[LAU] MIDI & real instruments combined in Ardour

[Ectropic Harmony]

I'd like to include some synth, piano, and drums (all MIDI) in a
recording of some music that I'm writing.

The synth & piano parts are both to be played on a USB/MIDI keyboard
controller connected directly into the computer.

The drum set part is to be played on a MIDI drum set (with sound
module) directly into Delta 1010 unit (MIDI) and a mixer (via drum
set's "Main Outs", 2 simultaneous tracks).

The synth part (USB/MIDI) will be heard along with an acoustic guitar
part that will be coming from the mixer & Delta unit. While the synth
is still playing, the drums (MIDI & "live") and bass guitar will enter
partway through. The synth part will occur again later while other
"real" instrument parts are going on.

The piano part (USB/MIDI) will follow along the same lines,
interacting with the live/real instruments (guitars, bass) and the
drum set (MIDI/"live") in various sections of the music.

It appears that the drum set part, via the "Main Outs" into the mixer,
will likely be fairly easy to incorporate into the mix. However, I'm
not sure how to pull off playing the drum set part only 1 time and
recording it simultaneously into both the MIDI data stream, via Delta
1010, and the "live" (Main Outs), via the mixer.

I've googled this and I came across a couple pages mentioning that
while Ardour supports MIDI now that it is still in early development.
It seems like a possible solution, or temporary work-around, might be
to create the MIDI parts in another program and to feed that MIDI
music data into Ardour. Is that the right idea?

How might that be done?

It seems like there are a variety of possibilities with the great
audio software that is available in Linux. :-)

In addition to how to get the USB/MIDI keyboard/controller MIDI data
into the mix (hopefully eventually via Ardour), how might the drum set
part be created on both MIDI data and the "Main Outs" audio at the
same time?

The drum set part will already have its own data/"sounds" via the
sound module, very nice professional sounds too, so I'm hoping I just
need to send those signals into a MIDI program and then from that
program into Ardour.

I just hope I can record the drum part 1 time, sending the "Main Outs"
to the mixer, while also sending the MIDI data to a MIDI program.

The synth & piano parts - they're coming from an M-Audio Axiom type of
keyboard, it seems to be quite popular in the Linux world so I went
for that ;-) - though the keyboard doesn't have it's own "sounds". I'd
like to use a MIDI program that creates very nice synthesizer-type
sounds and very convincing/authentic-type piano sounds.

I've experimented with a few random synth-type and piano-type sounds
from random programs, cannot remember which ones (there are a lot),
but it was difficult finding convincing sounds.

A description of the synth type sound I'm looking for - a type of
"milky metallic" sound, perhaps reminiscent of strings but it doesn't
have to be. Something you might hear on a synth track by Joe Satriani,
Steve Vai, or John Petrucci.

A description of the piano type sound I'm looking for - a "refreshing"
kind of acoustic grand piano, just a touch of the bright timbre mixed
in but definitely not too much, as authentic as possible. Something
you might hear on a live concert track by Mike Keneally or Jordan
Rudess.

If I can pull off this combination of USB/MIDI, MIDI/"Main Outs", and
live/acoustic/electric instruments all into 1 piece of music then I'll
be able to pull off a recording of what will turn out to be some
exciting music. :-)


Thank you for any assistance with this!


E.H.