2 The Cue window allows working with music ideas in a non-linear fashion.
3 Instead of navigating the timeline and placing regions of audio and MIDI
4 data at a particular point in time, you deal with short clips that contain
5 rhythmic and melodic patterns and can be triggered to play a certain amount
6 of times, then automatically trigger another clip to be played.
10 The concept has been introduced and popularized by Ableton and since then
11 found its way into many other applications. Ardour draws many ideas from
12 Ableton Live, as well as from several other digital audio workstations,
13 and adapts them to Ardour's specifics. If you are familiar with Live, you
14 will find many aspects familiar, but you should not expect the Cue's feature
15 set to be a 100% copy of that from any other application.
19 Here are some basics concepts of the non-linear workflow shared by multiple
20 applications including Ardour.
23 <h2>Grid and scenes</h2>
26 All clips are organized in a kind of a grid. The grid provides an overview
27 of all the musical ideas, all the rhythmic patterns, short melodies, and sound
28 effects that you can use in a composition.
31 One dimension of the grid, usually represented by a track, would accumulate
32 clips played with roughly the same kind of an instrument, e.g. all drum
33 patterns, or all basslines etc.
36 The other dimension, usually called scenes (or cues, in Ardour) would
37 organize these clips so that you would be able to play multiple clips at
38 the same time by pressing just one button. So if you want a particular
39 bassline played along a particular drum sequence, you would place them in
44 Ardour specifics are explained in the
45 <a href="@@cue-window-elements">Cue window elements</a> chapter.
48 <h2>Slots and clips</h2>
51 Cells in a grid are usually called slots. They are a kind of a container
52 that can hold an audio or a MIDI clip. Typically, a clip can be loaded
53 into a slot from a disk by pointing the file selector to it, or loaded
54 from a pre-recorded library of reusable clips, or recorded in place.
55 You will find more information about that in the
56 <a href="@@populating-the-cue-grid">Populating the cue grid</a> chapter.
62 In a non-linear workflow, a clip can be triggered to play in multiple ways.
63 Most of the time it's either pressing a corresponding silicon pad on an
64 external grid controller attached via MIDI, or scrolling the mouse wheel
65 downwards over the slot that contains the clip, or just clicking a 'Play'
66 button next to clip's name.
70 Usually you can configure a slot to respond to some ways to trigger clip
71 playback and ignore others. We'll talk about it in the
72 <a href="@@clip-launch-options">Clip Launch Options</a> chapter.
75 <h2>Follow actions</h2>
78 A clip can play in a loop until you stop it directly, or it can play
79 a user-defined amoutn of time and the trigger another clip in the track.
80 Say, you start a composition with one rhythmic pattern played four times
81 and you want the next rhythmic patterns to play eight times, then move
86 This is typically achieved through so called follow actions. In an example
87 above, for the first clip (or, rather, slot) you can set a follow count
88 (4 times), and use the follow action usually called "Next". This will get
89 the clip in that first slot to play 4 times then trigger the playback of
90 a clip in the second slot.
94 Every application has its own set of follow actions. Most common ones are
95 repeating the clip indefinitely, triggering the previous/next slot,
96 or jumping to a slot in a particular scene.
100 You can read more about follow actions in Ardour
101 <a href="@@clip-follow-actions">here</a>.
104 <h2>Musical time and stretching</h2>
107 In a non-linear workflow, all work is happening in musical time: both audio
108 and MIDI clips are measured in bars and beats.
112 By default, an application that supports a non-linear workflow will attempt
113 to estimate beats per minute in an audio clip and then stretch or squeeze
114 the clip so that it would match the bpm of the session and wrap neatly around
115 bars. That way, a clip that originally has a different tempo that the one in
116 the session would stay in sync with other clips.
120 Stretch options in Ardour are explained
121 <a href="@@clip-stretch-options">here</a>.