 Man, it's hot in here. I gotta turn on the air-conditioning Because I ain't gonna survive this ride. It's on fire and you're watching on for rumbling indefinitely Today I want to talk about problems with midi in our door Because that's something important for me and I think I'm gonna deploy some glasses Notoriously, you probably know I am using Ardor for all my art-tronic music production I have been using LMS for many years. However, I recently started to feel very limited by LMS limitations And since Ardor has developed enough to replace LMS completely in my work So I've decided to make the switch However, Ardor has its own set of problems currently and currently means in 2018 When most recent Ardor stable version is 5.12 and 6.0 is nowhere to be seen in a stable release yet So that's the current situation and currently there are some problems with midi in Ardor And I've reported them I reported them as bugs where I also made forum posts to discuss some things and problems and maybe how propose ideas how they could be Resolved for the artists. No, I need this. I can't drive without And I would just like to talk about this because I think it's important. I think I think people need to be aware of the problems before they jump to Ardor I need the developers need to be aware that these problems exist and that they are Important to the users or if they are important to the users. They are important to me, but are they important to you? and Well, I would like to support the developers in trying to fix this to make Ardor work better for us all especially for those of us who You're welcome who Oh dear, sorry Can't help you too especially for those of us who are making electronic music and Who need to sequence midi data and automation a lot and shift this stuff around heavily because This is what electronic music production needs So November 2017 I've released my recent long play which was titled suppressed. It is the last Long play that I am planning to release As a as my own alone project that is produced entirely with lmms I mean it is sequenced and mixed in lmms. It was mastered and sometimes also mixed with ardor Because I recorded vocals or guitars. I don't remember if I recorded the guitars for that album. I might have not Oh crap. This is shaky cam. Not good. Better. I hope the video stabilization can't no it can't It sucks. All right We have to deal with it So that album was the last one I am planning to release Sorry, but you're so fast planning to release That was made with lmms and the next long play I want to release If anything if everything goes well, it's going to be made with ardor entirely and nothing is Signaling that it won't be I know I still have tons of left over unfinished unreleased projects done with lmms, but well, you just gotta forget about this stuff You can't release everything If I were to release everything it's going to be just a shitload of crap and that's not good to listen to so I'm just picking up the best stuff. I think I haven't released that So I've decided to switch to ardor, but there are still problems most notably What I'm recently fighting with is that sometimes the media regions Are being lost Which is sounds really bad if you think about it So often when I save the project in ardor and I open it up again Some media regions Are empty and they play no sounds So if these media regions were copied somewhere else and I can just pick them up from there and replace the empty broken regions with Proper ones. That's not a no big deal It is annoying In these instances, but It's not a deal breaker however when The thing hits a region that when the bug hits a region that is unique and I can't really reproduce it Well, that's a problem because this is basically data loss and that's no good So I think this is the most important thing to fix Because data loss is like a no-go in a creative application ardor has crash recovery in place which works Pretty well most of the times I think it could be doing the saving the Backup files a little bit more often because sometimes it crashes and it doesn't recover anything And I wish it could But but it's there. It saves my ass many times. So I'm glad it's there But this disappearing data in media regions is really not good and I hope developers can Can fix this soon So that's that another problems are more with optimizing the workflow that is clunky and not Really fast and it could be faster And that is for example copying and moving media regions that use automation for plugins because when When you deal with synthesizers with heavy synthesizers Sound design and you you often need to automate lots of stuff either within the synthesizer or with external effects like you know reverb eq Phasors crossover filters that kind of stuff maybe some ring modulation etc. You know, it's all in a day's work for sound design like static effects are Are just retro and boring So if you want more sound design, you need to use automation a lot because automation gives life and expression that nothing else gives All the foe and envelopes are not not enough They are too repetitive and our brains pick up the patterns very quickly and we realize that oh, it's just another foe It's just an envelope. It's boring But if you can automate some things You give musical expression you you you put more musical Feeling more of your musical soul into the record Which isn't technically a record. It's it's synthesized. So it's not recorded by it's so called a record white Go figure Maybe I can Yeah, I can disable those For a while at least let's see I I find it's weird to talk to people who you who have your weird wearing Shades because you can't see there of ice and the eyes are important in communicating things So I I prefer to talk to you without the shades Yeah This is going to be a rambling video because this is unfurambling indefinitely. So it's random long Unedited well and just random And that's what I want to do it I want to be able to make some videos that are super random not very Polished and You know, I'm just sweating too much over other videos I think sometimes I put too much effort into editing And yeah, and it takes too long But on the other hand, I just I don't want to put out crap But I want to have an outlet for crap too. And this is it. So Yeah, back to moving and copying Automation so there are two types of automation in ardor Oh, shit gotta move that