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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.
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.
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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.