there who can help you with questions or issues: chat.unfa.xyz

[@krys38]

Great tutorial many thanks. [edit: solutions] : Okay for those who want to import unfa's session and get the error I mention below here is a solution to get the plugins at least on my distro which is PopOS but I guess it works on any Ubuntu-based distro: 1 - Make sure you do NOT install Ardour from Pop!_Shop or any other flatpak manager.. The plugin cannot be resolved by Ardour If you do this at least not without some tweaking with the sandboxing policy.. 2 - To get the fast_lookahead_limiter plugin, simply install the "swh_plugins" package and you´ll get a ton of plugins including the one necessary for importing Unfa's session. That's it... Works well on PopOs 20.10 and Ardour 6.5 .... Error: However, I get the following error in the log when I try to import the session in Ardour6: [ERROR]: Found a reference to a plugin ("gareus.org/oss/lv2/gmsynth") that is unknown. Did anyone encountered the same issue ? I've defined my LV2_PATH= $HOME/.lv2 even tried the system wide approach and placed the plugin in /usr/lib/lv2. Still not working. For those who have the same error I reported an issue on github here: github.com/x42/gmsynth.lv2/issues/4#issue-802995529 if by any change the error is related.. :/ Do you have an idea what's wrong @unfa ? I'm obviously missing something...

[@Chris_Tinacan]

I can tell I'm going to be back here. I had no idea such a FOSS DAW existed and I'm happy to know I'll have the benefit of your knowledge so thanks a lot for the video my dude 😁

[@TheOriginalGeekyNoob]

Watched. I'm ready for Ardour 6. Thanks unfa!

[@guilhermemachado5727]

YOU SAVE MY LIFE! Thanks for this awesome video!

[@tellerrandreporter]

Very great video - it helped me a lot. Thank you!

[@devinreeves762]

I just got a laptop with Lenux and I’m stoked to see everything it’s capable of! Thank you for helping me get up to speed with ardour! I especially Love that it’s open source I’ve been using Mac for a long time (GarageBand and logic) and most recently I’ve been producing on garage band and FL Studio Mobile on my phone and enjoying the portability tho it comes with some limitations when it comes to mixing and mastering. it was the perfect thing for getting comfortable producing, super intuitive (highly recommended for beginners) Within the last year I’ve been wanting to find a new program that ticks all the boxes because I compose, produce, sing, rap, mix, master and more and this seems to be the best option that incorporates it all into one (relatively) straight forward daw It’s got all the bells and whistles of the industry standards with the joy of knowing it’s open source! I’m lookin forward to learning more! I’ll definitely be watching lots more of your videos and tutorials!! Thank you 🙏 Aloha

[@P.Mateko34]

Thanks, unfa, thorough... How can I easily add dj scratches (digital) to Ardour projects, FOSS style preferably?

[@dolgov9000]

4:55 that hands sax tho!!! xDDD David Lynch would be proud.

[@zerolikeproduction]

Im a 21 kid in music , make music In fl studio Mobile , You are my teacher❤️

[@jahnlemmon]

How did you do that cool jazz sound! Will there be any tutorials for that :) ?

[@og_rayback]

thank for this tutorial, respect from italian rapper! 🤝

[@unfa00]

Thanks! Grazie!

[@scmurcott]

Brilliant work - very cool.

[@MrScaldas]

very useful! Thanks much...I'm off to follow your suggestion and create my first Ardour project...

[@unfa00]

Awesome :) Good luck!

[@zakariachahboun]

Thanks UNFA! How we can play video in the viewer (for dubbing) and How we can use Noise Reduction (like audacity)

[@alseveron6558]

Lovely clear tutorial, Unfa! Loved the American announcer parody and the trumpet :D. After some research, I've decided to switch from Audacity to Ardour, mainly because I want to do some midi stuff. I'm hoping it'll run on Linux Mint and Windows 7. ...Liked & subscribed...

[@TonyLing]

Nice one dude, this is really helping me along

[@matthewdraevich4214]

thanks for the great quickguide, it's really useful!

