Rosegarden Developers Interviewed by O'Reilly

rayk_sland writes "Users of the Rosegarden Sequencer project will be gratified to see it featured in O'Reilly's Linux DevCenter web magazine. I am a devoted fan of this program, which allows the user to sequence music using classical music notation, and has many other sequencer features I haven't even properly fathomed (read the article.) The Rosegarden project has recently released a 'pre-1' beta. Almost time for those party streamers..."

Comments

Rosegarden looks fantastic

[cbrocious]

Rosegarden looks absolutely fantastic. Unfortunately, its dependancy on KDElibs and QT make it impractical for me to build it in a reasonable amount of time (I'm on gentoo, so binaries for everything isn't really an option) and its layout makes it impossible for me to use it in ratpoison (my WM of choice) anyway.

Looks nice, but definitely could use some work in the dependancy and UI area.

Re:Rosegarden looks fantastic

[Anonymous Coward]

Gosh... isn't it great running Linux?!?! I mean, think of how much lower a business' support costs are going to be when "everything works" just like your example ;)

Re:Rosegarden looks fantastic

[Anonymous Coward]

Could you be in anymore of a niche? Do you really think that they're going to make changes for a single Gentoo user who uses Ratpoison as a WM and is not willing to wait the time to compile the supporting libs? Good luck with that. If you're in a ridiculously small niche it should be well understood that you're going to have to deal with some small inconveniences to do what everyone else is doing (i.e. having to build the supporting libs).

Re:Rosegarden looks fantastic

[Skinkie]

It is the only reason I have QT/KDE libs on my PC. But there is something else very interesting in all this. Because the original Rosegarden developer started his programming in GTK-- and moved over to QT :)

I do hope someday there will be a GTK2 interface for this great program, it will minimize the compile time a lot.

Re:Rosegarden looks fantastic

[Anonymous Coward]

Show me a business running their desktops with Gentoo and the Ratpoison WM, and I will agree with your point. :)

Re:Rosegarden looks fantastic

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit, let Qt and kdelibs build overnight and you are set. Actually I imagine it takes no more than 3-4 hrs in the backgrond on a resonably fast machine (2Ghz and up). And there is no dependency problem so why is any work needed?

Re:Rosegarden looks fantastic

[mordors9]

But once you get it all built, just think how much faster it will run on your system than on other people's ;-)

Re:Rosegarden looks fantastic

[Anonymous Coward]

Will you be my friend?

Re:Rosegarden looks fantastic

[Skinkie]

No I don't... he even started in GTK+, then moved over to GTK-- and finally QT was the magic word... But still... 4 hours compiling for QT, KDE, Rosegarden is no fun.

Re:Rosegarden looks fantastic

[Anonymous Coward]

And for those that think Gentoo/Ratpoison isn't so mainstream...

Rosegarden doesn't work on Fedora Core3 either.

Re:Rosegarden looks fantastic

[Anonymous Coward]

ratposion wm? How about fvwm? Not that Rosegarden would run on that, but you can make a nice custom ~/.fvwm2rc file that sets your desktop up just like you want it. Examples near the bottom of this page: My Linux Files
Just a suggestion.

Re:Rosegarden looks fantastic

[Sweetshark]

Thats not the point. The point is QT is a huge monolithic toolkit (it even contains GUI unrelated stuff like file operations). It would be better if it would be cleanly split in modules, so only those libs *needed* have to be installed. (I dont have to tell you about the advantages of modularisation, have I?)
But I guess someone wants to sell the package as a whole ...

Re:Rosegarden looks fantastic

[Guillaume Laurent]

Actually, the text you're linking to is a bit misleading : no coding was ever actually done using plain GTK+, we never even considered that option. We went for gtk-- right away (or, if you prefer, we went for GTK+ as soon as we learned that C++ bindings were available).

Re:Rosegarden looks fantastic

[Master Bait]

But I guess someone wants to sell the package as a whole ...

OK, then! Tell you what I'm gonna do. I'll split up kdelibs and email you the 'modules' for only ninety-nine ninety nine apiece! Take your pick! Think of the convenience!

Re:Rosegarden looks fantastic

[Anonymous Coward]

I do hope someday there will be a GTK2 interface for this great program, it will minimize the compile time a lot.

Because that's what really makes a program. You idiot.

Re:Rosegarden looks fantastic

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a fair complaint, if you think of Qt as a GUI library. It isn't. It's a cross platform API: it's designed to let people write software for Qt, and, in that way, for multiple platforms (last I looked, Windows, Mac OS X, and X11, which covers the vast majority of desktops out there.)

If you've only ever coded for Linux, or other Unix operating systems, you won't understand why people like this. If you've coded for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X at different times, you will.

