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Making Music With Linux: We're Getting There ...
Comparing music-authoring software on Linux with that available for other platforms isn't exactly a fair match-up. Dave Phillips, maintainer of the Sound and MIDI Software for Linux website, says "Don't bother with the odious comparisons: 'Rosegarden is no Cakewalk,' 'Brahms is no Cubase,' and so forth. We know. We're working on it, but we're working on better things, too."
I asked Dave about his current music set-up, and how he uses it with Linux. "MIDI-wise, there's not much you couldn't use. I have a Yamaha DMP11 MIDI-controllable mixer, two Yamaha TX802 synthesizers, an Alesis MIDIverb, and various other pieces. MIDI is MIDI.
Digital audio is another can of worms. Professional cards have only begun to see Linux support. Notable advances have been made by ALSA, particularly in the work led by Paul Barton-Davis. Digital audio boards from RME and MIDIman are now supported by ALSA, and OSS/Linux will be adding some more proprietary cards to their list later this year, I hope."
Free solutions are attractive to many musicians, who consider their music a labor of love, but can't spend money on equipment as if their music were a money-making venture. So, without big cash as a catalyst for the development of professional tools, how will we make that happen? Alex Young, digital composer and occasional musician, answers the question:
"We need competition. If you think about when the Amiga demo scene was big, different demo groups really competed to get the slickest code and the best tunes. As a side effect, many useful tools were produced. If Linux had a greater drive in multimedia than is commonly interpreted by onlookers onto the open source community, music tools would benefit. Maybe the increasing interest in Linux games will drive this, or maybe individuals interested in programming and music will. There are many things that could be done, maybe projects could even be funded by sales of music produced with such tools!
I think people need to be attracted to Linux itself. Considering that I still like using an Atari ST with Cubase, and some electronic musicians wouldn't give up their Atari even now, people don't see it as a platform for writing music. For that Aphex Twin sound, we need very advanced midi software. And for the kind of MoWax-style sound we need very good sample editors. I believe open source music software can be as good or if not better than the commercial counterparts, for the same reason as any other applications."
To many Linux-friendly musicians, how they license their music can be just as important as the music itself. I spoke to Jeff Alami, Linux.com editor-in-chief and weekend composer about this issue. "I'm not trying to make any money with my music. I may have to add some sort of license in the future if only to maintain that the music was originally created by me." The Design Science License has been developed by Michael Stutz as a method by which copyleft can be applied to things other than software. Written with a little help from Wendy Seltzer, an attorney at the Berkman Center at Harvard Law School, the DSL is a way of copylefting any work that is recognized by copyright law, including music and art. This is one tool you won't have to wait for; it's been available for the past few years. "From what I see right now," Jeff says, "the DSL would serve my needs, mainly because it works to maintain the attribution integrity."
It's true that Linux has no professional audio suite at present, but after speaking to some of the people who work with Linux as a music tool, the message is clear. We're getting there. Small bits and pieces of quality software are already available, but heavy hitters like Cakewalk and Mark of the Unicorn haven't made the cross-platform leap to Linux the way several big names in the graphics field recently have. A high-quality, open source audio suite is definitely high on the 'wish list' of Linux enthusiasts, and the increasing quality and openness of Linux sound-related device drivers is paving the way for Linux-based music production as more than hobby.
If software development for Linux proceeds as fast as it has over the past year or so, it won't be long till the killer audio app appears. Until that time, we still have plenty to talk about. Next week, we dive once more into the creative process, and discuss high-end audio mastering, low-bandwidth sound transport and using Linux as a tool for good old-fashioned synthesis.See you then.
With the new release of BeOS, we MIDI users can
look forward for more good MIDI apps for BeOS.
I mean BeOS is the peak of coolness when it comes to media.
K2500 isn't going to be a dinosaur any time soon.
Look at Kurzweils K2000. Its been around for almost, or perhaps over 10 years, and its still going strong. I owne a K2000VP (a upgraded version of the original K2000) and I simply love it.
Also, you talk about things being dated.... look at the computer! They date faster then synthesizers!
Take a look at all the classic 80s synths. Jupiter and Junos, those things sell for ATLEAST $400-$1500 these days. Everybody want their "phat analog sound" . Back in the 80s, people wanted them for their "pads" (stringed chords) and other such things.
You can't say a musical insturment is out dated. It can technologically be out dated, but sound-wise, its never going to date. And thats what music is about, sound, so everything else is a whole goddamn less relivant.
Just my $0.02.
In Italian (the language "espresso" came from, I believe) they omit a lot of letters. A few examples:
Basically, they must have really lazy tongues or something, because they leave out a lot of consonants. Based on the above example, "express" would become something like "espresso", so in translating back to English, we should restore the missing "x".
Hey! Yesterday my Windows system went for almost two minutes without a bluescreen! (That's a new record for me.)
There is no mention of notation software anywhere in this article, and that is a big thing for me and most other people I know. If there was a high quality notation product out there, like Finale, I would seriously consider moving to linux. But there isn't, so I don't. That, and linux people are arrogant bastards. But that is another topic.
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
thank you SOOO much for this post...
sample-based music by itself is not a brain-dead medium.
A few months ago I was inspired to write a kind of GPL for my music. Since I edited it myself and since I'm not a lawyer I don't really know how safe it is, and I'd really appreciate a few more eyes going over it to see if I've missed anything.
It's at http://www.ndirect.co.uk/~s.robertson/music/licens e
Self-promotion: If you're interested in the music that inspired it, that can be found at http://mp3.com/czr
-- colin
A few months ago I was inspired to write a GPL style license for my own music. It can be found at http://www.ndirect.co.uk/~s.rob ertson/music/license. Since I've edited it myself, and since I'm not a lawyer, I can't guarantee that it's 100% watertight, so I'd really appreciate a few more pairs of eyes going over it to see if there's anything I've missed.
Self-promotion: If you're interested in the music it was written for, that can be found at http://mp3.com/czr.
- colin
Because, troll, I'm about to feed you another tidbit, unfortunately:
CD'sa aren't music. MP3's certainly aren't. They just sound like music.
You can't put that into any digital format, no matter how good your OS. It's like trying to digitise works of art -- you lose something. Any loss of information destroys the art and makes it into an emotionless, spineless, piece of shit.
Thank you.
I agreed with what you were saying up til this point. I like a great deal of electronic music, but NIN is pure crap.
matured into what? more sophisticated crap?!
I can't afford MS windows though. My entire household only earns equivlent to $100 USD/month, and we're 'highly payed'
MS windows isn't an option for some of us.
All trolls have a grain of truth, but it gets purposely overextended and mangled in the actual troll, in order to get as many self-righteous responses as possible.
Of course, if Windows doesn't have a feature that sends your original to-be-modern-classic midis to the "Windows Update" (a.k.a "Privacy Stripping") site, and makes them less-than-average promo tracks. Pinguins in toxidos rule!
Look at the man page for nice(1)
what is a "toxido?" maybe you linux users should invest in a dictionary. i know it isn't open source, but it couldn't hurt.
Teach me to put it near the hohos
(By "THIS" I mean the parent? Judging by the response you're getting I can only imagine that soliciting repondents such as myself was the goal of your post.) Look, I can imagine that most Slashdotters enjoy digital music. But there are people who prefer its older analogue roots. According to you, anybody who professes such a preference is a troll. Well, golly-gee, Mr. Mainstream, I guess once we update our collective music tastes, we can come out from under the bridge, right? Hyuck, hyuck, hyuck! Give it a rest. Remember the movie "The Rock" when Nicholas Cage spends $400 on a Beatles vinyl album? Why did he do it: "Number one, because I'm a Beatle maniac. And number two, these sound better." Doggamn right they do.
Let's see Linux be as easy to use out of the box as BeOS.
A LINUX based Midi patch Librarian would be very fine thing. A Musican could sqeeze as much new and different sounds out of their old/vintage midi synths. Kind of the way LINUX allows a user to sqeeze more life out of their old PC hardware.
As far as Hard Disk recording goes, the hardware drives for good multi-track is in a LINUX environment don't seem to be there yet. If Digital Audio Hardware manufatures could be showen that there is interest in there products in the LINUX world that may prompt them to make sales with LINUX drives. TerraTec (http://www.terratec.de their emw88-mt ) or AARdvark (http://www.aardvark-pro.com and their AArk 24) these are only 2 examples that come to my mind there are many more. In an GNU world high quality software maybe free, but most of us still have to pay for the hardware to run it. In the Computer based digital Audio hardware world there is not much mass market old hardware that is worth sqeezing life out of to make quality multi track recordings.
Sheading light on this topic without flames is welcome.
There's a new version of Pro Tools that doesn't require the hardware - it can use an ordinary sound card.
CSound is a programming language that lies somewhere between C and BASIC in its ease of use, and takes some getting used to (for example, there is no way to do subroutines, loops or anything recursive), however, there are plenty of pre-defined modules that do such things as delays, Fourier transforms, filtering & resonance, etc.
Although CSound is still mostly text oriented, several people have come up with utilities to generate orchestras graphically (sorta like linking patch cords on old analog synths), and there are many MIDI conversion utilities to generate the scores, or if you prefer, the score can be done tracker style with a spreadsheet.
The MIT Press has a book available called The CSound Book (do a web search for CSound- You'll find it) that is a comprehensive reference for creating instruments and music from a programming standpoint.
For shame, for shame.
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA Oh wait HA HA HA HA HA HA HA Do you even listen to the man's music? HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA He's about as analog as a RICE COOKER or shit did they port SUPERCOLLIDER to a FREAKIN BUCHLA? HA HA HA HA HA CARLCo
It's the thing that pinguins wear!
openAl can do most of that simply and more. look for soundtracker clones for linux on freshmeat..its there.
I can agree with "BeOS not much better latencies than Linux" but I can't agree with "Linux is a much better platform for multimedia than almost any other operating system, including BeOS." Heck, Linux may have better latency than BeOS, though not by much. Latencies aren't everything! That said, I have personally seen BeOS latencies as low as 1.8 ms without special hardware or special drivers or a special kernel, just intelligently written software. The BeOS Media kit handles communication between apps--routing audio, video, or any data. Is there a paralell on Linux? I really don't have anything against Linux and look forward to using it when it catches up to Be in th emultimedia department. Won't get there for a few years, that's for sure.
So why do both of Cygnus's posts get a score of 1 while mine get 0? While mine is the only one with factual information in it.
besides that, i youve got real balls with the "ive got gnu" thing. stallman has been known to record songs in the past. i wouldnt risk giving him any ideas, personally.
well pardon me, I work with professional video tools. This looks like shit. And before I get hit with os crap, they run on IRIX.
The guy above is a drooling halfwit.
Hope this helps.
Microsoft's Medical Equipment Division is just doublespeak for it's global euthanasia program. If that isn't Microsoft, I don't know what is... http://www.microsoft.com/ironic/makingBSODreal.htm l
I went to school for music and spend about 20-40 hours a week in front of cubase or cakewalk pro-audio, I have a pc dedicated to music running windows 98. Hard disk recording, is widly hard disk intensive. I often max out a seagate cheetah scsi disk when working with 18-24 tracks of audio sampled 48K * 24 bit words. Windows sucks for this. GPF every other day. Any little background process will come back and hose your disk IO and kill your cut. The work around is to increase the buffers used in the MOTU drivers, this increases latency between recording and playback which makes it really, really hard to tell what you are recording to disk and it's timing context to the other tracks. MIDI software may come and go, the revolution in music right now is obviously hardisk recording/multitracking. Believe me serious musicians will learn linux, buy linux software, integrate linux, masturbate to linux, if linux can record 8 simultaneous traks of 48k * 24 bit or 96k * 24 bit words. Musicians are paying 500-600 dollars for cubase or cakewalk plus the cost of a macintosh-newest-haulass-machine with the fastest scsi drives available. Multitraking is the killer app for musicians, myself included. Linux can further the process because you can run raid arrays to further increase your disk IO which allows for more possible recorded tracks. Linux also has better threading than windows for processes to run on those traks in real time eg reverb, delay, flanger, eq, autotune, transposition, etc. With linux maybe you could link multiple boxes with network to create huge synced trak machines. I really think that linux could do this so much better than windows. Recording music on a machine is so much more complex than creating wave files with a microphone hooked up to a shitty sound card with a crummy dsp. It requires real guts with the IO and incredible smarts in editing digital data (often as it is recieved from the dsp before it is written to disk). It requires timing latencies that are low and consistent. This is all stuff that linux or real time linux could provide. People who havent seen it just dont understand the freakish amount of IO a real multitracker creates. Its like standing beside a sunsite ftp host in telco terminal. something like that. Are you developing a music/multi-track application for linux ?? need a technical person who can test software ?? cstover@mediaone.net
The timing problem isn't Cubase, and it probably isn't your computer or OS either. Even commodore 64's were able to do midi well. More than likely, it's your midi interface. If you are using the midi interface that uses the joystick port of a soundcard such as a soundblaster, the midi will be sloppy. If you really want tight timing and good midi performance, you need to buy a dedicated midi interface. I highly recommend musicquest. Expect to pay $80 and up... anything under is crap.
Because the original poster didn't even say that. You attempt to discredit his position by misrepresenting it. This is a common tactic but I must admit that I expected more out of you.
well, theres nothing else running! i`m playing a midi event from cubase into my soundblaster player 1024, and playing a soundfont from there. so its not like the event has to go very far!
You just dont get enough (any?) control over whats happening in windows. I want *nothing* else going on except cubase (or any app). Its a shame theres no `do just this one thing` mode. Same goes for games. Multitasking is great if you need/want it.
...No matter what the specs are on data compression. If you A/B a $200 portable Minidisk recorder and a studio-grade Technics CD player (as I have), you might find that the Minidisk actually sounds BETTER than the CD!! Also, DATs can really crap out during the change of seasons (due to humidity fluctuations) - I've lost one too many master tapes due to this. Does anyone know if this happens to MDs? The future of digital audio (as in computing in general), I believe, lies entirely in PORTABLE solutions. Desktop audio is simply too limiting - fan noise from computers, hard disks, etc. - can really bring down your tracks! Check out http://www.core-sound.com It's a great resource! -ad
Most of the discussion here seems to have been about audio, midi, wav, and suchlikes. Important stuff for many, it seems, but not for me. What I'd need is a good editor to enter and print musical scores (the actual sound-production I leave for much older machinery, like a harpsichord). Anything useful available?
Also, I hear nice things about Columbia's RTCMix.
As far as stability goes, it doesn't matter. Linux will crash just as bad as Windows or Powerbooks will. Oh, it happens. Unless you built the entire system to be fault tolerant to a medical spec, you're not getting anywhere. Digital Audio is still damn tricky.
Um, yeah. Only every commercial software developer that I was paying attention to immediately dropped or "suspended" BeOS development when they made their foolish announcement that Be would be for Internet Appliances.
I've written a few e-mails to Sonic Foundry asking if they were planning to port over their products to Linux. The response I got was: "We are keeping an eye on Linux but have no short term plans to port our software. Please let me know if you have any additional questions."