[@____-gy5mq]

I didn't know I needed the non destructive crossfade so badly. I struggled quite a bit in audacity.

[@CraigsWorkshop]

Thanks Unfa - great introduction. I'm interested in using Ardour on Linux for music production - perhaps electronic drums, but mic recorded bass, and guitar parts. I'll look at your other videos and see if you have anything like that. Cheers, Craig

[@unfa00]

Awesome, good luck! :)

[@petas874]

This is great, just trying to record a single track was pretty daunting when having zero experience from a DAW (except Audacious). Thank you for the video! I will check through much more of your content!

[@aannaa-uw4gc]

Hi! At 04:33 you clicked the record button, but when I do that, the sound from my mic just doesn't get recorded. The audio it's just in silence. I really don't know how to fix it, I tried changing the input device option, but it didn't make any difference, I set up it with the name of my mic, but the sound just don't get recorded. How can I solve this? In your video, you can see that the green bars indicate sound, but in mine they doesn't appear.

[@unfa00]

Please ask in my community chat - you'll get help there: chat.unfa.xyz :)

[@RogueRen]

I have the exact same Behringer interface and I cannot get any sound. How do you make that JACK server thing so I can actually use this program finally??

[@jonathanrush9760]

Good day, sir! I have a behringer umc 22 connected to my laptop. Why cant i hear the recorded track when i play it?

[@William_sJazzLoft]

It's an outstanding presentation. 00:11:28 I do suppose that gain automation is exactly that. I applied it as prescribed. There was some perceptible reduction in volume. But it didn't seem substantial. I could hear my vocal track. It wasn't overpowered by the music track. The thing is that just like your imported track it was a dual channel. But the automatic gain reduction tool appeared on both channels of the music track. I'm trying to figure that out. In the meantime, thank you for getting me started on using my first DAW - Will

[@anyeos]

I used Ardour 6 the last week and I will continue using it. It is an amazing piece of software, nothing to envy to proprietary DAW. Ardour is more easy and intuitive than other DAW software lying around. Just to take in account is that if you have some LV2 plugin that is failing it will crash your entire program. I needed to figure out what plugin were the problematic for uninstall it. One of the reasons for why that happens is that the plugin is a development version. So don't use development versions of the plugins, they can crash your work!

[@davidmatthews2319]

Hey unfa🇺🇦, great video, I'm having this issue where I can move my imported audio clips up and down but I can't move them left or right on a track, how do I fix this?

[@AKuTepion]

Ardour jsem vůbec neznal a vypadá to parádně, možná to bude mnohem lepší než LMMS. Takže díky za tutoriál!

[@saminoexiste]

As many, I recently switched to Linux and I really thank you for this content. Good bye Studio One 3!

[@sohar146]

unfa's videos always want me to start producing and recording now

[@unfa00]

That is exactly the result I want to achieve :D Thank you for sharing that thought!

[@sudarson4]

Extremely useful! Thank you so much for this video.

[@unfa00]

Thanks! I'm glad it was helpful :)

[@eladhen2]

Really want to learn Ardour. Can't watch video while Ardour is running... This is a real show stopper.

[@unfa00]

You need to install pulseaudio-modules-jack a.k.a pulseaudio-jack.

[@unfa00]

I've covered this (among other things) in my Manjaro audio production setup video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/rJjVooCsaLGtnM0 Check the timestamps for Pulse-Audio related chapters.

[@unfa00]

You can also ask for help at chat.unfa.xyz

[@fernandopenia7002]

Great video man, it's helping me a lot in my transition from lmms to ardour.

[@unfa00]

Great! I'm glad it's doing what it was supposed to do :) You may want to join my community chat - there's lots of people you can learn from or ask for help on your journey :) chat.unfa.xyz

[@antonsurviyanto5896]

Thank you... I have a question, I'm having a problem with importing mp3 file to the track, why Ardour default is MIDI file?

