Hi,
Full disclosure, I cross-posted this on the Ardour forum since Ardour is my main DAW, but perhaps my original question is better asked here with the diversity in DAW Users..
I want to do a new album project this winter and I want to do it differently than I have previously and I'm not sure if Ardour can do what I need..? I'm well versed in recording more or less live takes and putting them together but I'd like to do an acoustic based project and instead of laying down a live drum track from start to finish I'd like to play the drums live and organically and then take portions and created looped sequences to structure the songs from. I do not like playing to a click so I'd like to play the patterns live and then import into Ardour and match them up to the grid after importing. I'm most interested that the looped segments will paste cleanly at the beginnings and ends and not too concerned if every transient within the looped bars are perfectly glued to each grid beat.. I can play with steady tempo and I'm confident that I'd rather play with the feel I want and figure out the grid/click stuff later.
So... how best to.. (a) Discover the BPM or at least get close? (b) Map the transients to the grid in a way that doesn't require an hour of cutting and dragging segments.? (c) Time stretch or shrink the drum pattern in the event that I want to alter the tempo with out degrading the sound..?
Is this essentially what beat slicing is..? Is there any facilities to quantize Audio, even if a Plugin...? I have a pit of dread in my belly that this is not Ardour's forte, or is that what Rhythm Ferret does..? Help and objective advice would be very much appreciated!