In short: Qt is not a widget library. It has a subset that is, but that's not all of Qt. Calling Qt a widget library (or a GUI library) is like calling a fully fledged database a filesystem. It can be, but that's missing a lot of its strengths.

Re:Rosegarden looks fantastic

[Sweetshark]

That's a fair complaint, if you think of Qt as a GUI library. It isn't. It's a cross platform API: it's designed to let people write software for Qt, and, in that way, for multiple platforms (last I looked, Windows, Mac OS X, and X11, which covers the vast majority of desktops out there.)
Not if I want my software to be free - QT for example is not available under GPL for windows.
So its a cross platform API only for commercial software.

Re:Rosegarden looks fantastic

[Sweetshark]

I'll split up kdelibs and email you the 'modules' for only ninety-nine ninety nine apiece!
I wasnt talking about kde. I was talking about QT. It claims to be platform independant. But it isnt for GPL software (see windows license). Its current design is making it hard to use QT *only* for GUI stuff and using libs that are crossplatform under GPL without generating much duplicate code on the system.
Think of the convenience!
Trust your package manager, Luke.

oreilly

[tomjen]

Thats is what i love about oreilly, they have so much good info.

Wrong description

[mirko]

...but the story submitter said so.

From the page...
Rosegarden is a professional audio and MIDI sequencer, score editor, and general-purpose music composition and editing environment.

What I just want to get are specs... How many tracks at once does it promise ?
Logic Pro does more than enough and Cubase was much slower.

Re:Wrong description

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you can have as many tracks as you like.
The only limit is the speed of your computer/drives.
There is no reason for them to impose an arbritrary limit as they don't sell a 'Rosegarden Pro' that requires them to cripple a cheaper version. :)

Really, if you want to compare it to logic the differences will be in the maturity of the interface and routing/editing features, rather than the track count.

It does appear that Rosegarden supports latency compensation, which I think Logic 7 Pro *still* doesn't do properly.

Re:Wrong description

[mirko]

It does appear that Rosegarden supports latency compensation, which I think Logic 7 Pro *still* doesn't do properly.


OK, just tell me how many more tracks (no effect) it supports on similar hardware.

Re:Wrong description

[Anonymous Coward]

To be honest, I don't have a clue. My main tools are Ardour and seq24 when using Linux.

I run CubaseSX(XP) and Ardour(Linux) on the same box, and they seem pretty similar. For both, the drive speed is the limiting factor, even though I have fast hard drives.

Ardour only records at 32bit float, so recording at 16bit in cubase gives more tracks, at the expense of a little quality.

Prototyping Music.

[Anonymous Coward]

Harmony Navigator

stability

[polyp2000]

I've tried Rosegarden a couple of times - looks to be a very promising package - i've even contributed some stuff to the project. Last time i tried it though (probably 6-12 months ago) it had a tendancy to die unexpectedly rendering it fairly useless for anything serious. Its good to see its now approaching a final release. I will be trying this out to see how its been coming along - and maybe ... just maybe I can actually write some tunes under linux...

Re:stability

[unit01]

I have it running on an amd 64 gentoo system and the stability is great. combined with the JACK audio connection kit its blindly powerful. Dan

Re:stability

[polyp2000]

ooooh! that sounds nice...

Re:stability

[Anonymous Coward]

I find that it's missing a lot in the MIDI department, if you want to work in a real studio with lots of MIDI keyboards and gear.

Compare working with MIDI under Logic or Cubase, and there's really no contest.

Even without these MIDI problems, it's still horrible trying to navigate around the interface and make it do what you want. Assignable keybindings would be nice for a start.

Re:stability

[cayenne8]

I couldn't find it on the site..but, can Rosegarden import from powertabs editor? I'm learning guitar, and my teacher uses PT quite a lot. I can get PT up with wine, but, it crashes when I try to open a file.

This would be nice if it would import/export PT files....

Re:stability

[Anonymous Coward]

And since its a KDE application you can do whatever you like with the keybindings. Settings->Configure Shortcuts

Have you actually tried or are you just fudding?

Re:stability

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I've tried. I didn't realize that (I don't use KDE), that's good. However, there are still lots of things you want to do with keys that you can only do with a mouse (last time I tried). The mouse should be completely disposable in any serious music making application.

GUI

[Anonymous Coward]

GUI should be the top priority of Rosegarden development. It has progressed a lot since the earlier versions, but there is still a long way to go.

Re:GUI

[Anonymous Coward]

Where programs like this are concerned GUI is of considerable importance. Music composition is a very "real-time" process and its important to get ones ideas down quickly. I remember I could work so quickly with Med Soundstudio on Amiga / Windows. while not being state of the art by todays standards for me the speed and intuitive nature of the program meant I could work as fast as I could think. Anything that gets in the way of putting creative flow down in musical form is not a good thing. The gui does seem to steal a few ideas from Cubase et.al ... Id like to see a tracker style editor in the piano-roll notation section to really blow my mind

Rosegarden has come a long way.