GEEK Humor & sATIRE and MORE!
You're not worthy of wiping the Aphex Twin's ass. I can't believe you would dare associate him with MIDI. He, like all real men, uses strictly analog equipment.
Who is this guy? a musician? I am really at a loss.
To make proper music without midi is still very hard technically.Recording wav and so forth is expensive on the memory.Software instruments are better but most are only good for that stupid dance music.There is loads of room for improvement.Linux really has an opportunity here.
Obvisouly you've never even tried mixing before. You think it's easy to just stick both records together....dj'ing is a new plateau in music making, just because you're too old too understand that. Maybe you should cram some e up your nose and go to a rave....you'll understand then
This is one music app that I'd really like to see ported to Linux: SuperCollider, an utterly amazing audio processing language/application that feels like a cross between lisp, assembly and specialized dsp functions. It is similar in what you can do to CSound, but a lot easier and better, and it works in realtime too.
the way to do it is with MIDI CCs. most synths made in the last few years use CCs insteasd of sysex. it's literally the same as the diff between closed and open source (less of course the sysex is published).
The above poster is the same one who is attempting to use the untimely death of Don Knotts to promote his piece-of-crap Web site. The only decent and moral thing to do is moderate this into oblivious. Mr. Knotts was a good and decent man, and a talented actor. The above poster is taking a cheap potshot at Mr. Knotts' good nature and likeable characters in an attempt to make fun of him now that he has passed away. This, plainly put, is wrong. Please do the decent thing and moderate this jerk down. Thanks.
windows is the furthest thing from realtime in existance. Macs get away with this because they're cooperative multitasked, like win16 was.
This is reason #1 why Linux is the up and coming music OS. 2.2+patches or 2.4 can schedule tasks with about a millisecond of latency, which is fine for running DSP effects. You can use RT/Linux if that's not enough for you, but MIDI always ends up having a millisecond or so of latency anyway, so its probably not worth the trouble.
But when something better than MIDI comes along (please please please! =) RT/Linux will become important for controlling sequence playback.
Linux 2.2+mingo's patches or 2.4 can do realtime DSP processes with SCHED_FIFO with about 2ms of latency from input from the soundcard, to processing, to output on the soundcard, on my system. This is competitive with Beos.
If that's not enough, a lunatic named David Olofson ported an OSS/free sound driver to RT/Linux, so you can have your latency limited by the PCI burst size. this ends up being around 0.3 milliseconds for 44.1Khz 16bit stereo. With 96Khz 24bit audio you could go even lower latency (!) until you run out of CPU. Lets see BeOS even come close to that.
Consider yourself educated.
Amigas had full hardware pre-emptive multitasking. Ataris probably did too, but they sucked, apart from the built in MIDI ports which made them so popular in the first place.
BeOS is a pre-emptive multitasking OS with kick-ass latency levels that would ensure your hi-hats stayed in time. The up-coming version is free (slightly restricted) and scheduled for the end of this month.
Some major music software companies have expressed interest or are currently porting for BeOS.
Unless Linux and Unices in general can sort out the latency problems among other things, I doubt any serious company will give a crap.
My family has pentium 60 and two 486 100s.
Do not supprise at what people in US throw out.
I think what you're looking for is the AudioDK project. I was once in the same position as you, and it enabled me to make the big leap.
Anything aside from Buzz running on WINE on the computer I have at work after hours is out of my price range. Does this make me less of a musician? Does this diminish or enhance my talent or lack thereof in any way, shape, or
form? And there's no medium that's totally brain-dead. If you can't make it sound intelligent, that's not a reflection upon the medium itself, it's only a reflection of your capabilities within that medium.
Actually if you look at the CS world you see a corrolary between certain programming languages and the ability to produce "good" programs. Some mediums make things easier and some harder. Programming a win32 app from scratch is much harder than using say Visual C++ and the MFC
And, quite frankly, if there's anyone who thinks less of me for not having a real studio setup, their opinion means just about nothing to me anyway.
Depends on what you are doing. You can produce anything you want in whatever environment you want just depends on how you want to get recognized.
For doing recording a *live* (as in show) only a fool would use a computer at all. Digital tape recorders like the Alesis and Tascam products are proven and reliable, designed as such more so than any linux system could be. For session work Mac and Windows systems do a fine job. Linux is great, but the reliability argument just does't hold water.
It's more of a music environment than a music application. Along the same lines as MAX/MSP for the mac (and windows forthcoming) or PD on NT. Or (more recently) the excellent Audiomulch for Windows.
"Secondly, from a technical standpoint, Linux is a much better platform for multimedia than almost any other operating system, including BeOS. With Ingo Molnar's low latency patches for the 2.2 kernels, and almost without patches in the 2.3 series, Linux can support sustained, essentially guaranteed sub-5msec latency regardless of system load. This is truly impressive. Its too bad that Linus doesn't seem to care too much about this, but plenty of others do. " Linus recognizes that BeOS is far better for MM than Linux. see http://kernelnotes.org/lnxlists/linux-kernel/lk_99 08_04/msg01089.html FYI BeOS latency is much lower, measurable in microseconds, and it does it without patches and disk i/o increases. Just because you like Linux doesn't mean it can be all things to everyone. I like BeOS but I don't recommend it for high-capacity web serving.
and what does this have to do with music making SOFTWARe ?
If latency is your overriding concern, ask David Olofson about his port of OSS/free drivers to RT/Linux. Your latency is then limited by the PCI burst size, which beos will probably never do.
And I'd like to see you wrench 1ms in->process->out audio latency from beos. The best I could get 100% reliable under all loads was 3ms. and Linux 2.2+patches or Linux 2.4 (when it finally comes out) can do that easily with SCHED_FIFO.
I've programmed for both Beos and linux for audio apps, i've seen this stuff first hand. You, on the other hand, appear to rely on what you hear from Be's marketing department.
I will lay over and DIE the day a windows user says "yes! it didnt crash!" rather than "Oh no! i BSODed!".
how did this get marked informative?
I've overclocked my keyboard interface, it's
a little messey to dip my hands into the mineral
oil, but man is this keyboard fast now!
I'm working on an open source project to take
advantage of my upcoming DSL connection. I call
it AutoTroll. It will post messages like this one
for me. Anyone out there like to help? Contact me
at www.aintthisboogyamess.comical or my (old fashoned) bullitin board called "The 2x4" at 555-lumber.
Cash donations will be kept and unappriciated.
So, please help the cause, no checks please.
Have a nice weekend, ok.
I've seen comments saying Linux is great for sound apps because it is more stable, will have less latency etc.
I am sure it is stable enough but what about real time audio DSP? Linux is a great multi-tasking multi-user OS but it was never designed for realtime DSP...yet.
Can someone enlighten me, is there any reason why Linux should be better than Direct X, or, in the case of Mac OS, the "Go-on have all the CPU time you want, this isn't even a pre-emptive multi-tasking OS" system?
If Linux needs a good Realtime OS for DSP, the work by TimeSys should be interesting when it is released.
"Most of the established multimedia authoring software companies who were promising BeOS versions of their apps have canceled their plans" That's not true at all. *None* of the establised MM software developers have outright cancelled their plans for BeOS. Steinberg and EMagic are taking a "wait and see" approach. And that's it. IK Multimedia, Peak, and others have reaffirmed their support for BeOS post "refocus". I wouldn't be at all surprised to see Steinberg and EMagic resume development on BeOS in the near future.
You don't need to speak French, just to be able
m /index-e.html
...
to spot the 'English version' link.
You should be able to follow the jMAX link from here:
http://www.ircam.fr/produits/logiciels/log-foru
Well, unless slashdot goes and splits up that URL
Why don't you and the rest of your fellow trolls leave Slashdot and go sing some little troll songs? Or at least go hide under some bridges or something. (Not the Aurora bridge in Seattle, that one's taken.) Thank you.
Here
Have you managed to get cubase to play 16th note hihats properly then? I just *cant* get mine to stay in time. The events are programmed in time, but when i play it back, theres noticable, random variations in timing. This sort of thing worked rock-solid on amigas/sts 12 years ago. Perhaps i need a non-multitasking os? Any ideas?
Agreed, Csound kicks all ass. I started playing with it myself, and within a couple of hours had created some nice sound effects for a video game I'm writing. And I'm just scraping the surface of its phenomenal capability. It's a soft synth and tracker combined with a Real Hacker's interface: text-mode command-based YAFIYGI coolness. It has a place in every electronic musician's toolkit.
For the Slashdot readership:
Sign #1 that someone is really a troll:
The deny being a troll, restate their original argument in far more moderate terms, and call you a:
two bit prick.
I hope this turns out to be helpful for some of you.
That post SHOULD have been rated as -1, Troll :-P
That used to be halfway true... ...AFAIK he uses a custom synth running on a Powerbook or some shit like that.
hehe, the post you are refering to, is actually a response of Linus to my post about the scheduling latency tests.
.. sorry too lazy to create a slashdot-account :-)
I discovered what the 25% performance decrease was when using 80% of the CPU in the Reatlime process: there is only 20% of CPU time left to write buffers to disk, therefore since this involves some memory copying,(userspace->kernel), the performance drops.
But we are talking about an UP box, the non-lowlatency kernel performed a bit better in terms of disk performance while running the latencytests,
BECAUSE: sometime the benchmark was not rescheduled for 150ms, during that time, the kernel had the chance to write the buffers to disk.
We talked about this topic, and even a BeOS developer admitted that high CPU load of a RT process could cause decreased disk I/O performance, for the very same reason.
That is not a fault linux that is a problem that CPU power is LIMITED.
Anyway BeOS is not a hard-RT OS, therefore forget micosecond scheduling accuracy.
Some drivers, (IDE,SCSI) simply lock the kernel for several hundred microseconds, that means a non pre-emptive OS has to wait.
Please get a clue what does mean cache trashing. Even RTLinux doesn't make very big sense for lowlatency since switching context
10 thousand times per second, will kill your cache performance completely slowing down your box to a crawl.
I browsed the BeOS mailinglists and they were alway talking about 3-5ms latencies when playing sounds.
Using lower latencies is not very pratical, since you have more functioncall overhead than pratical DSP work.
Any claim BEOS latencies are MUCH better than Linux, is nonsense in the realworld.
FYI: BeOS is shifting towards Internet Appliances, closed source, and almost 0% marketshare on the desktop. OTOH, Linux grew from 0.4% 1998 to 4% 1999
I have nothing against BeOS, but I don't see the reason to blame Linux, because it was originally a Server-OS.
It works on the desktop too, because the kernel is well designed.
The kernel simply doesn't care if you use it for serving pages of a high-traffic website, or if you are using it as a 3ms latency guitar FX.
Both tasks work well.
PS: If you are SOO sure that BeOS can deliver microsecond accurate scheduling latencies under high load,
then PLEASE send me a benchmark which draws graphs like my "latencytest" (see my page)" which will show me maximum leatencies in the microsecond range. THEN I WILL BELIEVE you
all my tests are based on REAL BENCHMARKS
you have the full testresults, and benchmark code in order to reproduce this on your own machine
Benno Senoner
benno@gardena.net
http://www.gardena.net/benno/linux/audio
Here, try writing that first sentence again. Here's a revise:
This may not "sound offtopic"-but music composition applications aren't that hot "under" Linux. Isn't SGI, better for this?.
The advent of easy to use music creation programs will do nothing but take away focus from real musicians. I have literally searched and spent hours looking for and listening to mp3's of all sorts of techno, trance, industrial, and euro music and have yet to find anyting that compares to music produced by real musicans.
All this techno, looping, mixing midi crap is nothing but drivel. Just like rap music compares to real voice talent.
Give me *real* musicians anyday. Somebody who has worked long hard hours not just writing the music but perfecting their art on a real instrument. Even real keyboard players must spend years of pratice to be able to pratice their art.
This is Shadowcaster, I'm just not logged in. I would like St. Patrick to dump a hot bowl of grits down my pants. Thank you. Shadowcaster, wishing he could get more karma from this post :-(
Come on. You can't have spent more than two minutes on this.
Put some real effort into your trolling next time.
Thanks.
RJD makes extensive use of computers. In fact, 'Richard D James Album', from what I understand, was almost entirely composed on a mac.
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Your honor is perfectly understandishable.
Your mother is a goat.
Hi Clif,
I'm talking about this from a Professional point of view.
Professional what? Professional pundit? Bigot? Your posts make you out to be so far inside your own box as to be laughable. I'm sure you're not a bad person, or as bitter and insane as you seem to be. Step back from those opinions of yours a little, and you might learn something.
The point was making was that what is killing linux is the lack of professionality.
I think you might want to quit while you're behind.
I hate the idea that todays culture can take the braindead sample based mediums and promote them as High Art.
Go, right now, and buy a copy of the Beastie Boy's "Pauls' Boutique" album. Listen to it every day for the next three weeks, and then come back and post that again.
If you hate ideas, then there's really nothing more that can be argued with you. You're either a lost cause or a _very_ good troll. (Who posts at +1 for extra effect.)
--
blue
i browse at -1 because they're funnier than you are.
Aphex Twin is the psuedonym for Richard D. James, a two-fisted, analog synth ubermench. He's a Moog man through and through. All of this talk about Mac, DAT, and what ever is just a pile of horse manure. Listen to Selected Ambient Works, Vol. 1; there isn't a single digit anywhere.
Avid runs on the MacOS in name only. They basically had to rewrite all the low level drivers etc to make it work at all. The Avid system essentially replaces much of the OS and runs on the bare metal.
The only reason they had a hard time moving it over to NT is because everything they've done is tuned to the Mac hardware not the OS.
In fact, the reason they took the time to port to NT is because users demanded it.
Please.
Microsoft's Medical Equipment Division has been using Windows CE in pacemakers for sometime now. If that doesn't demand reliability, I don't know what does.
http://www.microsoft.com/medical
I've found a nice little free synth/tracker/midi program for Windoze and I was kind of hoping all the guys here at slashdot could go over and talk to them about doing a Linux port. It's at http://www.buzz2.com It's a great program for free and it still needs a little work. It would be nice if we could get them to open source it too. :)
...and you can wipe your ass with a cactus.
Why doesn't it surprise me that the drug-crazed hippie Linux crowd is calling for a way to write music under Linux? After all, that's what hippies do, right? Write music, right? Normal people are out bar-hopping, socializing, drag racing, etc. In other words, normal things. The Linux crowd, on the other hand, desires to stay at home and "write music." Surprise, surprise, surrrrrrrprise.
.. the large companies that have given us all the unprecedented wealth that we enjoy. Companies like Microsoft.
