Automation?

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barbouze
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Re: Automation?

Post by barbouze »

Advanced users could also use OSC and/or MIDI messages coming from Pure Data (from basic LFOs to Context Sequencer which looks amazing!) or even Iannix but maybe this belongs to another topic. At least those are great examples of how modular is our favorite OS and how deep you can go in automation. :D
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Re: Automation?

Post by jonetsu »

tavasti wrote: Yes, for basic users. Advanced users will write perl/python/something script to do it. :P
Ah ah. :)
tavasti wrote: In reality, how often you have needed LFO for automation? If cases are rare, then even this approach works.
I used to think who needs modulation ? Then it started to change slowly as I realized that all the synth sounds I like much are 'moving' in one way or the other, and that was not tremolo not vibrato or Leslie rotation, it was much more intricate and it gave the sounds a life. Then Bitwig introduced their modulators and that has gave the additional push to adopt them.

I would say that modulators are often essential to making '3D' music, they are an important factor. They can take many shapes. Some are envelopes, some are LFOs, sidechains, some are morphing sounds, etc...

See perhaps this short 3-minutes Bitwig demonstration of a small part of their modulators:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbJKjwwEIGk

Any VST parameter exposed by a plugin can be modulated using any of the 29 available modulators.

Cheers.
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Re: Automation?

Post by tavasti »

jonetsu wrote:I would say that modulators are often essential to making '3D' music, they are an important factor. They can take many shapes. Some are envelopes, some are LFOs, sidechains, some are morphing sounds, etc...

See perhaps this short 3-minutes Bitwig demonstration of a small part of their modulators:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbJKjwwEIGk
Indeed, looks convincing. Sure everything is doable with plain automation, but amount of work would be huge, for example those ADSR envelopes for every note :-o

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Re: Automation?

Post by jonetsu »

tavasti wrote: Indeed, looks convincing. Sure everything is doable with plain automation, but amount of work would be huge, for example those ADSR envelopes for every note :-o
I would not expect that much from Ardour/Mixbus although to have basic wave (sine, triangle, square, maybe random) creation and resizing capabilities for automation would be great. Click and drag the wave at the wished amplitude. Edit by clicking again and dragging. Or edit with a pencil. This would bring a little problem to solve: what to do with wave editing by dragging again after it was modified with a pencil, but anyways, it would add much to the automation subsystem.

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Re: Automation?

Post by tavasti »

jonetsu wrote: I would not expect that much from Ardour/Mixbus although to have basic wave (sine, triangle, square, maybe random) creation and resizing capabilities for automation would be great. Click and drag the wave at the wished amplitude. Edit by clicking again and dragging. Or edit with a pencil. This would bring a little problem to solve: what to do with wave editing by dragging again after it was modified with a pencil, but anyways, it would add much to the automation subsystem.
Without knowing ardour code, adding feature 'create waveform' to selected region would be doable with resonable amount of work. Select region, click 'create waveform ...' and you will get dialog for selecting base value, amplitude, waveform and frequency. Everything created would behave just like any other automation. That edition of waveform as waveform would be more complicated. Maybe stretch would be possible, so that all automation would be stretchable.

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Re: Automation?

Post by tavasti »

jonetsu wrote: I would not expect that much from Ardour/Mixbus although to have basic wave (sine, triangle, square, maybe random) creation and resizing capabilities for automation would be great.
Checking ardour bug tracker, there is feature request for modulation support. Some feature requests have donation set, so if you want you could promise some sum of money for this get done? http://tracker.ardour.org/view.php?id=7455

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Re: Automation?

Post by jonetsu »

tavasti wrote: Checking ardour bug tracker, there is feature request for modulation support. Some feature requests have donation set, so if you want you could promise some sum of money for this get done? http://tracker.ardour.org/view.php?id=7455
The Ardour bug is like, "bring those nice Bitwig features to Ardour" 8)
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Re: Automation?

Post by tavasti »

jonetsu wrote:
tavasti wrote: Checking ardour bug tracker, there is feature request for modulation support. Some feature requests have donation set, so if you want you could promise some sum of money for this get done? http://tracker.ardour.org/view.php?id=7455
The Ardour bug is like, "bring those nice Bitwig features to Ardour" 8)
It is. Should we create more realistic feature req, with my minimalistic specification?

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Re: Automation?

Post by jonetsu »

tavasti wrote:It is. Should we create more realistic feature req, with my minimalistic specification?
Hopefully not ! :)
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Re: Automation?

Post by tavasti »

jonetsu wrote:
tavasti wrote:It is. Should we create more realistic feature req, with my minimalistic specification?
Hopefully not ! :)
So you think it is better to wait forever for something which would be perfect than get sooner something which would provide something better than now?

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Re: Automation?

Post by jonetsu »

tavasti wrote:
jonetsu wrote:
tavasti wrote:It is. Should we create more realistic feature req, with my minimalistic specification?
Hopefully not ! :)
So you think it is better to wait forever for something which would be perfect than get sooner something which would provide something better than now?
I use Bitwig for creation. Hence no waiting. I use Mixbus32C for mixing. Sure, at times it would be nice to have full-fledged wave modulation in Ardour/Mixbus, but when it's really important, then I either use a plugin that has it, orI rework the trackin Bitwig and export it again.

The essence of my previous reply is about the Ardour devs not going an obscure path. I think that the time to do so is long past if Ardour/Mixbus wants to survive and prosper. They should boldly implement full features which are very user friendly ('user' being a person who mixes, not a regular real estate guy or some other unrelated types).

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Re: Automation?

Post by sysrqer »

I think it's a great example of how (I believe) linux is quite far behind other OSs. The only programs capable of doing decent and easy automation and modulation are ones which exist as cross platform daws (renosie, reaper, bitwig). All daws with a main base/focus in linux (unless I'm forgetting one) have pretty basic features in this area which range from being easy to painful to use. It's not anything inherent in linux that causes this but it is something that causes it to seem quite dated these days.

I suspect a lot can be done with lua scripting in ardour and perhaps it is possible that it could compete with the power that reaper has with the actions and scripts but it would take a huge effort to come even half as close.
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Re: Automation?

Post by tavasti »

sysrqer wrote:I think it's a great example of how (I believe) linux is quite far behind other OSs. The only programs capable of doing decent and easy automation and modulation are ones which exist as cross platform daws (renosie, reaper, bitwig). All daws with a main base/focus in linux (unless I'm forgetting one) have pretty basic features in this area which range from being easy to painful to use.
It is more about commercial software vs free software. Ardour and LMMS are also cross platform, but free.

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