[suso]

Wow! I haven't looked at the rosegarden project in a long time, but from looking at those screenshots, they have come a LONGGGG way. I remember when it used to just be a very simple notation program.

Open Source is getting there. Wherever there may be.

Re:Rosegarden has come a long way.

[arodland]

Yeah -- the "new Rosegarden", which is commonly known as Rosegarden 4, is miles ahead of the "old Rosegarden", Rosegarden 2. It's basically a complete rewrite, with all of the nifty features carried over (and then some), but brought into the modern age. I like! Looks like it ought to give Noteedit a run for its money.

Re:Rosegarden has come a long way.

[cammoblammo]

Looks like it ought to give Noteedit a run for its money.

You may not be aware, but Noteedit is no longer under development. Which is a real pity, because it was starting to become a really useful tool that had no pretensions to be anything but a notation editor.

I don't mind Rosegarden, but all I need is a notation editor, and a full blown midi environment (which is very pretty, by the way) is overkill. In actual fact, it confuses me a lot, which says more about me than the program!

Kudos to the devs though... I might even fire it up a bit during the holidays and have a play.

Re:Rosegarden has come a long way.

[arodland]

Indeed. Noteedit is all I was really after, too, and Rosegarden turned out to be way too big and complex for what I needed. If only a few of the more serious bugs in Noteedit were fixed, I'd be quite happy with it. Maybe it's time to see if I can decipher the code. I know me some C++, but nothing about KDE internals.

Excellent news...

[Kozz]

...for all those who've been told they were never promised Rosegarden.

Re:Excellent news...

[Bertie]

I beg your pardon?

Re:Excellent news...

[Pete]

It's a song, "Rose Garden". The most famous and oft-repeated line from the song is "I never promised you a rose garden".

Re:Excellent news...

[Kozz]

You're too young, I'm sure. There's an old song with a chorus lyric of "I never promised you a rose garden." *sigh*

Showing my age, I guess.

Re:Excellent news...

[Anonymous Coward]

And the line immediately preceding that one was "I beg your pardon?"

Re:Excellent news...

[Anonymous Coward]

He/she is old enough to remember that the lyric preceding "I never promised you a rose garden." was "I beg your pardon?". *sigh*

Not showing your age as much as you thought, I guess. (Or maybe the GP is showing his/hers more?)

Re:Excellent news...

[Bertie]

Erm, yeah, and the line before it is...

"I beg your pardon"

I'm wasted here, y'know...

Lilypond

[gtrubetskoy]

Looks like Rosegarden can export to Lilypond, which is by far the best music notation program AFAIAC. For years in our choir there were sheets made using Finale, and when I remade one using Lilypond people were asking me where is the book that this came from, it just looks so professional. They have a great paper on this .

Re:Lilypond

[bcrowell]

AFAIK, Lilypond is the only way to generate a printed score from Rosegarden. I'm surprised that they never even mention Lilypond in the article or the interview -- seems a little ungracious. I'm not interested in midi or electronic music per se, so to me, Rosegarden is just a not-very-functional GUI front-end for Lilypond.

Lilypond is great, although it's still in a state of rapid change. I hope one day they make the project stable enough that, e.g., people can depend on the Lilypond language not to keep on breaking compatibility. It's created a real problem for the Mutopia, for instance. But the bottom line is that Lilypond does let you produce professional-quality sheet music, and there isn't any other OSS that can do that. Pretty amazing accomplishment for a team consisting mainly of a couple of hobbyists.

Re:Lilypond

[Anonymous Coward]

"The most obvious difference is that MusE doesn't have a score editor"

There's a editor for muse here

If you are using lilypond on windows (or not), I would highly recommend LilyTool for JEdit

Re:Lilypond

[Chris Cannam]

AFAIK, Lilypond is the only way to generate a printed score from Rosegarden

No, you can print directly from Rosegarden as well. The results won't compete with Lilypond, but they're readable.

I'd hate to be on this project...

[Junior J. Junior III]

Brainless Manager: Where's my deliverables! We're past our due date!

Rosegarden Developer: It'll be done when it's done. I never promised you a--DOH! Uh, I'll get those deliverables to you by noon, sir. <grumbles>stupid project names</grumbles>

Most unstable app?

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only one who thinks Rosegarden is one of the most unstable FLOSS applications out there? I would love to give it an in-depth try, but every time I do, it just crashes on me.

Re:Most unstable app?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. A few AC's in these parts seem to think the same thing.