I can guess about the type of "music" that these expresso-swilling, tofu-gobbling flower children are going to churn out, song after sickening song. It will be the same type of anarcho-socialist tripe that the reefer addicts of the 1960s came up with, only this time instead of railing out against a noble war against Communism in Vietnam, the songs will attack the capitalist heroes of this decade
Yes, I can see it now; the socialistic Linux community releasing such cherished hits as Stallman and Cher's I've Got GNU, Babe and Peter, Paul, Mary, and Linus's If I Had A Hammer, I'd Smash Windows. Naturally, the "music" would be distributed for free, in MP3 format; socialists love MP3. Pardon me whilst I vomit. This type of horrible music must never be allowed to see the light of day. It must be stopped, and it must be stopped immediately. It is for this reason that good and decent people must see to it that music authoring software is never developed and made available for Linux.
That's just my opinion.
FYI, For those who use sound forge under windows. Up until this release, there has been problems with loading and saving files. At this point, as far as I can tell, all basic editing functionality works. The only thing that I'm not sure about are if external plugins work or not.
Still, it sucks that I have to run a the windows version of sound forge at all. The state of open source digital audio editors in a *nix environment is nothing less than piss poor. Anybody who has ever been forced to use XWave knows exactly what I'm talking about. ... I hate to sound like I'm complaining. All I know is that if I had the knowledge needed to write such an app, you can bet that I'd be working on it right now.
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Your honor is perfectly understandishable.
I'd have to check with EM as to whether that's OK. Not sure either way. It's also over 3000 words long, so it would be roughly three times the usual length of a 'long' /. feature. I might update it and post a link, tho, if EM says it's OK.
--
I have been making music with Linux on and off for about five years using Csound. Csound is a venerable piece of synthesis software. Its origins date back to some of the earliest formalised computer music at MIT.
Writing music in csound is pretty difficult, but very rewarding. Instruments are written in a flexible and powerful language (think of a language for describing modular synths and you are halfway there). The score is written in a seperate tabular file and there exist tools to convert MIDI files to Csound scores and back.
Recently Csound has picked up realtime capabilities. It is now possible to play Csound using a MIDI keyboard and hear the results by a soundcard. It is also possible to use Csound as a realtime effects unit.
There is a Linux version here
It's *not* a pile of horse manure. Not only does he use Macs, but he's even built his own samplers. Show me an analog additive-synthesis sampler, and I'll cream my jeans. :^)
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Okay, not only that, but he builds his *own* analog equipment. And he writes his own sequencer stuff. Show me an analog sequencer, and I'll cream my jeans again. :^)
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
This kind of software is very time-consuming and difficult to write (I *have* considered it).
I once started writing a sequencer which was to have done a few thing Jazz didn't do (like having tracks comprised of phrases, rather than flat lengths of events). I got about as far as writing a Qt piano roll window class when I realised that it would be much quicker to save up and buy a Power Macintosh and Cubase VST than to write my own, and that every minute I spend hacking on a sequencer is time I don't spend actually using one.
As for the free/pay software cultures, there is indeed a big difference. Then again, compared with the price of music hardware (anything capable of generating halfway decent sounds will cost at least as much as a quite passable PC, and probably more), paying $300 for a virtual drum machine plug-in doesn't look so excessive.
Or is it really "I want stuff and I don't want to pay for it"?
maybe people think that knowledge and culture enlighten them, and they want enlightenment without it being tainted.
Brian
I'm hoping that we can get the SoundKit and MusicKit working on GNUstep/Linux so that you could write one of these applications in a few weeks at the most. We will have to wait for the GNUstep development enviornment to evolve first, of course. The development environment that NeXT put together puts even VC++ to shame--partly because of the incredible NeXT API.
This article wasn't about Microsoft. It was about Linux. Gee, you can already do this with MacOS and a number of commercial Unices like Irix. Big deal - this discussion is about the present and future state of audio editing for Linux.
Microsoft is actually abysmal at multimedia for high and medium end editing - that's why the Avid isn't run on MS. It is resource wasting, slow, uses a pathetic file-system, is unstable and fairly chunky. My multimedia development platform of preference is the Mac (hell - everything on Microsoft is a poor copy of the Mac anyway - be better to use the original than the pathetic gimicy clone), but I'm very excited that my OS preference of Linux is getting some serious attention multimedia-wise.
Sorry to reply the the flame, but I felt it was an attitude worth exploring.
s'ok. Just don't let it happen again.
I will lay over and DIE the day a linux user says "yes! we have it today!" rather than "Real Soon Now".
Does this include Soundtracker? I'm too addicted to Buzz-style soft synth / tracker hybrids to have used it much myself, but it seems decent.
:) That and anything else you'd like to contribute, actually.
If it doesn't fit your needs, what edge does Impulse Tracker have on it? I haven't used either, so I don't really know....
And check out my brief plug for Octal here. We'd love to have your 'flazicator'.
Congratulations. The last line of your message has just become my sig. :)
Actually if you look at the CS world you see a corrolary between certain programming languages and the ability to produce "good" programs. Some mediums make things easier and some harder. Programming a win32 app from scratch is much harder than using say Visual C++ and the MFC
:(
Ok, true.... But can you really extend this to music, where the functionality that you're shooting for can't be defined nearly as objectively? (Not that either could be defined totally objectively, but I'm not really competent to argue that.)
Depends on what you are doing. You can produce anything you want in whatever environment you want just depends on how you want to get recognized.
No disagreement here.... I'm pretty much trying to say "I don't need the approval of professional musicians if that's the attitude they have" in a slightly less childish/(something)-sounding way, but I haven't really succeeded.
Hi Clif,
all the little bedroom 'musicians' grab a free groovebox type application and think they are a real musician. It's the whole DJ philosophy, let someone else do my work for me. Grab a few musicians aside, and ask what is the most important thing to them. Get real people involved and go at it.
The only thing I hate more than sample-based dance music is condescending people. There is talent in all walks of life, and art in all forms of expression. Perhaps if you were a little more open-minded about other people's choice of artistic medium your forum would be a little more successful. As it stands, I personally would never code for or help any group represented by someone with such a narrow-minded attitude.
Just something to think about. All people are real people.
--
Blue, musician, hacker, and supporter of trolls.
i browse at -1 because they're funnier than you are.
A lot of people are claiming that Linux's 'stability' will improve the chances of having a nice time recording live sound and whatnot..
I just want to point out that application crashes, even in windows, are often a fault of the application. If you access the wrong chunk o' RAM, yer gonna blow up, linux or not.
Also, no one has mentioned the gimp-like sound editing tool for linux, Glame. It looks perty cool.
Thanks,
--
blue
i browse at -1 because they're funnier than you are.
One of the main reasons I can't use any of the existing Sequencer projects on Linux is that they don't support system exclusive banks. And I'm not aware of any editor/librarian available on Linux yet, either.
A lot of synthesizers have hundreds of parameters that can be tweaked to get the effects that you want, and programming these synthesizers is easily as important as playback. If the synth isn't set up properly, then the song sounds like crap. Another really anoying thing is when the software automatically sets GM mode. These are problems I've had to put up with on Linux.
It wasn't until last month that I finally got a MIDI file with an embedded 17k User Performance sysex bank to play back correctly, and that was after writing my own playback engine.
I've tried the ALSA drivers, but it would seem that there are timing issues (unless pmidi just has bugs), and there is no documentation yet on the MIDI API. It may be great for audio, though I notice a significant loss of quality even on the Audio portion over OSS drivers.
Mad props to the Kurzweil Massive! (hehe)
and here's the fixed link to sonikmatter
what i would REALLY like to see is a good open source sequencer, with a HARDWARE interface (with lotsa buttons and knobs) for live performance! (like interactive, so REALTIME live performance is possible ) and maybe even better would be the ability to dump your sequences to the interface and just leave the computer at home? Wouldn't it be great to replace all the aging Alesis MMT-8's with something that doesn't crash, but has more flexibility?
--freq
k2000 owner, dj, musician, loon
"Tension is the great integrity" -- R. Buckminster Fuller
You know, I think we're missing the point, here. People are talking about duplication in effort, and all, but I think there's a deeper problem here.
If you look at any of the audio projects that are out there, they all have basically gotten to the same point; the basic interface is there, the plugin APIs are there, they have some nice mixing capabilities---and then the whole project kinda just loses steam.
Why? Because people aren't writing plugins. Why? Because the people who would be writing them don't know what people want..!! Seriously, writing plugins for some of these editing systems looks like the nicest thing in the world; these guys really put a lot of work into their programs. (ex; Gmurf, Electric Ears, etc.) it's just that once they were done the basics.. they went back to the drawing board, and decided to improve upon the basic functionality and stability, instead of adding those extras.
We, as a community, have to be the ones to MAKE those extras; if we want a certain type of plugin, we have to ask for it! Being able to mix samples together, and apply fadein/fadeout is all well and good, but how about a decent resample effect? Speed/pitch plugin? Resample to max volume?
There are a lot of plugins that still need to be made; this is what's really holding back the audio programs.
Also, while I'm at it, I should point out that while the Gimp is good at editing still images, we need either an extension to the Gimp or another piece of software altogether to be able to handle animation. I think extending the gimp would be the best idea; thus far, all we've seen are hacks, as far as making animations, or applying effects across image sequences. I want to be able to apply a ripple across an animation; be able to gradually move one layer from one side of an image to the other using keyframing; have access to a DECENT timeline editor.
http://www.retas.com
Lipsyncing to an audio track would be neat too, but you get the general idea. We have the hardware support; has anyone looked into this kind of project..?
James
Well, one wouldn't really try real-time audio rendering on a web/mail/DB server. On a workstation, most services either won't be needed, or can be reniced to not interfere with what you're doing. Same way your DB server's primary task is the DB. TGTAL (the great thing about Linux) is that a box can be tweaked to give the correct performance balance for the required tasks. [Can anyone see the niche for MMLinux - Multimedia Linux - optimised video/audio and lessened 'net' services???]
try
linuxUsersWho_DO_ProfessionalAudio++
I think that the statement "We're almost there" is a very accurate one. There are many groups, commertial and open, who see the lack of good multimedia applications in Linux. The desktop void is being filled, audio support is getting better, but AV tools for the OS just aren't there.
This is actually one of the long term goals of the LSDVD group: to produce video authoring software for linux. It's a long term goal, one which would take a lot of time and money, and might have to be slightly closed source in order to get by licensing issues with The Man.
We all love music. Most of us probably play and write music as well. Just be patient, the tools are coming...
-davek
ps: big things are happening with LSDVD, stay tuned.
6th Street Radio @ddombrowsky
Then I'd recommend you try soundtracker (http://www.soundtracker.org) or ecasound. Do some searches for dance music on Linux and check out some Linux demoscene articles and you'll find a lot of Modplug-like programs. Maybe we should even start a project to port Modplug.
-- atomly
One of the things that is seen as a minus for platforms like Win98 and MacOS is actually a plus for doing music (especially with video). You can easily (well, on MacOS anyway) configure the system so that the largest portion of resources is available to the music/video program. Here is an example of the kind of problem that companies like Steinberg, Digidesign, Emagic, etc have solved on Win98 and MacOS systems.
Imagine that you are trying to score music to a video clip. You'll want to be able to play along in real-time and have what you recorded happen exactly when you played it (digital audio and/or midi). You'll want to play along with existing tracks and make sure everything syncs up during and after the recording. If you've got a lot of multi-tasking going on, your music program may not get the resources it needs to reproduce a portion of the music without skipping or dropping out. Your video track needs to play without dropping frames while you're playing back 24 or more tracks of audio. And no matter how much processing you may be trying to do to individual tracks, sub-mixes of tracks, or the whole mix, *everything* has to sync up with the video timecode (including the video) on playback!
Can Linux be configured to allocate system resources and not allow background tasks to interfere when you are composing or mixing? For instance, getting a large email attachment in the background could choke your system because of network and disk accesses just when you are in the middle of recording that "perfect take". Then that performance is gone forever because of unreliability of the recording system. In a professional music studio with clients paying hundreds of dollars an hour this is unacceptable. At a personal studio level, it's still a pain in the ass. Is there a resource allocation solution in Linux that is easy to implement?
Is the Linux architecture capable of such heavy, all-important real-time tasking?
-ibo
Just thought I'd like to mention CSound, a very flexible music creation tool available for just about any platform. It is really a programming language for sound. The input is an orchestra (which defines the instruments) and a score (which defines the notes to play). The output is a wave file. The really neat thing is that the instruments can use all kinds of advanced functions available as CSound commands (i.e. different filters, formant synthesis, etc.)
CSound is primarily used for experimental electronic music, but I have found it is also excellent for creating new and original samples that can be used anywhere. The learning curve can be somewhat steep (it is similar to assembly language) but if you are serious about creating original music you should check it out. A nice page to get started is: the MITPress Frontpage
Nathan Whitehead
Do you claim the right to not allow others to have the same or similar thoughts? If you express your thoughts to someone else...are they allowed to think them too?
You are mixing up patents and copyright.
If I were able to patent my thoughts, then nobody else would have been allowed to have the same thoughts. Copyright is a right to restrict copying, not use.
And yes, if I express my thoughts to others, they are allowed to think them, but I would not be all that pleased if they start to spread them around claiming they were their own.
I am saying that information is not in and of itself property in my eyes.
I would say that your ideas of "property" are too narrow. You think that only tangible things can be owned. To repeat myself, don't think "property", think "bundle of rights" instead. The composition of this bundle is flexible -- "property" can mean different things in different contexts.
Certainly you have the right to NOT express thoughts of your own, or not release information to others. However, I do not recognize any right beyond that.
How about reputational rights? I wrote a song, can anybody take it and claim *they* wrote it? What can I do in this case?
How about more reputational rights? I wrote an opinion piece, somebody took it, inserted "And, by the way, Adolf Hitler was the greatest man of the XX century" at the end, and started to distribute this article. What can I do now?
And remember that you don't own your name, even under the current intellectual property laws -- and of course, if there is no intellectual property at all, then anybody can take and use your name -- right?
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
I just can't delude myself into believeing that when a person makes a copy of a musical piece and shares it with a friend, that they have commited some horrid offence.
Well, of course, there are always two possibly different value systems operating: one is your own personal morals, and one is the set of current laws. Your personal morals are (from my point of view, at least) your private business. You may believe it to be immoral to wear bathing suits, or to work for the government -- that's all fine. You can believe all you want.
However, in your interactions with the real world your personal morals do not matter much -- here the laws rule. I may believe that this 35 mph sign is unreasonable and stupid, but if I am caught I have to pay a fine anyway.
Intellectual property is no different. You can believe it must not exist, as long as you remember that:
(1) Your beliefs do not impose any obligations on me -- what I should or should not do;
(2) Your actions in real world are still subject to current laws, regardless of your beliefs.
One more thing that you might want to think about is the freedom of contract. Two adults can enter into any contract they want, right? So if I wrote a song, I can enter into contract with you, giving you a license to play the song but specifying that you shall not make any copies of the song. I clearly can do this, cannot I? And that gives me the opportunity to establish the whole copyright system, even if there is no explicit "copyright law". It would be very inefficient, but it could be done.
So unless you want to make a law forbidding any restrictions on information, contracts will still be able to limit its freedom. And I don't think such a law would be a good idea.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Being a windows music junkie, even though i can't stand being in Windows, there's nothing I can find to match the functionality of SonicFoundry's ACID. Is there anything out there?
