How to set up a pro-level music studio

Credit: www.qtractor.org

Part Two!

Did you miss part one? Get hold of it on page 64

Last issue, we set up the DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) Qtractor, and we took a look at the basics of working with music in Linux. This time, we’re going to get further into working with MIDI in Qtractor by looking at more of its processing and editing facilities. We’ll also have a go at adding digital audio files to projects by both importing them and recording them from scratch.

Once we’ve added the audio files into our Qtractor project, we’ll get the scissors out and start cutting up the audio to make it fit into the composition. We’ll assume that you have installed the JACK and Qtractor packages on your system. Look for them in the package manager if not.

MIDI editing

We’re going to look at some of the more advanced MIDI editing tools that Qtractor offers. You’ll need to have MIDI data present in a composition before you can begin editing it. If you haven’t got anything ready yet, consider downloading a MIDI file from the internet. Searching the web for MIDI files should prove fruitful. Drag and drop the .mid file onto the main Qtractor window so that you’ve got some juicy clips full of notes to play around with.

Double-click a MIDI clip to open up the editor window. Here, you can highlight a group of notes by dragging over them with the mouse. Ctrl+A selects all of the notes in the clip. If you have no notes selected, the MIDI tools will have no effect.

Quantize (locking the timing of MIDI notes on to the grid) is one of the most