Re:Most unstable app?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had exactly 0 problems with it.

Can't wait to see it in action

[The MESMERIC]

Been wrestling over it for 3 months
Can't even output a simple Do-Re-Mi :(

I know, I know its me! - it's all my RTFM fault - I just don't get that whole jack-ass konfingeration stuff *sigh*

Windows Cubase .. here I come ..

Nah - not really :P

I will try again when I test-drive Fedora Core 3.

Re:Can't wait to see it in action

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out the fervent linux live audio CD.

http://www.ferventsoftware.com/index.php

Alsa, Jack, Rosegarden, Ardour (With VST plugin support!), Freqtweak. PD, etc etc.
It costs, but it's very, very easy to use.

Re:Can't wait to see it in action

[The MESMERIC]

I might

Even dynebolic live-CD didn't work.

I just want to write tunes - and if ever money comes in get a keyboard.
but at the mo I can't afford even £49.99 :(

Re:Can't wait to see it in action

[Anonymous Coward]

Post another request for help on rosegarden-user. There's been a lot of new folks joining recently to ask about config problems and you may have more luck with getting a useful reply.

Great paper?

[Anonymous Coward]

They have a great paper on this.

Lilypond seems to compare themselves to some of the biggest music PUBLISHING companies in the world. They compare their typesetting to that of Schott, Bärenreiter, Henle, etc which release REPRINTS of previous editions. So all of these comparitive examples hold no weight at all.

If you actually look at 2004 works by PRESENT-DAY composers by those publishing companies, you will see their typesetting is flawless, as they are done with computers.

REPRINTS are exactly that- originally published in the pre-computer age; but REPRINTED and released in a newly bound edition, stamped with a present year copyright date. So why the heck is Lilypond comparing themselves to reprints from the 1950's?

Try comparing yourself to a 2004 composition published by Schott, CF Peters, or others if you want a fair comparison. Not a reprint.

Re:Great paper?

[ambrosine10]

I think the authors make the point that they want to hold themselves to the standards of hand-engraved scores, NOT computer generated scores. They specifically point out that they don't like most computer-generated prints.

Re:Great paper?

[hanwen]

Try comparing yourself to a 2004 composition published by Schott, CF Peters, or others if you want a fair comparison. Not a reprint.

the point that reprints are usually better than the 2004 material.

The quality of score layout has been steadily declining over the past 20 years. Show me a 2004 Baerenreiter score that can compare favorably with their 1950 prints. I haven't seen any and I do get to see a lot of new music.

The unfortunate reality is that revenue in the serious music publishing business is in decline. This makes good-quality engraving (which requires a lot of work and skill) unaffordable except for the most famous composers of the most prestigious publishers. LilyPond is our try to counter that trend, by making software that produces good output without requiring lots of work or lots of knowledge.

Han-Wen

Well, they never promised you

[Anonymous Coward]

a rosegarden.

now did they?

Rosegarden is no Soundgarden.

[Anonymous Coward]

And I know Soundgarden.

What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Im just a musical geek girl who cant say no.

A girl posting on slashdot.

Did hell finally freeze over?

Re:What?

[MsGeek]

Yes, the temperature of Hell has been at zero degrees celsius for the past 5 years or so. That's how long I've been posting here anyway.

RTA?

[RealBeanDip]

...and has many other sequencer features I haven't even properly fathomed (read the article.)...

RTA... you're kidding, right?

Re:RTA?

[Anonymous Coward]

shut up

NoteEdit

[Anonymous Coward]

NoteEdit is also decent for sheet music to Lilypond if that's what you're looking for.

Unfortunately the project is half-dead due to percieved disinterest. Doesn't make it less functional though.

OSX

[omeomi]

Seems like a wise decision would be to follow Audacity's example and to release an OSX port...Windows would be nice as well, but I guess OSX is more likely. In all honesty, many musicians aren't going to want to take the time to futz with compiling relatively unproven software on Linux.

Re:OSX

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you give RG developers an OSX box? :)

Re:OSX

[martinoforum]

I don't think Linux has a realistic shot at beating down Apple (Logic), Steinberg (Nuendo, Cubase), Cakewalk (Sonar), Digidesign (Protools) and MOTU (Digital Performer) without any kind of differentiation. Basically, OSX and WinXP work for these kind of apps now, there's little gain to be had in moving to a new OS. Rosegarden is doing very well in that it has moved from totally impractical (a couple of years ago) to borderline usable (now) as regards actually doing anything musical. However look at what has happened over in the PC world in the same time and it really just serves to illustrate the fact that Rosegarden is not catching up, it's falling further behind. Not a nice thing to say about a worthy project, but true unfortunately.