:^)
And let me just say that juno6 and terminatorX for Linux are two of the coolest things I've ever seend
Joe
Thanks for the info. I was under the impression that the "intelligent mode" of the MPU-401 is what handles the SMPTE/MTC/MIDI clock signals. If it's available through the existing driver interfaces, then I'm a little more optimistic.
Is there a mailing list or site for more information on SoftWerk? I'd be really interested in anything that would listen to the MIDI clock on my old Akai HD recorder.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
I recall a few years ago reading an article in Keyboard about sequencer timing accuracy. One of the suggestions they made for Windows was to close EVERYTHING else -- no screensaver, no browser in the background, basically nothing but the sequencer should be running. They also suggested turning off unused MIDI channels during playback. The idea was to give as much processor time as possible to the sequencer and the channels it is really playing.
Failing that, I might borrow a friend's drum machine, dump the drum track to that, and set it to clock-sync to my sequencer.
Apologies if you've already tried all this. Just thought it might help.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
Actually Macs rule the pro-music market pretty much. The standard is something called "Pro Tools" from Digidesign.
There are some solutions that run on NT 4 now, but they're still a minority.
On the other hand the semi-pro market is pretty much all on the Win95/98 platform.
Multitrack, Random Access, and editing is why you don't use DAT except for mastering, and CD burners have just about made that redundant too.
.wav file, with effects, all in software within the box).
Multitrack means recording 8 or 16 or 24 or however many tracks and then mixing down (to a
Random access means instant access to any point in time during the recording. And Editing is real important too. Want to move that chunk of music around ? Just select and drag, or whatever. You get the idea.
Granted, DAT is the way to go for a 2-channel recording of a performance, but that's not studio work, that's live work.
Oops sorry !
Here's the link
Most of the established multimedia authoring software companies who were promising BeOS versions of their apps have canceled their plans, the best example of which is Steinberg's promised Nuendo for BeOS. Given the right hardware, BeOS is more suited for multimedia authoring than Linux (I use both OS's, by the way). How can one expect Linux support from such companies?
I'm still chained to Win98 for my music recording since I use Cakewalk Pro Audio and soundcards which are supported best under that OS.
---- Politics: Kissing ass and pointing blames.
Not just duplicating MIDI tools but rather using linux to go beyond MIDI and make software "instruments" that are rich and expressive like their acoustical brethren. I play and write for piano, voice, and recorder and have been on the hunt for good music programs at reasonable cost.
As others here have pointed out, a simpleminded projection of music into digital tools can lose as much as it gains. For example, MIDI is heavily biased toward the 12-tone equal tempered scale of modern western music. This scale is fine for most loud, busy, and only approximately tuned harmonies of most pop music (and has a number of advantages for easy key-changing) but on the other hand, the scale lacks the pure, sweet thirds and sixths that you can hear in, for example, renaissance polyphony, and comes nowhere close to the harmonic sevenths common in Barbershop and other close harmony vocal traditions.
In addition, all sorts of other scales (meantone, "well-termpered", 19-, 31-, or 53- tone equal tempered, etc.) would be great to use in music if you could switch among them as easily as MIDI lets you switch among instuments (the math regarding tuning systems is very interesting -though it tends to be a crackpot magnet- and might make a good slashdot thread. I wrote some perl->gnuplot scripts to show some of the patterns and I would post them if I wasn't averse to getting slashdotted).
Same goes for musical timbre and control of pitch overtones. All these things sound like a perfect game for musically inclined Open Source hackers. I am slowly teaching myself the computer side of things but in between my other five jobs, it is likely that others could do it a lot faster. I'd be happy to help, though, from the music side. Anybody on this case already?
I'm a radio/TV student at a fair-sized Canadian university, so I'm quite interested in having editing software for my Linux box at home. I downloaded BC2K a while ago, actually - just havne't had a chance to really use it until now (I'm in video year, and we can't edit outside of the school. Besides, I don't have the space, or the equipment.)
.wavs, edit, even playback! I actually got sound the first time! Not the second time...but it's worth testing again.
I'm going to try this to edit a feature for my radio journalism class. The interface leaves a bit to be desired - having to open two sessions to be able to edit stuff together is a drawback. Then again, I was taught on SAW and Video Action RT, so maybe I'm just spoiled:).
Results of the BC2K test will be available come Wednesday.
Incidentally...I've been able to almost get SAW working under Wine. Not consistently enough to be usable (this was under a late-99 version of Wine), but the first time I ran it I could load
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
There's also BEAST/BSE. I've got to say Buzz Tracker is one of the few applications I keep W*****s on my system for, and can't wait to see how these turn out.
--
You're not worthy of wiping the Aphex Twin's ass. I can't believe you would dare associate him with MIDI. He, like all real men, uses strictly analog equipment.
"who owns words? "
"Nobody owns the fucking words, man." -- James Dean
Dan
I had looked for tools to use in algorithmic composition for years before finding keykit. It works quite differently than some commercial MIDI packages, but for the experimenter/MIDI hacker it is a very useful tool
I wholeheartedly agree with gribbly here. Sonic Foundry write *amazing* music software. The Photoshop of music is not an exaggeration either. You want to know why?
User Interface.
Acid, Sound Forge (both by Sonic Foundry) and Photoshop are all really, really easy to use. All you usually need to do nearly anything in these programs is a two button mouse, ctrl, alt and shift. Play around with these buttons in Acid for 5 minutes and you'll be looping, cutting, pasting, zooming, stretching, panning, and generally manipulating sound right there on your screen. The interface looks really simple but it hides a monster of a program.
Like one of the very early posters said, digital audio is also my ball and chain to Windows. Unfortunately, making music is one of my true pleasures in life and there's no way I'm giving up the ability to do that quickly, easily and at home just because of an OS war. Sorry, I'm just not that much of an idealist, so sue me! :)
The Linux community could do a couple of things to rectify this situation:
Do all this for me and I'll promise to pull the plug for good... except maybe for the odd game of Half-life :)
"Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge, and where is the knowledge we have lost in information?"-T.S.Eliot
jazz was recently GPL'd (betaversion was out for some time, stable version 4.0 was released few days ago).
erik
...all excited, don't know why...
For those of you who have used Max on the Macintosh or NeXT, Miller Puckette, who wrote the patching program "Max", has created a new version which runs under Linux. It is called Pd and you can grab it at
http://www.crca.ucsd.edu/~msp/software.html
There is also a real-time graphics add-on library. The program is not really meant for casual use, but rather for people who have specific real-time performance needs which aren't met by the typical consumer apps.
The killer app is already here -- it's called jMax by -- IRCAM. I wouldn't worry yourselves on trying to replicate Cubase VST or Logic in an Open Source model-- those systems have been in development longer than Linux has, and
you're not going to get very far without copying every single bit of functionality. And who needs more cloneware?
I'm sorry I don't speak a word of French what exactly makes this so good? Babelfish output is not very legible.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
Both are excellent and i plan to use them a lot once the bugs are fixed... I hope to try the Video editing someday. (And i hope to learn how to make a VideoCD with Linux...)
--
Artix
Your Linux, your init.
Hmm, an open source Pro Tools wouldn't do much good considering that software is basically a GUI for their hardware. They use to give the software away for free on the mac, but to get the functionality which makes Pro Tools the standard DAW you need their DSP cards and audio i/o racks. Both VERY costly ($10,000+)
"This seems like one of the areas in which we actually arent competing with microsoft."
Everyone here is forgetting one major point...
Of course we are not. Microsoft only makes the operating system. It's up to the professional developpers to choose what OS they deliver their system. If we can prove to them Linux is better, then we may see professional suites ported.
The market is not a very stable one. My Father purchased a copy of Encore from Passport. It was a fairly well know notation software program and the company well belly-up. It would be great to get some to port existing code such as encore, fix the bugs and open the source...
Don't forget that one...a combined mixer/wave editor, I'm guessing the same concept as goldwave/multiquence for Win9x (basically lets you build sample loops and multitrack your waves). I just got it and installed tonight, so I haven't had too much of a chance to play with it, but if it works as designed it should be a kick in the ass to get me to dust off the old guitar and...
6 940264.html
Oh yeah that url is
http://www.freshmeat.net/appindex/1999/05/17/92
mcrandello@my-deja.com
rschaar{at}pegasus.cc.ucf.edu if it's important.
I used a pair of couplers with the rca's off my turntable to an adapter into my souncard, wmrecord or some such to put it into .wavs. Sorry, can't help you with scratch filtering (most of my record collection is very well preserved, and I kind of like the few pops that are there, adds character or something), try DAP(?). There are quite a few nice mp3 compressors out there like lame(technically NOT an ecoder but...) or bladeenc, I used some gtk thingee. Sorry for the lack of details but it has been a few months and an installation or two ago (I'm a distro-hopper). Freshmeat's appindex under X11/Audio ought to get you started
mcrandello@my-deja.com
rschaar{at}pegasus.cc.ucf.edu if it's important.
What constitutes music, or a musical expression? (couldn't someone's IP address be percieved as latent musical expression?)
How should remixed or rewritten or rethought music be differentiated and classified from the 'pristine original', whatever that is? How should this be done in a decentralized computing environment, such as the one we're playing with currently?
Your answer seems to raise more questions than it settles.
who owns words? who owns notes?
Well as far as copyrights are concerned, the second you record any song or WRITE DOWN any lyrics, they are copyrighted. This applies to all forms of recording including digital.
You sound like you probably already know this but just in case...
Have you used CSound and SuperCollider? Yes I know they are not exactly the same thing but creating synth from a programming standpoint is hella fun, and similar to Ample.
Go, right now, and buy a copy of the Beastie Boy's "Pauls' Boutique" album. Listen to it every day for the next three weeks, and then come back and post that again.
I don't think that is what he is talking about. Besides the fact that Pauls ( a classic album) is over ten years old, the Beasties were not, and never will be a part of the braindead sample based mediums that the poster was talking about. Instead take a listen to the INCREDIBLE amount of techno/house/jungle/trip/acid/crap that is being released out of peoples basements. This is the real problem he is referring to, and this is propagated by these cheap simple software packages.
Actual Conversation
Me--> What do you do here?
CalArts Student--> Oh I want to be a rock star.
Me--> So why are you here?
CalArts Student--> Well I'm in L.A. and my friend is getting a hacked copy of ProTools so I can put out a Pro album.
Me--> What's the music like?
CalArts--> I haven't written it yet.
I thought he was kidding.
This is a dumb question, but didn't they start out in the early 80's selling MINCE (Mince is Not Complete Emacs)? I remember using it on a VAX, and then on my Atari ST.
Cubase is available for Windows, and has been for years. Likewise Notator (or whatever it's called these days), Cakewalk and the rest. I am pretty sure that ProTools is ported to NT as well. Personally I use Cubase and SoundForge, both on w2k, and I have never had either crash on me (no, really!). I'm not saying w2k is perfect (far from it) but these particular apps seem to be pretty damn stable.
As for studios, most of the one's I have been in use Mac's, I haven't seen an ST for a couple of years in anything bigger than a bedroom studio. I do sometimes miss my little Falcon030 though!
Wy do muso's use Mac's?? Not sure. From speaking to a few it's more likely that "it's what everyone else uses" that anything else. Remember - a lot of these people are not geeks - they want to be able to swap notes with others about how to run these systems and you can't do that if yours is different from theirs. As for live work - that's a whole different story. The (few) performing artists I know use purely hardware sequencers on stage. Once you are happy in the studio with your mix, stick it on a floppy and load it up into a little (but bomb-proof!) Yamaha or Rolad sequencer. One banc I know used to use a Tosh x86 laptop but it got it's screen smashed on a flight so it was back to the Roland.
Linux could be a great sequencing platform - but it needs real ports of the big apps - not new apps. When Joe Muso walks into the shop and wants a computer they will say "I want a machine to run Cubase" - not "I want a linux box".
Thats the problem...
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
But that's not the point, is it? I, and others like me want nothing to do with Windows, because we think it's a waste of money and hardware. Now the games are here, creating music is about the only application I can think of that I can't do (well) under Linux, that I'd have to go to Windows for. So, yes, we're talking about the state of affairs in the Linux for Music world (or Music for Linux, depending where you come from). Pointing out that it can be done under windows in this thread is about as useful as a guy shouting "I'm horny" in a Lesbian clubhouse.
The truth shall make you fret. (Ankh-Morpork tImes motto)
In any case, that's the platform this should be targeted at. Look at computers like the Milan etc.
it's in my head
I think the reason musicians like myself want a platform like linux is so they don't have to spend $$$$$ on soon-to-be-dinosaurs like the Kurzweil 2500xx. Your site seems mainly interested in that beast, so what does it have to do with this topic?
Actually a lot of good development does get done by hobbyists, and linux (I hope) will be no exception. Good sites that focus on the whole picture: prorec and harmony central.
If Creative Labs is involved, it sounds like openAL could be a DX for linux? That'd be lovely ...
You, sir, are worthy of wiping "the" AT's ass. The rest of us are busy making music ...
Even simple mp3 players like SoundPlay are capable, in Be, of playing multiple tracks simultaneously, even at different speeds. If you are in to making music on computers you really should give Be a look. The free version of R5 should be available on the 28th.
-=RR=-
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
I remember playing on their Indigo series of workstations. Seems like the music composition stuff was all there, but I didn't really check it out.
Maybe it was all rather rudimentary? Does anyone have a better idea of SGI's offerings? How about if getting them to port some sound stuff to Linux?
I never heard of AMPLE - but am working on somethign similar. I real recently needed (and am still working on) a dynamic music system using MIDI for games. It uses two formats - an XML based language format, and a 'tokenized' format for fast entry (which is what I've been concentrating on) that takes a very simple notation ("C1.I127.N13." would create a 'explosion' type sound by playing the gunshot sound from the MIDI programs bank (program 127 actually - it doesn't associate by instrument, just by programs) clear at the low end of the scale.) When I'm done it will be Open Source (it already uses another author's sources I'm using with his permission for the MIDI commands - a nice shortcut that got the job done quicker without me having to debug all of the MIDI output.) so there would be yet another 'alternative' to AMPLE - but it wouldn't BE AMPLE. However, with a parser, the MIDI stuff, etc. in place, someone could lift the sources off of me when it's done, and strip out my dynamic music language and put AMPLE in it's place.
Just a thought....
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org
I did download ecasound and ecawave last night but, sadly, I'm missing some dependencies and haven't been able to run them. Ecawave claims to be a stable wave editor.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
"Intelligent MPU-401" interfaces are mostly of historical interest only at this point in time. Almost nobody makes them anymore, and their purpose is unclear. They existed to deal with CPU's too slow to handle a MIDI data stream. Perhaps you are referring to stuff like MOTU's "smart" MIDI interfaces. ALSA has support for the MTPAV. But these devices come with a killer interrupt frequency that is clearly not designed to work well with a multitasking OS. You're right that sync issues are tricky, but this has less to do with MIDI h/w and more to do with software that understands how to use SMTPE, MTC, MIDI Clock and MMC for control purposes. We can easily read the data via the existing driver interfaces, but there is almost no software (possibly none) that really pays any attention to it. One of my programs, SoftWerk, allows the use of external MIDI Clock as its clock. The version that does this, however, is not yet at softwerk.sourceforge.net, but hopefully will be soon. And your comments on the difficulty of writing the stuff and the size of the market are completely correct. I write Linux audio/MIDI stuff basically full time, and its hard work that benefits very few people.
terminatorX is mmm-mmm good!