gear up get an ambulance Fixing the camera Oh, yeah better so There are two types of automation in ardor one is midi cc automation and another is just generic Automation I would say so the midi cc automation is everything that you can save with midi data And that has a limited resolution because midi cc Typically uses seven bits, which is 128 values between 0 and 127 So it's not very much resolution You can deploy Doubles the resolution and have 14 bits controls, but I don't really know how to force that Or anything and usually it's not possible. Also most midi controllers Only support seven bits For midi cc, which is I think Derives from continuous control I think that that's it So midi cc in ardor is saved with the midi data Basically when you record something in a midi or draw some nodes ardor saves that as a mid file to the disk and The cc automation also goes there and your pitch band automation. It's also midi cc However, that's by default using to set 14 bits. So it's higher. Which is good And that is saved with the midi data with the region So when you move your midi region on your Track on the timeline That automation moves with the nodes, which is cool because Yeah, we want that however all the other automation for example if you want to Change the If you want to automate a notch filter effect applied after your synthesizer is doing its job You usually use the generic element of ardor automation Which is great. It has great resolution and Stuff but it's not being synced with the midi regions So if you move your midi region the automation is not going to move with that. You have to move it separately And the problem is that you can't really move that stuff and if you have multiple lanes of automation You have to move that separately So basically moving it is not an option for complex parts Instead what i'm doing I've discovered you can do is cut and paste the automation along with the midi regions And to do that you need to use a range select tool You select the range. So for example your four bars the phrase that you want copy or move somewhere And you you select that ring the time range Then you add your automation lanes to the selection because they are not selected by default And I don't know of any settings in order that can make it be selected because that would make it easier Like if you could just swipe Just drag and select that that time range Yeah range selection sorry not region range the time range and just Drag that over and have all automation go with it. That would be That would be cool, but it's not working like that. You have to select the range Then control click on the automation lane headers Until you have all that selected Careful to not click anything silly and deselect your Your ranges or no tracks and then you press even control c either control c if you want to copy Or control x if you want to cut and paste it somewhere else Then you make sure your edit point is set to playhead or mouse depending on what you want to use to mark your paste point Your eight points. So then you move your mouse or your playhead wherever you want to put the starting Point of the of the selection to to be pasted in and then you control v You press control v and you have either a copy or or The only copy pasted or or duplicated and it's it's clunky I hear you it's clunky So, yeah, I really hope the art or developers can can improve on that And and figure out a better way to do this or just make the current way Easier More fluent I don't like that this thing is keeps bumping Again Have nothing have no order to move What you doing? There are many emergencies in this city right now. I already had two In no other video. I had a single one That's telling Or maybe it's a one big emergency. I don't know. They are all headed the same way, right? No Oh, yeah, they were. Yeah, they are anyway So that's that's problematic In my unfilved videos, I usually tell about how to work with this so you can find your way around it I know it's not optimal And actually I was recently thinking should I really Do ardor guide series right now with these? These issues in place like Doesn't this defeat ardor as a as a tool for serious production? And I thought myself though it doesn't you know, yeah, it it should be fixed but There's tons of other great things you can do with ardor and Well, I'm gonna try to make that series anyway and I I'm gonna I can always make a serious two for Future versions of ardor where hopefully that things are Are better Yeah, so other problems with me are Loop problems for example Why is it just Stop shaking What the f I just need to change the resonant frequency because I think the windshield has a resonant frequency very low and it it's resonating with the engine when I'm not driving And probably resonating some harmonics too When I'm driving And that shakes the camera very bad. I don't like it. Oh man. It's hot What was I talking about? Hardware issues. Yeah midi issues. Oh another midi issues Looped playback. So for example in lmms, I would often loop a certain part of the song And Work on it edit regions or any drone patterns As it's played back over and over and it works fine. It just works I also did the same thing in ardor for audio and it works very well. However with me it breaks and I don't know. I recently I don't remember if it was ardor 6 or ardor 5 and that's important because Uh I should not report ardor 6 issues in the deb in the bug trucker I think I did that before and I apologize. I I missed that information and I I reported some issues regarding ardor 6 and I should not have I don't remember if it's currently also in ardor 5. I'm gonna check it but I had this issue that when you select or For example, you select a bar or a range or a midi region that lasts I don't know a bar and you press the right square bracket You get Loop markers to be placed around your selection. So then if you press the l key ardor will go into loop playback mode and it's going to start transport So you can just listen to your selection over and over And with midi that breaks because When you have a bar It has four beats, right? It has the first downbeat Then it has The upbeat and then it should be the downbeat again Which is the same downbeat because it should have looped, but it actually plays two downbeats Because to place the downbeat of your looped Bar and it also plays the downbeat off The