However there is a reasonably open market that nobody seems to be going for - an open-standard "music computer" with a lightweight embedded OS that can be taken out live on stage, and used to run what are effectively server applications (MIDI or audio in, audio or MIDI out) in a stable manner. Running servers is a clear point where Linux can kick the bezeesus out of Windows, and I personally hate taking WinXP out on a stage for fear of something crashing mid-song. Linux is good for mission-critical applications like that, and I think development focussed on providing core live functions (multi-track recording, an effects and virtual instrument plugin architecture, a good soft-sampler) on a minimal embedded OS would do the trick much better than trying to fight the big boys without any resources would.

Re:OSX

[cammoblammo]

I wonder if http://www.agnula.org/ might be what you're looking for. This is actually two distros (one Debian based, the other Red Hat) specifically designed with music workstations in mind. The subsystem is configured from the ground up (low-latency kernels, jackd works out of the box, apparently, and so on).

The project was originally funded by the European Commission, and is still going since official funding ceased. It's got some work to do still, but I'm thinking about pulling it down and having a play. A dedicated music machine sounds like a lot of fun!

Re:OSX

[omeomi]

I don't think Linux has a realistic shot at beating down Apple (Logic), Steinberg (Nuendo, Cubase), Cakewalk (Sonar), Digidesign (Protools) and MOTU (Digital Performer) without any kind of differentiation.

I dunno...right now, all of the good sequencers are pretty expensive, so there's definitely a market on the Mac/PC for a somewhat decent, free sequencer. For instance, I own Logic 5.1 for Windows, which I use for recording and stuff, but I have an OSX laptop that I use for performances, etc. However, I can't afford Logic 7 for OSX, so it would be nice to have a minimal sequencer that I could use when I'm on the road.

an open-standard "music computer" with a lightweight embedded OS that can be taken out live on stage, and used to run what are effectively server applications (MIDI or audio in, audio or MIDI out) in a stable manner.

One thing to look into would be the Planet CCRMA version of Fedora out of Stanford. You have to install Fedora first, but then you install their stuff with APT. It has a low-latency kernel, and a bunch of audio software:

http://ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccrma/software/

Also, a traditional sequencer isn't really the best for live performances...look into PD http://www-crca.ucsd.edu/~msp/software.html or Supercollider http://www.audiosynth.com/ for live-performance stuff on Linux

Tom

Re:OSX

[martinoforum]

My real issue with both this and AGNULA is they're still too big, while failing to provide the weight of musical features to go with the installed size. I'm really just looking for a box that has as little as possible running on it.

If you have a look at things like hardware samplers, they're basically just PCs with a very minimal amount of operating system and enough software to drive a little bit of proprietary sampler hardware. There's very little to go wrong, and if it does go wrong then re-installing the OS is not an hour job (fatal on stage). The old AKAI samplers had their OS on a floppy, you could make a few backups and take them along to gigs in case something went wrong.

Computers are getting powerful enough now that it's quite realistic to envision a single box that can run an entire band inside five years. When I say "run", I mean handling:

• Piano, keyboard and synth sounds
• FX processors
• Loops and samples

... all coming out of one programmable box. We've already got to the stage where sample sets sound better than the hardware alternatives (see: Drumkit From Hell Superior or BFD vs a recent drum brain from any major manufacturer), so I don't see why we shouldn't move as much as possible into the computer. Then maybe I can ditch my Yamaha A4000 sampler - hefty 8gb hard disk, 128mb of RAM and all.

I could do it now on Windows. but that would mean running mission-critical stuff on an OS that could potentially fail to boot and cost me the gig. Ideally we should be talking about something that can run off a live CD and have a boot time of less than a minute from there. Combine that with redundancy like RAID and multiple sound cards inside the box and all of a sudden we're looking at a much more realistic alternative to dedicated hardware... Linux would have an advantage here, but providing a whole new desktop OS which takes 2-3 minutes to boot into the GUI and insists on username/password login etc is just not going to cut it with musicians. That may sound daft, but it's not. Here's a list of the stuff I have to set up on a stage for a gig:

Drum Kit:

• Rack
• Cymbal arms on rack
• Bass drum
• Hi-hat and snare drum stands
• Floor tom
• Snare drum
• Pedals
• Hi-hats
• Cymbals (x3)
• Electronic pads (x3)
• Triggers on acoustic drums (x2)
• Drum brain
• Leads (x5) to plug all the pads and triggers into the brain. Tidily.

Other stuff:

• Hardware sampler. MIDI from drum brain, audio out.
• Drum machine (for clicks)
• Mixer to plug all the above into
• Headphone amp for the stuff that only I should be hearing
• If it's a small club, I own the PA as well.