I'd love to see that pile of slick grow into a live performance trend.
(does wav, au, mp3...)
[|]
We use it for techno / house arrangements,
.....
.oO0Oo.
We sell an average of one tune a week to various record labels in the UK
blows the socks off of our previous midi equipment filled studio.
chuck in resonator and some other synth tools and you've got the lot
only thing it's lacking is
nope can't think of anything except the penguin
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
=====
CalArts Student--> Well I'm in L.A. and my friend is getting a hacked copy of ProTools so I can put out a Pro album
=====
It seems as if you do not really know what you are talking about. Protools (http://www.digidesign.com) , as it applies to professional audio, is a piece of software designed to operate a specific company's audio hardware. The hardware is very pricey and the software does virtually nothing without it.
I think you do not understand music. People produce sound and other people decide to listen to it. It's that simple. To try to quantify a song's merit based upon how simple or difficult it was to produce is silly.
Jeff
Linux is now becoming my *everything* box, not just a server or a box to compile my code.
linuxUsersWhoWantProfessionalAudio++;
Heh actually I would appreciate that. This thing said something about DVD playback and it went into a lot of more technical jargon but from what I can tell it seemed to be a fairly featured sound/video editing program. Course I have no experience with anything else.. but it looks nice :P
Just compile a unix app to do it. If nobody noticed, all of the really "BIG" things still use some unix derrivative for their heavy work.
It might not be the choice of the GNU generation, but it'll work, maybe with a little tweaking, and it'll kick arse when it does.
Eh...
Ok, from a musician's point of view:
:) It'd be nice to be able to do some neat sample-editing on the computer, but I'm not willing to fork over $600 for SoundForge, or Cubase, or what have you, plus another however many hundreds for Windows, and hundreds to upgrade my comuter equipment so that it can run a currently supported version of windows. The synths cost enough already.
I agree. "sound cards" just plain suck when it comes to producing decent sound... the "audio out" and "audio in" are kind of a waste.
I do most of my work on my Emu E-synth nowdays (plugging the digitial out directly into my home Stereo reciever makes for some cool surround sound effects
Right now, the only possible use I can see out of connecting my synths to my linux box would be to try to send a drum sequence over the midi...
It would be nice to able to use my old 486 to control my e-synth and other sound modules in a performance setting (I'm not dragging my regular computer around anywhere) And, any program I used would HAVE to be consol based. It is just *not* practical to fiddle with a mouse when you're trying to play an instrument. I wanna go press "F6" and have it make my synths do all the bank changes/paramter adjustments necessary to instantly put me exactly at the sound configuration i need. (in effrect, I record a sysex midi, and it plays it on que. In fact, it would be quite usefull to be able to run any number of midi's in a similar way, so that I could , say have it playing a rythem sequence on one sound controler, and simutaniously be prepared to do a bank change and play some funky sound effect on my ESI-32 on que.
To me, THAT would be a musicians dream. A seqencer from hell that could control several sound modules at once, scripting everything I need into a few simply key presses, ready to activate at need.
In general, What this would mean is me having several cheap-ass sound cards in the thing, using nothing but the midi capabilites on them. But I'd need a console based program 'casue I'm not gonna be looking at a computer monitor while I'l playing to see where to move a mouse. (and heck, my old 486 can't deal with X anyway). A linux based progam like that could instanlty make dirt cheap *practical* and *useful* sequencing available to to any musician. with enough spare cash to fork over for a 486...
Of course, a decent sample editor would be a joy too, but for that sort of thing you really need a program which knows all the ins and outs of whatever sound module/synthesier you use, "general purpose" sample editing has very limited use when you want to make something which sounds good when using the particular effects of your synth. You gotta keep in mind all the preset info (ie, crossover points, cuttoff points, sample mapping and stuff) in order to be usefull to someone wanting to lay out a bank on his synth. And most differnt synths do these things differently. Each has differen't capabilites. Just getting the loop points to sound decent can be a major stumbling block on different keyboards.
cav
GNU OCTAL http://www.gnu.org/software/octal
Minor correction :-) ... we're not "desperate" for coders, though we are definitely interested in talking to people who can develop DSP plugins. There is a mailing list for developers; see the octal page for more details.
GNU OCTAL http://www.gnu.org/software/octal
However, the original point about decent composition software is entirely valid. Basically it's a job for some good real-time people to get their teeth into. Stability is nice, minimal latency and solid timing are critical. Something with the feature set of, say, Cubasis or Logic Fun would be a big step forward, and in view of the take-off of virtual synths and the like, a plug-in architecture along the lines of (compatible would be a basis) VST is probably now a must-have
TomV
to start: electronic music is not 'experimental', it has been around for 30+ years in some form or another and is an established medium of composition that gets far too little attention in mainstream culture... that being said ... :) i wrote a piece for tape using my linux box and a program called 'phazor' which uses FFTs in interesting ways .. not very flexible, but cool. the rest i did with the macs in our Music Tech Lab. however -- two of us who work in the lab at UR have applied for university money to write a Granular Synthesis application this summer in C++ developing under linux. anyone who has any suggestions, code, or would be interested in helping (we're in Richmond, VA) please email me! cybin@whid.net. --matt
There are two sides to the market. Linux/Unix is used for the heavy lifting because that is what it is good for at this point. Windows is used in spite of its fundamental problems simply because so many users can manage to get their particular job done using software that runs under Windows.
For example, I have lots of vinyl that I would like to efficiently put on MP3s and listen to on my Abex AD-600A. The problem is to rip from the vinyl, filter for scratches, adjust the blank space at the beginning and end, save as an MP3, compile MP3s in the correct order and write to CDROM. I can do it under Windows using Sound Forge and Nero but I can't imagine how to go about it under Linux. I'd like to hear what hardware/software others have used to solve that problem under Linux.
Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years
at:
2 213830.html
http://www.freshmeat.net/appindex/1998/08/04/90
The homepage being: http://www.gnu.org/software/lilypond/
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
Of course their are other factors but they should take advantage that they have good software to port it, when the difference of quality isn't big enough (that is when the free ones are "good enough") and are easily available (download or in distros) they will have a harder time getting people to switch.
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
I hope they don't. Sure, mp3's are fine if you're using them to replace cassette-copies. But face it..the sound quality really isn't that good, especially compared to vinyl, which is what most DJ's and others who know use. Don't believe me? Try mp3-ing a recording that uses a lot of subtle reverbs (high-end, supposedly "noisy" information). You'll find that it gets rather severely mangled.
Next, consider bass frequencies. MP3 compression takes out subbasses that the human ear can't perceive. These subbasses are however very important in defining the quality of the discernible audio (they cause the speaker cones to distort in certain characteristic shapes. the other vibrations - frequencies - get added on this distortion). Furthermore, they give the listener a thump in the stomach he or she seems to find pleasurable, especially on a dancefloor, where most DJ's operate. So let's hope DJ's avoid mp3's like the plague.
News and bla for computer musicians: http://lomechanik.net/
There's Stomper, a fantastic drum synth that comes absolutely free, except that you have to send a copy of the music you make with it to the programmer. Sounds fair to me.
Or try FruityLoops, granted, it's not free, but it's cheap and exactly what musicians like: buttons to push and a lot of blinking lights. That seems to be what a lot of programmers seem to forget: musicians (myself included) are stupid. They don't like to involve themselves with technical stuff when they're doing music. Which is why FruityLoops is so popular-it's a drumsequencer that behaves just like you'd expect.
The guy who makes Buzz apparently seems not too thrilled about porting. Too bad, but then, speaking from experience, a lot of musicians find that program to be too complicated anyway. That doesn't mean, though, that the people who make the programs above won't be either. At the very least, looking at their software, Linux programmers may learn a little bit about musicians and their preferences. Sure, a few topnotch studios only work with pro-tools on a Mac, but the vast majority of musicians use much less elaborate, much cheaper software. Why do you think Acid is as popular as it is?
If linux music tools become simple and musicianly, a lot of musicians will make the transition, if only because linux is free and musicians are cheapskates.
News and bla for computer musicians: http://lomechanik.net/
Do most of what stuff? Professional audio recording? I think not.
Now, before the flames start...I majored in music theory and composition back in college. Being the geek that I am, I was naturally inclined towards MIDI and the electronic music scene (not the same as Electronica, though that's cool, too).
While this was a few years ago, the only real choice for professional-level sequencing and digital audio was either Cubase or Performer/Digital Performer. While Cubase was (and is) available for other platforms, namely Atari's, Performer was (and is) only on the Mac.
Windows barely has any reliable sequencing and/or digital audio applications. Part of this is due to the instability of the OS itself, and part is due to the selection of software.
I'm not the only one with this view: a good number of professional recording studios use Macs running either of the software titles I mentioned, or even Atari's with Cubase. Why? When it comes to reliability, the Mac and Atari are more stable than Windows. Yes, the Mac doesn't have a command-line (well...didn't), but for the specific application, it doesn't need one. Ditto for the Atari.
I would love to see Linux take off in the recording/sequencing field. It's hard enough for we musicians to afford good instruments; having to shell out even more cash for a reliable workstation and software just adds insult to injury. If it was possible to get good sequencing/recording software for Linux (which is the least expensive OS) that can run on slightly out of date equipment (read: cheap), I think you'd have a bunch of very happy musicians composing penguin ballads! ;^)
Your Friend,
Your Friend,
D
At the time I ran Linux on a PC, I wrote music on my Amiga 3000 running Bars and Pipes. I switched to the PC so I could use those nice 8x8 MIDI patchbays and have digital recording integrated with my sequencer. That was 1997, and that was the last time I looked into using opensourced sequencers under Linux... and back then I had all these ideas about how cool it would be to have a modular configurable sequencer that anyone could write modules for, and that had a customizable user-interface, and on whose developer you'd never have to depend for driver support. There was nothing that cool (or even remotely that cool-- I think there was something called Jazz at the time) available, so I was dual-booting Windows to run Logic Audio and Soundforge. But recently I started paying attention again... all you brilliant coders have had a few years to do some neat stuff :) I don't know if anyone's posted this link yet, but it's kind of impressive: http://www.linuxartist.org/audio Maybe I'll get a nice fast Linux box for music production sometime soon, eh? :-) -Denizen Magic Firesheep http://www.mp3.com/magicfiresheep
It may be more a point of the quality of software engineering, but the stability of Linux would prove damned useful to musicians using their computers to sequence instruments during live performances - it'd be damned embarrassing having to reboot your drum machine/tone generator because it suffered yet another BSoD...
Although I'm not exactly an expert in such matters, I can see Linux being used by a similar kind of geek to those who currently favour it over Windows - power users. If you want an open-source musical development application that's more configurable than a very highly configurable thing, then Linux seems a good choice of platform.
The difficult part will probably come in trying to get hardware vendors to release the information necessary for drivers, but that's just as much of a problem for people who just listen to music as for those who want to make it.
There is in fact no less than two promising (in my opinion) systems for cubase-like midi-editing for linux.
Jazz - a non-open source, non-free project with most of the functionality I look for (I have only worked with cubase earlier) and even some nice sampler-like qualities (editing and playing samples in various ways)
kooBase(Brahms) - an open-source, free cubase-like sequencer that has reached some maturity (0.97). I haven't tried the latest versions, but it looked promising (and I am willing to forgive a lot if the software is os).
Well I for one would certainly love to see some decent sequencing/audio manipulation software on Linux; it's basically the only reason I still have a dual-boot 'doze system. I'm not sure exactly about the technical issues behind (for example) real-time digital multitracking and signal processing. UNIX (and thus Linux) is really good at getting decent performance out of any hardware you care to throw it at; but it's also got the overhead of file abstractions and security. On low-end hardware, Windows/DOS software often has a perceived performance edge, because it's only dealing with a single user system, and doesn't have to worry about giving applications direct access to the hardware. Then again, I guess anyone using pro-audio software is going to be running on a dedicated workstation where they can suid root no end... but... ew. We'll probably start something along the lines of the GIMP (which let's face it, is pretty limited ATM), then once the snowball is rolling the contributers can pile on their code. I doubt anyone (or any one group) is going to code us a Cubase clone and open-source it overnight! Just my 2p.
These sigs are more interesting tha
There is also another buzz inpired effort which is based on the MP4 format. It is called CPS ... (http://www.bonneville.nl/cps/)
Oops. CPS is 'looking' for people to port it to Linux.
Why not update it, and posted it to Slashdot as a Feature? Might not pay as well as EM...but you would get a great deal more egoboo here!
ttyl
Farrell
p.s. egoboo, Science Fiction Fandom term for "Ego Boost"
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
Expertise, and specialising the machine, pays.If you spend about 2/3 of the effort you spend learning Linux, you can get a Mac to be rock stable for specific audio uses, provided you turn it off when not in use, and don't install MS or AOL software on it.
Legacy and current software: a hell of a lot of software and hardware support for Macs is out there and always has been. There's new commercial stuff like MetaSynth that's strictly Mac- graphical experimental audio synthesis, and I hope to hell they haven't gone and patented it. An old 68K mac still makes a dynamite sequencer for outboard MIDI gear. You'd be surprised at what you can get your hands on just free or from shareware. By the time you're into crippleware you're already seeing stuff like 8-channel digital mixers with both pan control and binaural stereo arrival delay built into each channel- and that's still just shareware stuff, technically.
OS support: the last thing you want is preemptive multitasking. Preemptive multitasking is what makes those squawks and dropouts on Windows CD rips- to the OS it was Very Important to move the mouse at that moment, so important that the audio process had to go pound sand. You never see that on a Mac because instead the mouse just stops responding for a halfsecond, or the keyboard stores up a few letters and catches up when it can (there's an event queue for this allowing you to move faster than the machine is responding). All the while, the _important_ task is still undisturbed. Sure, this sucks donkey ankles when you're talking about watching Netscape render a page- but when you're talking about recording a band's hottest take of a song in a 500$ an hour studio? That's when you don't give a rat's ass whether your window switching happens promptly or if you have to sit there for a sec waiting for it to catch up. It's similar for MIDI- in that case, your music sounds like crap if the note-on signals are not happening _exactly_ when they are supposed to. With rigidly sequenced stuff, it will make it sound less solid- a serious drawback for technoid stuff that's got to sound like a savage machine. For MIDI-recorded performances, it's worse- it will make a musician's performance sound, literally, like they are not as good as they are! Most musicians with a good sense of timing can pick up on this, and it's brutally demoralizing. With a Mac you can get away from that.