[@MisterDearly]

Thanks so much! This helped me get a handle on Ardour: I've been playing guitar for 20 years but never tried recording it haha. This helped me record my first song segment. Just curious: are you Norwegian? Your accent sounds familiar to me.

[@indigodawn3174]

Is there a way to quickly select all tracks and then align them back to back. I wanted to use this program to merge mp3 files for my mp3 player.

[@HugoisteinHund]

Thank you for making this video

[@Auridian]

My hero. Thank you!

[@SixXGaming]

So, I need this to edit dialogue and foley for films. Any recommended plugins?

[@timflatus]

That was very useful. I shall have a look at some of your advanced stuff too. I want to know more about managing tempos with complex time signatures and also could use some guidance on using LADSPA / LV2 plugins - Compressors & Side chaining, EQ, Amp simulators & Distortion, Reverb, Delay and Pitch shifting each deserve a separate video.

[@citizencain454]

What would you use for an outside the computer multi-tracking break out box ? Or must you make several passes of one stereo track? To add up to several tracks, or a mult-track recording inside the computer .

[@JeroenBaten]

I should have watched this video the first hour I started playing with Ardour.

[@adrianmartinez-lq5he]

Stupid question recording how i va record whit the laptop microphone Or is strictly necesari to do whit midi?

[@privacyIsKing]

Thank you so much for this video!

[@kiranaric]

This tutorial was really helpful and elegant. Thank you.

[@unfa00]

Thanks!

[@bonbonpony]

18:06 Speaking of orchestral music: are there any good free orchestral instruments that doesn't sound like crap, that I could use with Ardour? 23:13 So, it doesn't really record into that original sample, but kinda like on a new layer hovering over it? 23:20 OK, now when you deleted it, does it delete it also from the disk, or just from the tracker? If just from the tracker, is there some way to bring it back if I change my mind later? What about the volume envelope or other modifications I applied to it? Will it bring them back too? Or just the sample? 23:23 OK, so supposing that this sample is still there somewhere, in its complete form, is there a way to view it at whole in its original form? 24:03 Jakie dziki? :D 25:10 Beside the markers, is there any way to just draw a box selection and select a couple of tracks at once? Or maybe selecting just some particular ones by clicking on them one by one? (I mean group selection.) For example, if I want to drag a couple of samples at once further down the track instead of dragging them one by one. 29:01 I see a spectrum here, so one more question: Is it possible in Ardour to change the view of a sample from the default "waveform" view to "spectrum" view? There are things that are easier to see on the spectrum, e.g. overtones of musical instruments, or phonetic features of speech. So it would be very useful.

[@pdprao]

U r just so good in explaining, fabulous, thnx a lot, god bless u with more n more abilities

[@unfa00]

Thank you! God blesses me with the fantastic community that keeps my initiative alive :)

[@oglothenerd]

4:56 That was fucking awesome!

[@carloverzeletti6521]

Wonderful Thanks so much for getting me started.

[@unfa00]

You're welcome!

[@burning_KFC]

As always writing a comment to support the channel

[@unfa00]

Thanks! Any engagement makes KZbin more likely to recommend my videos. At least that's what I'm told.

[@burning_KFC]

@@unfa00 So now I’ll be trying to comment even harder ^^

[@patricio.dorantes]

Hey! Thank you very much for this video, it was amazing for a quickstart. By any chance do you know about any Ambeo Orbit plugin for Ardour6 (Or any other gnu/linux software for this propuse)?

[@computersciencestuff3405]

Very well done. Thank you 👍

[@Jdonovanford]

Can I use East West/Quantum Leap Symphonic Orchestra with Ardour?

[@nobua3562]

Thank you very much. It was very helpful.

[@CrazyDrumer94]

Sweet tuto ! Clear and productive, thank you. I’m starting covers, and was looking for how to record MIDI with my e-drumkit, i’ve got a MIDI/USB cable and Ardour installed, one sweet sounding VST pack downloaded ^^ any tips ?

[@xanderul3167]

Thanks, veru useful! Wondering, which and how installed plagins. A have just few VST