... so the last thing I want to deal with is a complex OS on the scale of Fedora or Debian with Gnome or KDE booting up in the middle of all that. I just want machines that I can turn on and they work, there really isn't time for things that have such a high opinion of themselves that they want the user to wait :)

Hence the suggestion that we need a dedicated OS built for the purpose. I already have a dedicated music OS - it's called Windows XP. It doesn't connect to a network, it has all the fancy GUI options turned off... and I hate to say it, but it boots faster than Linux on my primary machine. I could maybe improve the Linux boot time if I installed Gentoo or somesuch, but really - I'm a musician, I don't do that kind of thing :D

Music on Linux is a chicken and egg situation. There's no way the majority of musicians are going to bother installing Fedora or Debian and then one of the add-on packages like AGNULA or CCRMA in order to get software that's inferior to what we already have on Windows. There has to be something that Linux does better. At the moment, there's really not anything apart from some geeky things like JACK whic

short-term thinking

[Anonymous Coward]

"projects this size are hard to get into, and we neither have the time to fully document the code, nor to constantly guide newcomers"

Er...maybe if they trained up some help, they'd have more time...

Of course they don't seem to be unhappy about the lack of help, and they can run their project however they want. And seem to be building something great to boot. But I do think a lot of opensource developers are remarkably shortsighted about this sorta thing.

Re:short-term thinking

[Guillaume Laurent]

Er...maybe if they trained up some help, they'd have more time...

Gee, how come we never thought of this before. :-)

Honestly, if it were that simple do you really believe we wouldn't do it ? "Training" people through email just takes too long, and many contributors have just vanished after a couple of patches. We just can't afford to invest this kind of time into some guy whom we have no way to know if he'll stick around. All projects of this scale have the same kind of problem, there's no simple solution to it.

Re:short-term thinking

[Thing 1]

Sounds like a Training Guide would be useful; that way your marginal cost per interested human would go way down.

ARGH!!!!

[Spy der Mann]

Mod me troll if you want (uh but flamebait preferred :) ), but i'm getting tired of Linux-only releases in a cross-platform world.

And considering that the majority of music users use, well, WINDOWS... (my dad always bought windows music products. I think Rosengarden is missing a huge potential market: Windows users.

I tried freeware Windows MIDI sequencers a couple of years ago, all sucked. So I'd gladly appreciate if the Rosengarden devs made their software cross-platform, now that it's STILL IN EARLY development. This is when major structural changes can be done with nobody noticing.

And finally... for those of you who want to flame me with "this is NOT a Windows thread", I respond: If I don't come in the Linux zone and say that window users needs cross-platform versions of already existing linux apps, then who's going to tell them?

My 2 cents.

Re:ARGH!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem I have is that my hardware for MIDI and audio (M-Audio Quattro) doesn't have Linux support, and in general support for other multi channel cards is lacking under Linux. This is more an issue with manufacturer support, of course, but makes Linux a non starter for me.

In addition a simple loop-based layout tool (like Acid) would be helpful. I find this to be a great tool for quickly fleshing out a song. Acid 2.0 may not be feature laden but this is a virtue: it stays out of the way of the creative process.

Re:ARGH!!!!

[don.g]

Some open source developers disagree with you.

Open source developers usually write software because they want to use it. If they don't want to use it with Windows, then why should they port it just to satisfy some whinging Windows users? Especially the "I couldn't code my way out of a soggy paper bag, but Doing This Would Make Open Source Succeed*!" sort.

* Succeed being defined as "do what I want it to do"

Re:ARGH!!!!

[MBCook]

Well, it uses QT and such, so with the exception of the audio code it shouldn't be to hard to port if it's written well.

But the audio code is the sticker. There is no free cross-platform sound code (other than relativly simple stuff like SDL (simple by comparison to some of the more interesting things you can do native)). So if you were to port the audio engine, then it should be easy. Either that or write an ALSA emulation layer for Windows or OS X.

Graphics are portable thanks to toolkits and OpenGL/SDL. Audio isn't always that easy. And, as another poster pointed out, people tend to write OSS for THEMSELVES on the platform THEY USE and hope it's useful for other people. If they were out to sell it, I'm sure they would have used Windows. But for themselves, they used Linux (and I would too, I like the dev tools better, but that's personal preference.)

Re:ARGH!!!!

[chromatic]

It's not that simple.

I maintain a couple of and contribute to a few free software projects. I can build and test on a couple of architectures and a couple of operating systems on my own. I don't have Windows installed, and if it weren't for one machine a roommate uses only to run an accounting program, there wouldn't be an installation of Windows in my home. (That machine has no network connection.)

If I want to know that that software runs on Windows, I have to rely on other programmers who not only can and do run Windows but can and do build software there. I can understand why there seem to be so few of them -- the last time I tried, it was an awful experience -- but telling developers that they should write software that works on Windows is fairly useless.