I'm not aware of any reason why Linux could not be just as strong for these purposes (except maybe the legacy software, but oh well). You have the source code, it can be changed, and music workstations are often dedicated machines making it very inviting to hack up a specialty Linux that does nothing whatever but the music tasks. Furthermore, I can tell you there's another aspect that might not have been obvious right away- seen VA Linux's new one rack space linux servers? Picture one of those tucked into a rack of audio gear, and you'll begin to see the appeal Linux could have. Picture a specialised digital audio workstation, a FREE one, developed by musician geeks to blow away anything currently available. One that uses a dedicated box, as if it was an embedded application, maybe running off RTLinux or something. Perhaps it doesn't use X, but something more direct that assumes the presence of a particular screen or LCD display. Perhaps it builds synth keyboards and control panels into the OS like they were keyboard and mouse. Perhaps it builds in control of an automated mixing board enabling digital-like control of an analog mix- knobs and servos aren't strictly necessary, there are things like cds cells and optoisolators provided you can control the devices, and they're a lot cheaper. Who knows?
My point is that the sky's the limit, and there's really no reason Linux couldn't end up the obvious choice for something like this. The trick is thinking of it like an embedded application- there's really no point in having the thing serve web pages, and if you're willing to compromise your master tape for the sake of serving some web pages on the same machine or having instant messaging windows pop up, you should stick with doze ;)
For those of us who need more dedicated performance, there is still Macintosh (indeed, multiplie macs- I find that I wouldn't trust my powermac to send MIDI sequences and simultaneously record the resulting digital audio from the mixer. But I have a little older mac that can do the sequences as a dedicated box).
For the future? Well, Windows is still going to be consumerland, MOTU is still going strong, Digidesign is still on top of the heap but Opcode is toast, bought and dismantled by Gibson USA. Current Macs suffer somewhat from consumerism- these heavy tasks tend to require lots of slots and terrible demands on a consumerised system, and for a while there Apple had _totally_ blown off pro users, and they could do it again anytime. Not that the old gear doesn't still work, but you can't blindly put your faith in corporations- they can let you down.
Linux might well have a serious future ahead of it in DAW-land, not so much because of any inherent suitability for profoundly pre-emptive multitasking servers to the task (shudder) but simply because it is out there, it's available, it can be turned into whatever you like and it's GPLed and the information is always forthcoming. It's not about linux power, it's about linux empowerment. Ask Opcode users about empowerment sometime now that their vendor has been corporately bought and _thrown_ _away_ stupidly: there will be no bugfixes or access to the source code of Studio Vision. This is what lies in wait for anyone who doesn't control their tools. You have to be able to control your tools or they can be taken from you, held for ransom, or even broken and made useless for no good reason. With Linux, you can own your tools.
Right now, I compose music using a few linux software tools. The mediocre (but increasing!) quality of the software available right now is offset by the good quality hardware I use. The SB Live has open source drivers that are very bleeding edge (there is no MIDI support for the front panel yet, so I don't use MIDI :) My roland JP-8000 can synthesize any sound there is, and the recording from the emu10k1 in the SB Live is top notch.
As for software, I use VoodooTracker for mixing loops, DAP for editing individual samples, Zerius Vocoder for being like Kraftwerk, and Broadcast 2000 for editing the final thing and mixing in performance stuff. Yeah, it sounds like a lot of little hacks and kludges, but I like itF0 07 C7 C8
Bingo! I know many musicians who have gone from $1000 computers to $20,000 dedicated machines with less functionality. You see when you are recording with a group you get 70 tries. ON the 70th try the magic is suddenly there and the song moves right. This is not an explainable thing since the other 69 tries are note perfect, but the 70th somehow has a level of energy that didn't exists. The last thing you want is to get the magic (whatever it is) and then find out the recording device didn't capture it.
Of course musicans have also discovered that for all the promise of digital, the orginal masters (running at 15 ips on 1/2 inch tape) can be recorded and edited in analog without anymore (noticable) hiss then then digital and analog editing has advantages. (mind you digital has advantages too, unless your are an engineer with expirence I wouldn't trust your judgement on which is better)
the Windows world. In the Windows world you just throw together an end user program that runs out of the box and gets a job done and forget about it. We've got plenty of those in the Linux world and the Windows world. What we're talking about regarding a lack of professional tools is professional tools that cut the mustard in the Linux world. That means a complete build environmant which allows students just entering the world of CS to compile the program themselves, an interface based more on programming, and a heavy integration of the scientific aspect of sound programming in the interface. That's what it takes to get really defined as a legitimate Linux program.
My method of producing music with my computer is rather unconventional; it consists of a tracker (modplug), a program that allows me to throw multiple .wav's on top of each other and record in synch (cooledit pro), full duplex, and a nice high quality sound recorder (soundforge will do nicely).
:)
My setup sounds far nicer than MIDI at the very bottom of the musician-hardware pile. It is a travesty that this setup is not covered in pedantic magazines more often, as it's the setup of a lot of 'underground' trackers. I've had a chance to talk to profesional digital musicians and they state that they didn't do it my way, because they didn't need as much hardware.
I have a full duplex soundblaster, some Windows software and a few nice guitars. Guess which piece of that lineup I'd like to eliminate from the equation?
One very nice piece of software (shareware) is AudioMulch. Basically, it's a set of components (FX boxes, sample players, even a TB-303 emulator) which can be connected with patch leads. It's Windows-based, though the author said (at last year's First Iteration conference in Melbourne) that he may port it to Linux. Here's hoping...
Here are a couple of good links on the subject:
http://www.bright.net/~dlphilp/lin ux_csound.html
http://mitpress.mit.edu/e-boo ks/csound/frontpage.html
I haven't the time to explain it further, but it is far and away the most powerful sound package I've ever used. Even without a pretty GUI for composing, it's worth checking out.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
Sorry this came off as condesending. I feel everyone needs to express themselves somehow. I'm talking about this from a Professional point of view. I am a horrible guitarist and will probably never progress beyond 4 chords because I enjoy the braindead mentality of this type of playing. I would never call myself anything more than an amature with this instrument, but I enjoy it.
e soul/index.html
/. html stuff fixed this time...preview clif...preview :)
The point was making was that what is killing linux is the lack of professionality. I am mainly a Mac user, but it kills me when people tak about switching to the PC because their are so much more in the way of Music apps. As a professional, this is far from the truth. I keep a PC around to pick these apps us, but they do nothing for me except as a creative tool. I love sample based mediums. I hate the idea that todays culture can take the braindead sample based mediums and promote them as High Art.
Check out the article over on salon
www.salon.com/ent/music/feature/2000/03/14/machin
for more on this (Props to my man peters @ pyramid for sending this the other day...and I got the
I'm sorry that it sounded like I was being condecending, I was trying to be real when people are asking for honest opinions as to what needs to be done. It wasn't my intent to insult any musicians out there.
clif
Between this post's parent and its, well, grandparent, there's sanity.
Anything aside from Buzz running on WINE on the computer I have at work after hours is out of my price range. Does this make me less of a musician? Does this diminish or enhance my talent or lack thereof in any way, shape, or form? And there's no medium that's totally brain-dead. If you can't make it sound intelligent, that's not a reflection upon the medium itself, it's only a reflection of your capabilities within that medium.
And, quite frankly, if there's anyone who thinks less of me for not having a real studio setup, their opinion means just about nothing to me anyway.
I'm currently biased much more towards Octal than BEAST/BSE (cleaner design, I think), but I'm involved with Octal, so draw your own conclusions.
.wav on, and you're willing to convert all your samples to .xi before importing them.... It was worth it for me, though. (Oh, you'll also want to use the native comctl32.dll.)
And you don't have to keep Windows around to run Buzz, as long as you've got another machine to render to
I will lay over and DIE the day a linux user says "yes! we have it today!" rather than "Real Soon Now".
/. somewhat. Slashdot is pushing development by raising functionality that we don't currently have. If someone then thinks that X functionality is sufficiently worth investing some time in and/or an interesting hack, we end up getting the functionality.
OK - I know this is flamebait, but I had to respond. It seems that this person has missed the point of a site such as
It would be easy to sit down and identify a whole bunch of apps that any O/S is lacking - precisely because nobody has written thenm yet.
True, Linux is somewhere behind Windows in certain areas of applications. However there are other areas where the application coverage kicks Windows' butt as a platform. Networking apps for instance!
Sorry to reply the the flame, but I felt it was an attitude worth exploring.
A little planning goes a long way...
We should be allowed open access to the unrestricted copying and redistribution ... [snip] ... Published or in the wild data should be immanently shareable
Well, that's the basic idea of FSF and like-minded people: that there is no such thing as "intellectual property", that information cannot be owned in the sense of putting restrictions on its spread.
However it's all good and well to make sweeping declarations like this, but in order to convince people you have to come with reasonable arguments why this should be so.
Is there a "natural right" to copy information? Hm.. doubtful. Is it "you can't stop me so that's got to be legal" thing? Not a very good argument, that. Can you offer an "economic efficiency" arguement? Perhaps you can, but it's very much non-trivial to show that lack of intellectual propery will promote socioeconomic growth.
Or is it really "I want stuff and I don't want to pay for it"?
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
I find the idea absurd that a person can own something which doesn't exist outside of the human mind.
Think about it in this way. What is property? Property is, basically, what is called "a bundle of rights" with respect to the owned thingie, the most important of which is the right to exclude others. Exactly which rights make up this bundle is subject to debate (especially is the owned thingie is not physical).
My thoughts, dreams, ideas, etc. exist only in my mind. Yet I am quite convinced I "own" them -- that is, I have a set of rights with regard to my thoughts and one of them is, clearly, the right not to divulge them to anybody else. Nothing absurd here at all.
Besided, consider this. You go to a fine restaurant and pay a sum of money -- for what? For the food (as in some protein, some carbs, a lot of fat, some minerals, etc)? Nope -- you can get your carbs in a more cheap and convenient way. You come to a good restaurant for the *taste* of food and for the atmosphere. Both of these are intangibles -- they exist only in the human mind. Yet would you deny the restaurant the right to charge you for them? for something that exists only in your mind?
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Perhaps you would care to update that link with one that actually exists?
I wouldn't want any general-purpose OS (RT-Linux, QNX, WinCE, whatever) on my pacemaker. I want something built from the ground up to keep my heart beating. Which doesn't take a whole lot of processor power, really.
--
E_NOSIG
Wow, thanks alot for this post!
Someone please moderate it up ASAP.
Insightful, Informative, Underrated...
I strongly believe that trying to be clever is detrimental to your health. -- Linus Torvalds
Have you checked OpenAL ?
"OpenAL, the Open Audio Library, seeks to become the audio counterpart to OpenGL for audio. With OpenAL it is possible to create three-dimensional sound across many platforms, such as Linux,Apple Macintosh, Windows and more, with quality suitable for professional projects like games and multimedia applications.
OpenAL is supported by a growing number of hardware vendors and developers (such as Creative Labs and Loki Games) with the goal of creating a powerful, elegant C-based API for creating rich, high-quality 3D sound content, with cross-platform compatability as a design goal.
The real problem is that linux and most unixes are used for *work*..mainly the heavy lifting stuff that involves passing chunks of data to various locations 24/7 with extreme reliability. Theres very little interest in the video/audio stuff (as far as editing goes not simply playing) because [a] most of us arent musicians and dont care and [b] playing is fine for 99% of the user base who use it as a desktop anyway.
people tak about switching to the PC because their are so much more in the way of Music apps. As a professional, this is far from the truth.
What!?
You're kidding right? Two words: Sonic Foundry.
Let me put it this way. Sound Forge is the Photoshop of digital audio. What Linux needs is the Gimp of Sound Forge, and then Acid.
If Linux wants _many_ new fans, an Acid-alike will do it. Acid is _the_ sh*t. So called "serious" musicians will try to tell you it's a toy, etc. But it most certainly is not... it's (part of) the future of music!
(BTW I am a "serious" musician. I play many real instruments at way beyond the "4 chord braindead" level. I just don't have my head up my ass).
gribbly
P.S. If there are any coders who have been harbouring an impulse to write a Linux Acid-alike... contact me. I am a designer by trade, and hereby offer my services in a design and co-ordination role. So if you would like a neat document that describes exactly how everything should work from an end-user perspective, let me know.
maybe
today, i've got a mac with Vision DSP, which handles audio & midi tracks seamlessly, and is very tight for producing professional studio quality work.
how many years will we have to wait before we can get a linux version to be doing what i've already been doing for years already anyways?
john.
I'll just put a plug in for this very professional, GPLed, nonlinear audio/video editing tool - Broadcast 2000. I just used it to put together a music "collage" for some fireworks our city does every summer and it absolutely rocked. The guy I worked with on it couldn't stop commenting on how excellent and intuitive it is, much less that it's free. If you have to do any audio editing (including adding effects, compression, fades, etc), this is the tool. Not sure about the video side, but I'd wager it's as good.
-motardo
Wow, this does look quite impressive. I'm going to check this out as soon as I get home. By the way, here's a direct link to the screenshots:
http://heroine.linuxbox.com/bcast 2000screens.html
numb
If the response is "I can't afford a DAT," then you also probably wouldn't be able to afford good enough computer hardware capable of making a quality recording of a live performance, either.
A DAT would save me a lot of trouble, however I already have a computer that is sufficient (for now at least.) Last night one band offered to let me borrow a digital 4-track for recording future events so I might do that. Keep in mind that I am NOT a musician (nor do I play one on MTV.) I love music but don't have any talent in that area. That's a huge part of the reason I'm doing this.
Another possibility that is showing some promise is getting sponsored with IDSL or ADSL access at one of the local bars so I can broadcast live events. If that happens the computer will become an absolute requirement. The software I use for that will be icecast which allows MP3 streaming.
numb
You can already do most of this stuff with Windows.
This is fine if you're just playing around sampling some stuff. But for recording a live performance you need an operating system that has a high level of reliability. That's something that is not currently available for Windows.
numb
Haven't had any problems with my DAT yet (Tascam DA-20 MKII).
The reasons I got it... at the time (2+ years ago), hard drives were still kinda small.
The analog inputs into the DAT are much better than the analog inputs on any soundcard that's affordable. Considering I go through an external Mackie mixer, it was/is the best choice for me still.
It also makes a handy external DAC for my sound card's digital out.
This is the same model that we used in college-- actually they were the original DA-20. We had 2 of these units, one in the performance hall and the other in the sound/midi studio. Both were used nearly every day, for over 2 years, without one single problem. No tape jams, no dropouts, just routine cleaning. It wouldn't surprise me if you were having problems with portable units though.
Besides, when I master something to DAT, it doesn't stay on the tape-- I dump it digitally over to my hard drive for final processing and burning to CD.
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
If you're just recording a live performance, there's no reason to be using a computer at all.
Try a DAT.
If the response is "I can't afford a DAT," then you also probably wouldn't be able to afford good enough computer hardware capable of making a quality recording of a live performance, either.