next bar after the the one that you were trying to play in loop And it plays that in a very short delay So if you enable metronome, you actually hear something like You first you you loop the region You'll yeah, you define the loop range you play You loop the playback and you go You have two beats and that breaks because Then ardor I think then ardor plays back If you for example Have that media region Duplicated afterwards It often plays back the same note very quickly and it doesn't send a note off Because it just it shouldn't Send the note on even so it doesn't send a note off and that note gets stuck and it plays through all eternity Until you send panic You just control press control alt p and it sends note off to all instruments On all channels. So it's a it's a quick way to do that. There's also a button in the interface for that but It's no good like you play one loop. It's good and then it breaks. So it's like okay And even if it doesn't break For example, if you have a drum beat that doesn't break for some reason it you can get around displacing your loop markers to not Be perfect, but for example Stop a little bit early to make the loop read range a little bit shorter But it then messes up your rhythm And you can't really you can't really listen to your rhythm anymore because you have a shorter bar And sometimes I don't know sometimes the first note doesn't play in the loop or at all So then I shift my start loop mark loop start marker Early and again, it breaks the timing like It's it's not a one bar anymore. It's it's 1.1 bars or or 0.95 bars and It's hard to program drums that way what you can do Is enable auto return, which is a function in order that Brings the playhead back into the start position after you stop the playback. So you can put your Playhead in the beginning of a bar you want to you want a addition You enable auto return and then you press space And you start playback then if you press space again, it will stop playback But auto return will put the playhead back to the place where you started the playback. So You can just tap space bar twice and it's going to play the same thing again I know it's not as convenient as a loop However, it also gives you more control because you can easily Stop it and replay it and you can easily also listen to the More to more of your composition that comes after the bar you would originally be looped over So that's something you can use To get around the problems of looping and MIDI. Yeah, are there any other problems with me? Ma Viewing and manipulating note velocity is a bit difficult because most programs Most dw's I've worked with they have kind of a lollipop graph for note velocity under the Pianoreal pane or window and that's true for Like open source and commercial problems that I've used like protos Cubase Reaper Yeah, like I think every single one does that and in order There's no such thing right now. You don't have the lollipop graph to manipulate note velocity. Oh, shit. It's jam It's traffic jam again here Can I please come here, please? Thanks shucks yeah, and currently The way that you view note velocity in order Pianoreal is with the color of the notes So by default you input notes with velocity of 64, which is right in the middle because The MIDI velocity range is from 0 to 127 7 bits as we already discussed with MIDI CC Do the same thing because well Yeah, go ahead and Velocity of 64 is green and as you increase the velocity the notes become orange and then red if you Sorry if you increase the velocity so you make the notes louder if you decrease the velocity they also change the color I don't remember what color I mean it would make sense for them to go blue. Maybe maybe not Come on so that's that And yeah, it's pretty convenient But to manipulate the note velocity you have to select the notes And you can do two things Currently, I'm aware of like the first thing I used to do is use my mouse wheel And if you hover over a note, you should have a tooltip popping up with the note current note velocity in it And if you use your mouse wheel your scroll wheel to You can use it to change the velocity up and down And the tooltip should update doesn't I think it doesn't always update or sometimes it Just disappears for a while and you don't know what is the velocity and you need to move your mouse away and then move it back So yeah, it's uh, it's flaky a bit But you can also use the v key v for velocity And if you press it with notes selected you can type in a number And you can apply the velocity or I think you can even do some other things like increase the velocity by x Yeah And if you Access that panel without having any notes selected. I think you will get a default velocity for newly created notes. So Yeah, so you can change what velocity will be assigned to newly created notes with the draw tool or the the edit mode when you hit control and mouse I think So that's that and I fought and I recently I think I I don't know if I wrote on the forums or if I filed An issue on in the buck tracker mantis but I thought about It and like if just like there is an automation lane for the bender Which is the pitch bend or any other cc midi control Why not have a lane for the note velocity and there you would basically have a The the familiar lollipop graph And you could open up this lane I know not not everyone needs that lane and not everyone needs a lane all the time for every track So it's not a big deal. It it can be it could be even opened on up by default or or not But it would be great to have a lane with the lollipop graph where you could just draw a line to make a crescendo or Just change the velocity And or just view it easily and change it without using the mouse wheel because Or type a number on a keyboard because that's really inefficient And hard to get used to and then be quick with I think That's a nice exchange lanes So, yeah Maybe I'll try to link to my bug reports and maybe foreign posts and other or so if you are interested in these things You can go there read it or maybe post and reply or maybe propose some other solutions or say i'm stupid or any other thing really Yeah, I hope we can we can help the other developers To to solve these issues and make midi workflow in order Really rock solid I'm looking forward to see what's going to happen in order six, but it's a long time away. So i'm not Like I was thinking about