If you want good free software that runs on Windows, go to this supposedly huge, untapped market, find people capable of developing, testing, and submitting bugs, and point them at those projects that wouldn't mind running on Windows if they had a little help.

Re:ARGH!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a free cross platform audio layer.
It's called PortAudio, and works on Windows, Mac (Os9+OSX), Linux and BSD.
Audacity uses it with good results.
Jack is also Linux+OSX, but less portable to Windows due to it's need for a proper POSIX system.

Re:ARGH!!!!

[big.ears]

But the audio code is the sticker. There is no free cross-platform sound code (other than relativly simple stuff like SDL (simple by comparison to some of the more interesting things you can do native)). So if you were to port the audio engine, then it should be easy. Either that or write an ALSA emulation layer for Windows or OS X.

Actually, PortAudio solves the cross-platform audio problem quite well (cf. audacity), although I don't know if Rosegarden uses it. But, the QT toolkit may be the real stumbling block--it requires an expensive license to develop with on windows. And probably, the developers just don't care about windows users, which in my opinion is a mistake. One reason why Audacity, for example, is such a good linux audio editor is because it is cross-platform, and gets lots of testing with windows users.

Re:ARGH!!!!

[roadrunnerro]

And that's one of the main the reason open source doesn't catch on as well as it should - (hey, it's free - now why do so many people insist on paying for stuff? I wonder why everybody isn't getting a refund on MS products and sending donations to OSS projects... ).

It's because most developers do it for themselves - as an interesting project, not considering what the user needs (not to mention 0 market research usually). That's cool (I'm a dev myself and do stuff for the fun of it), but whining about why other people don't like your work afterwards seems a little odd...

You're either doing it for yourself (and keeping your very nice proggie multi-platform, but only between linux versions) or doing it for the users and offering them what they NEED: win32 versions. And manuals. And support. Taking money for some of your work isn't immoral you know...

Consider Firefox or OpenOffice NOT having Windows ports.. Or done completely without corporate support... Idealism and morals are good, but purism and extremism are bad in the Real World(tm)

Re:ARGH!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell you what, once Rosegarden has reached a stable version, then consider asking again. Until then, the Rosegarden developers have enough to deal with without having a new version of visual studio every couple of years, new OSes every other couple of years, and all of them coming with new service packs, unannounced API changes, and new ways of doing things.

Better yet, ask again once Microsoft reaches a stable version.

Re:ARGH!!!!

[Sweetshark]

Consider Firefox or OpenOffice NOT having Windows ports..
Firefox and OOo were cross-platform even from their pre-open-source roots, so they where not really ported.
FF and OO are means to keep/get critical infrastructure (the www and Office-documents) to a open standard.
Rosegarden is not comparable to this.

Re:ARGH!!!!

[Guillaume Laurent]

We've discussed portaudio recently. Although we haven't seriously looked at it yet, it seems to be a very good candidate.

However, MacOS/X has Garage Band and Logic, Windows has Cubase, Cakewalk... I'm not sure how much of a "market share" Rosegarden could have on those platforms, where free software is less of an issue.

Re:ARGH!!!!

[fishbowl]

>The problem I have is that my hardware for MIDI and
>audio (M-Audio Quattro) doesn't have Linux support

Of course it does! It even has an officialy supported ALSA driver.

>in general support for other multi channel cards is
>lacking under Linux.

Well, that's true for some, but not for others. I can find no fault, at least at the driver level, with the ALSA driver for my Delta 1010 or my Delta AP2496. I bought the 1010 because of the lack of support for my Echo Layla, but that's supported now as well, as are RME/Digi and Terratec devices.

>In addition a simple loop-based layout tool (like
> Acid) would be helpful.

Well, Rosegarden is shaping up to be a pretty good sequencer, and from that starting place, much is possible. I wish Imageline would just go ahead and release a Linux version of FLStudio and raise the bar.

Re:ARGH!!!!

[Mr. Hankey]

There are plenty of Windows-only applications out there that do what you want. This is an effort to bring missing functionality to Linux. It's not about market share for Rosegarden per se, although the availability of a free MIDI environment under Linux is likely to bring more people to both Linux and Rosegarden. There are even bootable CDs that come with Rosegarden pre-installed. It's freely available, and you can have now if you're willing to exercise a few neurons.

Your argument is akin to complaining about Macintosh application developers. Sure, they might be able to reach a larger audience under Windows. That's just not what they're after.

Re:ARGH!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

However, MacOS/X has Garage Band and Logic, Windows has Cubase, Cakewalk... I'm not sure how much of a "market share" Rosegarden could have on those platforms, where free software is less of an issue.