All the microphones, mixing equipment, etc. will make the DAT (or computer) look like one of the cheaper components anyway.
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
Hey, I picked your post out of the slashnoise! The good news is that most of what you wanted to happen in your post has already been happening.
Fortunately, MIDI only defines notes as numbers. Those numbers are usually interpreted (by software or hardware) as a 12-tone system (C1, Eb6, etc) but as far as MIDI goes, I think it's just notes #0-127. It's up to the synth for the implementation. It just so happens that most use a piano keyboard. MIDI is already capable of the types of expression you mentioned, via the real-time controllers, and the fact that you can have other tuning systems associated with a particular MIDI patch.
On my Proteus synth, I have MIDI patches using both Gamelan tuning systems (5 note, and 8 note) as well as 20-tone, "C-only" (uses true harmonic tuning on C for the pure intervals you mentioned) and a couple others. It makes for some rather authentic sounding bagpipes! You can also make user tuning maps adjusting each note in 1-cent intervals.
Now, that can only go so far... if you want control over the actual sound, and apply techniques that MIDI doesn't give you, well that sounds like something the Kyma system has been doing for years. Kyma is basically an OO programming language, which talks to a Capybara sound module-- essentially just 1 or more dedicated DSP's in a black box. This was very popular for movie sound designers. I saw a demonstration of this way back in 1994 or so-- the system could be programmed to say, harmonize a note you sing with some brass instruments, as well as some truly amazing real-time sound processing and sound morphing.
Other forms of synthesis get close, using standard MIDI data. The complexity of the sound is abstracted away from the data stream-- a synth still sees the same old note-on, note-off, channel aftertouch, velocity, etc., but new synths make use of those in very creative ways. Look at the Kurzweil K-series and their function generators (over 10 years old now). And, newer synthesis methods- physical modeling synthesis and modal synthesis. Seer Systems' Reality is one that does those and some other types in software on a PC.
MIDI (the protocol) has served us well for almost 20 years now-- that sure says something about an open standard! Still, I think it's time for something much faster. MIDI is limited to 38.4kbps, which means I have to wait a couple minutes while I dump a bunch of new patches over to my Wavestation.
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
Like any tool, using computers for music takes lots of talent and knowledge to use them correctly. Or, you can be an idiot and make something that they play on the radio.
There's a whole new world of experimentation and new compositional techniques that electronic music brings. And it's constantly evolving. The manipulation of sounds, etc... A lot of NIN's new tracks and the Quake soundtrack are pretty ingenious if you analyze them, and his techniques have matured considerably over the past few years.
And "real" musicians will never go away. We're just using more toys now.
I double-majored in music if that means anything.
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
I would highly recommend checking out Bill Schottstaedt's snd.
You also may want to look at Mix. Some of the software here is also great.
> Well, of course, there are always two possibly
> different value systems operating:
> one is your own personal morals, and one is the
> set of current laws.
Certainly....one of my personal beliefs is that
the entire system of law and government is about
as valuable as a steaming heap of dung.
> (1) Your beliefs do not impose any obligations
> on me -- what I should or should not do;
Of course. Yet by the same token I just ask for
the same respect (unfortunaly the big uniformed
men with guns who call themselves the government
feel they have the right to impose their belifs
on me...particularly their belief that they have
the authority to tell me what to do...and
furthermore that authority exists)
> (2) Your actions in real world are still subject
> to current laws, regardless of your beliefs.
Only if you are caught. Which, truthfully doesn't
happen much. I exceede posted speed limits
at least 2 times a day every day. I have never
been ticketed. I have smoked pot probably a
hundred times in my life...purchased it probably
10 times. I have never been caught doing any of
these things...therefore I have to say that my
actions are not subject to law unless I am
caught.
(especially when you factor in that at least the
purchase of certain substances implies technically
illegal action by at least 3-4 others (producer,
distributor etc) who also did not get caught
at that time either...)
> One more thing that you might want to think
> about is the freedom of contract.
This scenario you describe is flawed. This
"Freedom" to restric another via contract only
exists if there is someone who can enforce this
restriction. As such...the restriction of a
contract is actually a threat of force.
(ie If you break this I will have have men with
guns force you to do things (ie pay restitution
etc))
As such I would not classify this as a freedom.
I do however recognize a freedom of people to
freely associate themselves with eachother and
enter into any agreements that they wish, between
themselves...so I supose yes.
> So unless you want to make a law forbidding any
> restrictions on information,
Why is it that law is always considered the most
important source of rules? I much prefer to
follow my own sense of morality than some old
rich authoritarian mans rules.
Given the plethora of laws that a person can break
in a single day, and continue to break every day,
without ever being prosecuted, I think that
talking about law as if its important "because its
the law" is fairly silly.
The laws that you really can't get away with
breaking too easily (stealing, murder etc) are
generally fairly deplorable and not morally
justifiable anyway.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
> My thoughts, dreams, ideas, etc. exist only in
> my mind. Yet I am quite convinced I "own" them
Do you claim the right to not allow others to
have the same or similar thoughts?
If you express your thoughts to someone else...
are they allowed to think them too?
> Besided, consider this. You go to a fine
> restaurant and pay a sum of money -- for what?
Usually so I don't have to cook.
or to put off grocery shopping for another
day.
> You come to a good restaurant for the *taste*
> of food and for the atmosphere. Both of these
> are intangibles -- they exist only in the human
> mind.
No restraunt claims the right to stop you from
copying their ideas and cooking the same food
at home for your friends, or even from opening
your own restraunt and cooking dishes that are
similar or the same as their own.
I am not saying it is wrong to charge for goods
and labor...I am saying that information is not
in and of itself property in my eyes.
Certainly you have the right to NOT express
thoughts of your own, or not release information
to others. However, I do not recognize any right
beyond that.
Its like this;
If I lend my friend my car, with the intent that
HE drive it soemehwer...then he lets other people
drive my car...that is a problem. It is real
property of mine that he and noone else have
been given permission to drive.
On the other hand...if I hand him a CD of music
that I created...and he makes a copy for a friend
then I still have my copy. Nothing has happend
to my property. My property is the CD itself not
the sound on it.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
I dunno...certainly keeping your heart beating is
nice but...thats a fairly simple task.
Since idle cycles are wasted cycles...it would
be really nice to run a distributed.net client
on a pacemaker.....
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
> As far as stability goes, it doesn't matter.
> Linux will crash just as bad as Windows or
> Powerbooks will
I agree...it does happen. I have had Linux systems
lock up and crash etc. However....they are still
a hundred times more stable than just about
anything else I have used (including many
comercial unicies - there are a couple that have
been on par though).
So yea...my system crashes on the order of
once every other month or so...my workstation
at work does somewhat better.
When you consider the average windows machine
crashes on the order of several times a week or
on some...several times a day...
> Digital Audio is still damn tricky.
the mantra is "User Aps can't crash the system"
(not always true sadly...)
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
>> who owns words? who owns notes?
:)
> Well as far as copyrights are concerned, the
> second you record any song or WRITE DOWN any
> lyrics, they are copyrighted. This applies to
> all forms of recording including digital.
Very true from a stricly legalist viewpoint.
However this isn't the question of "From the
court of law point of view, who owns words and
notes?"
Personally....my answer would be that nobody owns
them, and everyone is free to use them. However,
thats not as popular of an opion as it could be,
and it disagrees strongly with the current
establishment.
I find the idea absurd that a person can own
something which doesn't exist outside of the
human mind.
Music is nothing more than vibration of air. Music
does not exist on a tape, or on my hard drive.
Music exists in my mind. It is an
interpretation of data. Outside of the human
mind, writting, words, music are all meaningless.
To claim ownership of any of these things is
to claim to own nothing more than a human
percieved and interpreted pattern of
information.
of course...those are just my offtopic views in
an offtopic conversation.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
> How about reputational rights? I wrote a song,
> can anybody take it and claim *they* wrote it?
Claiming that they wrote it would be fraud. Not
because I wrote it but because they didn't. Thus
they are telling a lie.
> How about more reputational rights? I wrote an
> opinion piece, somebody took it, inserted "And,
> by the way, Adolf Hitler was the greatest man of
> the XX century"
Again...they are commiting fraud in my eyes. A
lie, claiming that you wrote something that you
didn't.
I don't see how one needs the concept of "IP" to
see the wrongdoing in either of these cases.
And also...I am NOT mixing up patents and
copyright...I think they are both equally
absurd.
I just can't delude myself into believeing that
when a person makes a copy of a musical piece
and shares it with a friend, that they have commited some horrid offence. Its just not
"stealing", its "Shareing". (thats not to
say that I activly go around copying CDs...I
have more important things to do with my time...
like write code)
I dunno about anyone else, but when I write
something, or come up with an idea, it is for
use. I don't see how I could possibly gain
anything by stoping people from using, coping,
or distributing anything I make. If what I do
can benefit someone, either practically (like
a piece of software) or emotionally (music, art)
then I should be glad that it benefits them and
that they use it.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Talking about free music licenses, check out:
The Free Music Philosophy
I'm a musician myself, and I'd hate to have my music controlled by some record label. Perhaps some musically-inclined slashdotters should get together and write up a GPL-equivalent of music... I'd be happy to know about that.
mikre he sophia he tou Mikrosophou.
The direction and mantra of copyleft and similar activities are that data is not a physical medium, that is that it is relatively abundant. Like Negraponties(sp?) analogy, when you borrow a bit, there is always a bit leftover. This said, source code, music, etc is data, and without disadvantage you can make unlimited copies. Simply put, when you make a copy, the original entity is neither damaged or destroyed. With today's leaps in technology the folks behind copyleft believe that "that human expression and communication across digital computing networks is actioned through referencing, copying and sampling this weightless, non-physical data". We should be allowed open access to the unrestricted copying and redistribution as long as the originals are unchanged, undamaged whatever and that all subsequent copies keep their integrity. Published or in the wild data should be immanently shareable, breaking the old and outdated principals behind intellectual property which had it's time relating to physical mediums but the architecture of the policies just don't port well to data. Music makes the copyright policies even muddier, who owns words? who owns notes?
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
GO Here. The links at the bottom of the page. Seriouslt this does it. All :-) Perhaps you can find salvation here even? GPL'd Etc. as a poster towards the bottom mentioned. Check it out.. Click Here! :-)
I spent some time trying to work on a sample-mangling library. I found I just don't have the time to work on it. Also, there's a few things I'm not exactly a god at that I need to learn (half the fun). I managed to write formulaic wave generators (sin/cos/tan/sqr/triangle/rising saw), and the odd effect. The only thing that was of any real use was what I'd called the 'flazicator', which would make a sample sound like the freaky voice parts of "it doesn't matter" (Dig Your own Hole/Chemical Brothers).
Does a sample processing library exist already? I haven't seen one. I think this would speed things up, since this kind of code would be common to all of these audio projects... pure MIDI not withstanding.
Something I personally need is a mod tracker. There aren't any decent trackers, as far as I have found, for Linux. Impulse Tracker is the sole reason I keep a DOS partition, it's simply the best tracker, IMHO. These days, it seems trackers are falling out of popularity, and those still being developed are crossing the line, into bigger and better editing suites.
---
script-fu: hash bang slash bin bash
[ approaching AI ]
one of them is sonorus (www.sonorus.com). after speaking with the ceo for quite a while (a few yrs back), it seems that he put all his trust in OSS. OSS dropped the ball by not supporting this card very well. yes, they do have some support, but when I corresponded with the OSS guys, they clearly felt that their time was better spent in the mainstream rather than fringe digital audio market.
another is the frontier wavecenter (www.frontierdesign.com). talking with these folks yielded no interest at all in unix ;-(
just yesterday I bought a midiman (www.midiman.net) pro audio digital card. cost was $100 (!) and it does seem to work well under win*. but I bet the free unix support will not be there for a long long time, if ever ;-(
its great to have sequencing and .wav editing under linux. but the most critical part of digital audio work is the initial capture from digital audio sources. this is sometimes a once-in-a-lifetime event and you cannot trust M$ products on a once-only gig session. but I would be willing to trust linux (or *bsd) for this audio capture. but alas, only the zefiro za2 (www.zefiro.com) card is really really supported by linux. and this is quite an expensive and very old ISA card - due to die out pretty soon, I bet.
before free unix can tout that its 'pro audio ready', it needs to have solid and proper support for the digital-audio cards. and I don't mean the kind of card that you find on the shelves of Fry's ...
--
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
my point (post is further down) exactly.
I don't know HOW MANY TIMES I lost work due to win* locking up. using supposedly high quality apps (sound forge and cooledit/pro) and the latest win* o/s. importing a 2hr tape from dat can take an entire weekend! win* will crash somewhere in the middle. or record to a temp buffer but not be able to save. or crash during saving. or when I save and reopen for editing, it corrupts the file.
I don't see HOW pro's can justify this time investment in fooling with M$ crap.
come to think of it, maybe THAT's why the Mac is so popular with the music crowd. its not as functional as a linux box but it supposedly IS stable for audio work.
--
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
The hardware side of music (MIDI and such) will be the easy part. Linux supports traditional MIDI cards (such as the MPU-401, and the low-performance joystick-MIDI interfaces on most sound cards), and you can work with that. I used to use Jazz (the XView version, if you remember that) and a MPU-401. Professional audio is the next major issue. If you're doing professional music, a game-quality soundcard with lousy frequency response, an imprecise A/D converter and lots of RF noise is about as useful as a chocolate teapot.
The software side will be harder. The greatest strength of systems such as Cubase VST is the number of interlocking programs. You have your effects plug-ins (ranging from homebrewed compressors and flangers to expensive proprietary DSP wizardry), soft synths (including ReBirth and the new VST 2.0 plug-ins such as Neon and LM-4), sample loop/phrase editors (i.e. ReCycle) and the like. FX plug-ins, for one, are incredibly useful. A Linux-based digital recording/sequencing application that only has a few basic reverb and echo plug-ins will look pretty poorly compared to Cubase or Logic.
On one hand, there are a lot of free (though not quite open-source) DSP plug-ins for Cubase VST, and the SDK is available. The interface has a small C++ class library to wrap it; if a compatible API could be written, a lot of plug-ins could be ported. On the other hand, maybe (just maybe) it would be possible to run some Windows VST plug-ins (i.e., DLLs with functions for doing stuff to buffers) using part of WINE.
With all due respect, even MPU-401 support for Linux is not 100%. It's fine if you want your Linux box to always be your clock source but, in the real world, that's just not always the case. People using standalone digital recorders, for example, may want the recorder to be the clock source.
When I downloaded Jazz++, I found that it came with a code patch to allow my MPU-401 to operate in Intelligent mode (external sync). Unfortunately, the patch did not compile on my system. A quick check of the code led me to believe that it was written for older libraries. I don't think anyone is maintaining it.
Sorry, but the vast majority of Linux "audio" software seems targeted at guys with semi-pro soundcards who want to goof around with sequencers and maybe a loop or two. FWIW, BeOS, with all it's "media OS" claims, is in the same boat. (Yes, I know Logic is "coming". Where is it now?)