maybe waiting to to start making releasing the The videos for ardor guide series until ardor six is released, but it's going to take a long time. So I decided to start doing that earlier However I have way too much on my plate like I really wish I could have At least one day a week To do this stuff because There's so much I would want to do and also I'm Often I spend a lot of time instead of for example editing a video I sit down to edit the video and then I find a bug and I just Sit down and write a bug report and I don't know or search for for fix Or try to install a newest version For example, I recently tried to install the newest version of kato live and it doesn't work I wrote a foreign post about it. I'm just checking it every day For two days trying to see if anyone knows what's going on so I can get running because I have like I have some crashes in kato live and I would like to be able to take advantage of auto save And a crash recovery that is in place in the newest version, but it's not in the current one But the newest version doesn't work and I have to be use the current one And yeah, and that's like So lots of my time is are it's also spent Trying to Help solve problems with the software And it's not like I'm complaining about it because it's it's a natural thing And I want to help develop the software and I want to help fix the problems No, I just want to make you aware of that By the way I'm making a video for my Suppressed album. I wanted to release that album on youtube in the 2017 still I thought I'm gonna manage to release that in December I didn't I then I thought I'm gonna release that in Maybe january, maybe february. I didn't But I was working on that but I had problems. I couldn't resolve but then And I finally managed to To Get my way around it and I'm currently rendering that and it's like I have 105,000 frames Because it's uh It's a it's an hour and 20 minute an hour 15 minute video At 30 frames per second full hd Yeah, and I'm rendering like 10,000 frames every day and my my pc is basically rendering these frames from Blander compositor for It was friday, I started friday, saturday, sunday, monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday, today's thursday I am rendering this for the 7th 6th day Non-stop. I'm like I'm like 60,000 frames Down there right now. So it's like 45,000 frames to go And yeah, I guess it it should be ready next monday or thursday So I'm excited to see what you what you think, but I think the video is pretty beautiful. It's simple. It's very simple I went to just make an animated visualizer And I made one with Animation notes in blender So it's nothing like it's not as anything. I'm not using stock anything. I hate stock Stock is just ah Stock is not art Stock is anti-art I mean if you buy art from stock, it's It's not your I I have very strong Feelings about using stock anything I like I don't say it it it should not exist I I perfectly understand why it exists And I even sell some stock stuff like I sell some stock sound effects actually one sound effect And yeah, but I would I I'm not using stock anything. So Also, I I don't even know if you can buy stock animation notes projects Maybe you could because it's very powerful if you don't know animation notes is a is a procedural animation system for blender That lets you program complex behaviors and data processing Of geometry and other things also text processing and it's just Amazing and it's open source and it's completely free And it's a it's an add-on for blender the open source 3d all-around solution Which I'm using at work every single day Along with inkscape, which is an open source graphic the vector graphic editing program, which is fantastic Yeah, so it's me rambling right here randomly rambling. I've thought about calling this serious random rambling or something And and making a short name rr But then I thought about you or I which is you know stands for universal remote identifier Isn't it I changed the meaning of it I'm for rambling indefinitely just like with uv it's alpha vlog, but it's also ultra violet Or ultra violence if you're Oh, it's not Yeah Same with qr. I made one video in a series called qr, which was quick requests And it's made a very quick video about synthesizing noises of Vinyl record being scratched basically Yeah, and Yeah, that was also a definition of an existing acronym Which is something I enjoy I'm not sure if I should do that because it might confuse new people very much Like why is this guy calling this qr or why is this guy calling this uri? I mean It's always written in the corner But Maybe it's not as searchable as it should be. I don't know I'm not sure if I should do that for our guide I thought about breaking some conventions that I've Come up with just for the sake of Making it more findable in the youtube For example, I I thought about putting the Name of the series at the end of the oh crap I missed my spot at the end of the video title instead of the in the beginning like The answer vlog videos are titled uv Hash number and then the title and I thought about calling the ardor guide videos something something Dash ardor guide numbers are something something But I don't know Let me know if you think that it makes sense Why is this cars? Here what the fish? Okay, I'm gonna park here then See what will happen Am I gonna make anyone angry? Oh crap It's not bash into the door That would suck Big time Okay, I promise I'm gonna upload this video as soon as I Yeah, I'm just I just call this. I don't know I'm just gonna I'm just gonna slap it into katyn live At the corner tag at the intranamation. I need to render the intranamation Shoot Okay, I'm gonna do that my cpu is 100% occupied, but my gpu is not So it can do it Have I parked right? No, I think I'm too close That one can can't leave right now. Let's just fix that That one Well, someone's got to be blocked That's life Can't take everyone happy Just impossible Impossible All right, I'm home can do some things Thanks for watching. I heard something or found this interesting or inspiring or whatever Let me know what you think if you have any questions about this or other things related to Linux audio Please leave them in the comment section If you think Long hair is cool Let me know If you think beards are lame, let me know And now just go and make some music Bye This crap motherfucker's guy mate