The market for professional audio software is small enough without targeting an operating system that is still very much in the minority. This kind of software is very time-consuming and difficult to write (I *have* considered it). That's why even the Windows versions cost so much. There's also a culture barrier -- Linux users are accustomed to Free Software while Steinberg, Logic Audio, etc. are most definitely trying to get every dime they can from their products.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
... is the same thing that a few other posters have named: high-quality recording.
/am/ interested in is recording miked sources -- a school choir, a friend playing guitar, my grandmother's voice, interesting environments ...
MIDI is cool, but I don't know much about nor use it. My musical gene is stunted;) What I
There are some audio-recording utilities for Linux (audiograb), but none that offer the functionality of a simple personal audio workstion like the Akai DPS12.
In fact, this could be a money maker for anyone who wants to sell it: I would really like to find a professional-quality card featuring two XLR inputs (perhaps on a breakout box) and GPLd software to access them, saving into a non-proprietary format. Better, make the interface to the computer a USB connection, and a decent laptop can become a much better tool than my DPS12.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Haskore is a really interesting music notation which is implemented in the functional langauge Haskell. The introduction to the tutorial dose a good job of describing it:
Haskore is a collection of Haskell modules designed for expressing musical structures in the high-level, declarative style of functional programming. In Haskore, musical objects consist of primitive notions such as notes and rests, operations to transform musical objects such as transpose and tempo-scaling, and operations to combine musical objects to form more complex ones, such as concurrent and sequential composition. From these simple roots, much richer musical ideas can easily be developed.
Haskore is a means for describing music---in particular Western Music---rather than sound. It is not a vehicle for synthesizing sound produced by musical instruments, for example, although it does capture the way certain (real or imagined) instruments permit control of dynamics and articulation.
Haskore also defines a notion of literal performance through which observationally equivalent musical objects can be determined. From this basis many useful properties can be proved, such as commutative, associative, and distributive properties of various operators. An algebra of music thus surfaces.
You would probable find that Haskore offers more ability to extend your musical ntation then AMPLE because flexable notation is one of the things functional langauges like Haskell are good at.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
This a great topic. I've been waiting for the opportunity to ask some questions. At this point I need tools for recording, mixing, and realtime visualization of line input.
I've been using Goldwave for recording. It's a great shareware program despite only being available for Windows. The problem, other than my aversion to Windows, is that when Windows crashes the entire segment I was recording is lost. This is a definately a problem when it's live performances that you are recording.
Gmurf (open source) has a lot of potential but needs more development. The primary thing I'm looking for right now is software that allows me to record and does realtime visual analysis of the input. This is critical for adjusting the recording level to prevent clipping. The second thing I need is a nice open source mixer--one that allows me to adjust recording and playback levels at the same time. As far as the actual recording goes, SoX does an excellent job of recording and uses very little overhead.
My question is: What are the best open source packages for realtime visualization, the mixer, and wave editing?
numb
The market is not a very stable one. My Father purchased a copy of Encore from Passport. It was a fairly well know notation software program and the company well belly-up. It would be great to get some to port existing code such
9 283854.html
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as encore, fix the bugs and open the source...
Check on freshmeat in the last few days/weeks. I was almost positive I found a package that did musical notation that you are describing there.
I just found Mup at:
http://www.freshmeat.net/appindex/1998/07/01/89
MuX2d is in the works:
http://www.freshmeat.net/appindex/2000/01/04/94
As well as the very interesting Rosegarden:
http://www.freshmeat.net/appindex/1998/05/06/89
Brahms:
http://www.freshmeat.net/appindex/1999/09/30/93
Those should get you started.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
(Mainly because my friends & I had such a hassle recording a few songs using windows)
The author mentions the Tracker music as used in the Amiga demo scene. The trackers were wonderful, in that they allowed people with talent and vision, but little musical expertise to produce tunes that sounded nigh-on professional at times, nad best of all, the software was generally free, or at the very worst, shareware. However, in the late '80s and early '90s, 8-bit 22Khz sampling was perfectly acceptable for release, as cassette was the primary means of distribution outside of the computer. What sounded professional 10 years ago would be laughed out of the studio now. There already exist several trackers in the public domain for most OS's, but they serve more as a doodling pad than anything else. So there are more complex options (Cubase, Cakewalk etc......)
It doesn't say a lot for Windows and MacOS that an awful lot of musicians would rather die than let go of their ST's, simply for stability reasons. TOS was admittedly crap, but it rarely needed patching, and there were no service pack. The TOS that came with your machine would be the one it stayed with until it died, for the most part. BSOD/GPF's are bad enough for coders, but imagine what it'd be like to have to reassemble the music if one crops up! You may never get that sound again, unless you made copious notes on the settings, and let's face it, one of the points of doing it on computer was to alleviate writing every little detail down. MacOS these days is almost as bad....and that's before we come to the astronomical prices charged for the latest versions of the software. I'm aware that the software is WAY more advanced than the ST/Amiga days, but the price shouldn't be hiked as high as it has been.
So we come to Linux. Stable? yes. Capable of performance? yes. Lots of developers around the world? YES! It is an acknowledged fact that many coders also have an affinity for music, so... Musicians, what do YOU want from a Linux-based music program? Musician/Coders, what do YOU want from a Linux based music program? Coders, what can we GIVE them in a Linux based music program?
Answers on a Post Form!
- "How do we do it? Volume!" - The Bursar of Unseen University.
I wrote an article for Electronic Musician magazine that was published in the 06/99 dead-tree issue, titled "The Penguin's Song," about the state of music hardware and software support for Linux as of Spring of last year.
Unfortunately, the 06/99 issue seems to be the only one that's not archived on EM's very kludgy website. I've pestered the parent company, Intertec, a couple of times about this, and they keep alleging they're going to fix it.
The article's aimed at musicians looking at Linux, not at Linux geeks looking to music, so the focus might seem a bit strange to some of the Slashdot crowd, but I'm really rather proud of it.
Unfortunately, if you'd like to see the final version of this article, you'll either have to buy the back issue or pester EM's parent company to get the 06/99 issue into the archives. Or maybe I'll post the draft version if Intertec's too clueless to post the final one.
--
Mmm.... Oskari (the sole developer) isn't too friendly to requests to open-source Buzz or to port it to Linux, and neither is the mailing list - the topic is taboo due to a past mailing list meltdown. Buzz does run under WINE, though, quite well, but with a few significant bugs.
There is currently an effort to produce a Buzz-alike for *nix called Octal. It's in its extreme infancy (first code release last weekend), but we desperately need coders. Check the project out at http://www.gnu.org/software/octal/octa l.html and contact the project maintainer or myself if you're interested in helping out.
Good question.
I don't want to run a Linux-based program solely for the sake of running a Linux-based program.
I want to concentrate on the MUSIC.
I don't want to be sitting there thinking "I wish this program would do such-and-such, but that's OK because I'm running on a better OS."
Right now, believe it or not, Windows98 handles all my music needs flawlessly. The software I use (Cakewalk Pro Audio) isn't the highest-end software there is, but it's matured over 9 versions and I've used it since version 2.0 for DOS.
Can new software be designed from the ground up with the same functionality for Linux? Sure, if it's designed by people who know what musicians/composers actually need to do.
But the hardware support has to be there first. So there are some obstacles to overcome here, and eventually, I'll bet that there will be linux ports of the most popular professional packages. I'm in no hurry though... there was a time when Windows sucked at anything multimedia.
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
Every now and then you stumble across something which is an interesting fusion of several interests. One such find was around the late 80's, I bought a Music 500 system (like a Hybrid Music 5000) for my BBC B microcomputer. Basically this was an RM, FM synth linked into the system via a 1MHz port with 16 voices. What was interesting about this system was the method of driving it - it came with it's own Forth-like language - AMPLE (Advanced Music Programming Language Environment) for writing music, building sound sets (by combining voices together, using ring-modulation), controling volume and stereo position, and of course it also came with programming control structures such as loops, conditional execution and other such wonders.
While today's technology far outstrips the equipment that I used then, the AMPLE language provided a interesting (to a programmer who plays keyboard and oboe, anyway) method of creating and playing music, and not necessarly just playing music using conventional tools. The letters A-G represented notes, with capital letters implying go up and lowercase mean go down the scale, note lengths were easily specified (48, implies a crotchet, 24, implies a quaver and so forth), ties and slurs could be implemented and chords could be played on. As an example, a bar of music for one voice including chords might look like
24,C(48,ge)b~48,a(fc)96,C(ac)
which equates to quavers playing notes C down to B while G and E below are played and held, with the B quaver tied to a crotchet chord AFC and semibreve CAC to end the bar.
Several times I saw suggestions that the language should be revived and tied in to some modern MIDI or sample-based system, but to my knowledge nobody has ever taken up the challenge. If anyone knows differently, I like to hear from them!
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
I'm gonna get slammed on this, but what the Hacker culture here doesn't understand is what professionals want to need. Heck, this could sum up the reason why Linux is going to be a hard sell to replace the desktop of any platform.
Shit, this is one of the problems with all the shareware apps on the Win side. All the little bedroom 'musicians' grab a free groovebox type application and think they are a real musician. It's the whole DJ philosophy, let someone else do my work for me. Grab a few musicians aside, and ask what is the most important thing to them. Get real people involved and go at it.
You know what would just rock my world as a musican...a good free multitrack recorder. The software timing and latency issues would be practically nothing within Linux. Give me something that I can configure under X and then run simply using a serialported LCD, with Midi controls for most of the functions. Get support for a few of the multitrack cards (unfortunately the Echo line has stated they will never open their drivers to the public to maintain quality). Build this, get support for even one card, so that if someone wants to build a DAW cheaply and easily they can. Someone could add features and functions and make a killing off of this simply for the Hardware...
If you are interested in the stuff as a musician, please visit Sonikmatter.com. We are a group of forward thinking professional musicians. We have represenatives from several major corporations, both hardware and software and my co-admins are consultants for many of these companies. Heck, we'd even think about setting up a dedicated Linux forum if their was enough call for it.
Enough shameless selfpromotion, anyways, if ya want musicians to use your software, ya need to work with them, not just say I got this and now use it (hmmm...that seems to be my way of programming as well...doh!). If ya want to know what the non-tech challenged musician os thinking visit us and out forums.
thanks
clif
This is by far, the biggest thing that's keeping me chained to using windows.
:(
Quake3 is out for linux, Pine's great for e-mail, Communicator is acceptable as a browser, but there is an emtpy void where the multi-media apps come in. I haven't been able to find anything for wav file editting like Sound Forge, or a sequencing program as good as VST, or a multitracker as good as SAW.
(all of these are personal preference I'm sure).
Plus, from my understanding, there's no plug-in architecture like MS's DirectX that allows for effects plugins to be compatible with virtually all of these programs (well, except for SAW)...
When these apps are carried over to Linux like Photoshop was (Gimp), MS will be a distant memory...the likeliness of this however is a sign that I'll be using MS stuff for a while to come
-lev
Q: What do you think about American Culture?
A: I think it's a good idea.
(adapted from Gandhi)
It was good to see Dave Phillips being quoted here, since he's probably the most well-informed source on this subject, and, since Dave himself is an active developer of any projects, a fairly independent and honest source at that. Its a bit depressing to see so many comments thus far show little knowledge of whats actually going on in the Linux audio/MIDI/music development community. First off all, as the article mentioned, we do now have support for high end ("professional") interfaces, including the amazing RME Hammerfall and devices built around the ICE1712 chip such as the Delta101 from Midiman. The Hammerfall is a potentially revolutionary card, bringing 26 input channels and 26 output channels into your system for around $500. Its all digital, and so all the stuff mentioned here about RF noise is null and void. Secondly, from a technical standpoint, Linux is a much better platform for multimedia than almost any other operating system, including BeOS. With Ingo Molnar's low latency patches for the 2.2 kernels, and almost without patches in the 2.3 series, Linux can support sustained, essentially guaranteed sub-5msec latency regardless of system load. This is truly impressive. Its too bad that Linus doesn't seem to care too much about this, but plenty of others do. In addition to this almost-dedicated-h/w level of performance, we can provide high performance, stable, reliable libraries for networking, database operations, multi user facilities, high end graphics cards, and big disk arrays. Finally, companies like Dell, Compaq and Gateway now sell Linux preinstalled. One might have hoped that such a platform would have companies like Steinberg running to us, but alas, not yet. That said, we *are* talking to Steinberg, and they are considering the possibility of an open source implementation (probably not by them) of a VST host. This would be an exciting development. VST (1 or 2) is not by any means a particularly superb specification for a plugin API from a technical point of view, but its widespread support by the industry makes it important. Since we in the Linux world tend to prefer technically superior solutions to mere marketing strategies, there is also work going on a mailing list that any developers reading this should know about: the linux-audio-dev list (send a message containing "subscribe linux-audio-dev" to majordomo@ginette.musique.umontreal.ca . On that list, we have been discussing two related API's, one called LADSPA (the Linux-Audi-Dev Simple Plugin API) and one called MuCoS (not its final name, we hope). LADPSA is intended as an initial plugin API standard that offers about the same functionality as VST1.0 (and indeed, could be used to support VST1.0). MuCoS is a much more advanced system designed to support sample accurate, low latency, high performance plugins. LADSPA is getting close to a final definition. There are also people (I am one of them) who *are* working with musicians to make sure that we are developing pro-quality, studio-ready tools rather than bedroom toys. I am actively engaged in writing multichannel recording software designed to replace racks of Alesis M20 ADAT recorders, for example, and work with a commercial pro studio to make sure that what I'm doing works in a real studio setting. However, this is not simple work. When your goals are to do things at least as well as ProTools, a program under development for at least 5 or 6 years, and used by most major studios, its not a matter of a long weekend hacking late into the night. There are many careful and tricky design questions to be answered. The solutions are not the same for all categories of programs (e.g. HDR systems place a different kind of stress on a system than synthesizers/trackers do). Its slow hard work, quite different from web programming, database work or kernel hacking because of the real-time nature of the task. So yeah, we're getting there, and nobody that I know on linux-audio-dev is under illusion that we've written ProTools yet. But there is no single "killer app" for audio/music/MIDI work, just a series of tools that all need to be developed. That said, there is way too much duplication of effort. I'm all for the GNOME/KDE split, because I think that having multiple strands of development/experimentation is a good thing. But given that we don't have a single soundfile editor capable of doing a lot of what even the most rudimentary commercial Windows/Mac apps can do, let alone handle a 24 track 24/48 recording, it seems crazy to me that we have at least a half dozen projects working on "the GIMP for audio". The comparison seems like a good one to me, because I recently read about issues that the GIMP has with CMYK color, a required feature for professional printing purposes. Its a good analogy with many Linux soundfile editing programs, which are slowly adding plugin architectures, neat FX etc. but are (mostly) fundamentally written around a stereo assumption - completely inadequate for studio work. OK, I've written enough here. Come join us on linux-audio-dev if you're serious about Linux and audio.