The commercial Windows stuff is pretty expensive, so there's that. Also, a small market share on Windows might still equal your total number of Linux users. Just a thought.

Re:ARGH!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Rosegarden requires Jack audio layer (professional level low latency audio driver on top of ALSA) and Windows does not support anything similar to Jack. That's why it's impossible to port Rosegarden to Windows.

Re:ARGH!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

> Of course it does! It even has an officialy supported ALSA driver.

Ah - that's good news. Last time I checked (several months ago) I couldn't see anything on the M-Audio site but if it has changed then that's excellent and I will check out RoseGarden as well.

Re:ARGH!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm do you have a source of information on the drivers? Selecting Quattro USB and Linux on the M-Audio site gives me "Driver not found, please use another search criteria."

Re:ARGH!!!!

[cammoblammo]

Go to http://alsa-project.org/ and have a look there. In Linux you don't normally get your driver directly from the manufacturer---it's better to get it from your distribution or from some central repository like this that can tell you how to install it for your system, and not some one driver fits all `system' like in Windows.

Re:ARGH!!!!

[cammoblammo]

What do you suggest then? Hobbyists should hand over their code to a Big Company who will make sure that the market is more completely satisfied and that all users have what they want?

Rosegarden is GPL. If a Big Company wants to do the aforementioned, what's stopping them?

Re:ARGH!!!!

[fishbowl]

http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/doc-php/templ ate.php?company=Midiman%2FMAudio&card=USB+Audio+Qu attro.&chip=Cypress+AN2131XX&module=usb-audio

Re:ARGH!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks - I found the stuff on the alsa site as indicated. I had assumed the original poster had meant that they were officially available via M-Audio. I will have a play around with the drivers and RoseGarden over the Christmas holiday. Many thanks.

Re:ARGH!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

"In Linux you don't normally get your driver directly from the manufacturer"

Sometimes you can or do (e.g. Nvidia, ATI, Lexmark). If M-Audio is officially supporting these drivers or is aware of them I am surprised that the M-Audio website doesn't at least offer a note on this when you look for the drivers. A missed opportunity I feel.

Re:ARGH!!!!

[Bob Uhl]

1. Many of us don't use Windows--how then are we supposed to develop therefor?
2. We like freedom; why would we want to support a platform which is not free?
3. You have Windows--surely you could figure out how to port Rosegarden.

Re:ARGH!!!!

[chochos]

I just read that page. It starts OK but then it becomes a little radical... saying that porting something to Solaris will only help Sun seems a bit extreme to me.

I can easily imagine people in a situation where they need a certain open source library to work on Solaris and they have no other choice. They can't install Linux on the machine because it's not theirs to control, maybe there are some other apps running there that are solaris-only. Or they developed their own app on Linux but it turns out this particular client wants it running on Solaris, period. So porting a library to Solaris so they can run their app will help these particular team, and if the library is GPL, they have to contribute back any changes they make that allow the library to run on Solaris. The author of said library might then decide not to publish those changes because he thinks porting his lib to solaris is sabotage and only helps Sun.

Disclaimer: I have contributed to a couple of open source projects, and even have a couple of my own on SF. I don't know if I could code my way out of a soggy paper bag, though, since that's a hardware problem :)

Re:ARGH!!!!

[chochos]

I think there is a simple answer to this particular case.

Rosegarden works a lot with sound and MIDI. It's built on top of the Linux audio architecture (ALSA). ALSA is free software, so Rosegarden can use it and still be free software.

On Windows, Rosegarden would have to use whatever API Windows has for audio, and that's not free software. Maybe there is a license conflict that prohibits the Rosegarden developers from having code that calls that windows API, or maybe they just don't want to call a non-free audio API.

Re:ARGH!!!!

[martinoforum]

That seems a little surreal. There'a a couple of APIs on Windows for low-latency audio, WDM/KS (which is the Microsoft driver API) or ASIO (... a Steinberg creation). ASIO would maybe prove a problem, but if there was an issue with FOSS software calling Microsoft APIs then there would be absolutely nothing on the Windows platform at all, which is obviously not the case.

Re:ARGH!!!!

[martinoforum]

None of the big guys will port to Linux any time soon. Linux has no installed user base of musicians, and no differentiating advantage. Where's the return on investment in porting to a platform with no new users? The reality is that most people who're both serious musicians and interested in Linux probably have a Windows or Mac system for audio use anyway. If they port to Linux they won't make any more money, they'll just lose a sale on their existing platform. It's a shame, but it's true.

Linux needs a "Big idea" that kicks the arse out of anything on the PC or Mac platform in order to be able to get any major commercial support. I have my fingers crossed. And as for suggestions along the lines of "It's open source... you develop it!", I'd just like to point out that I'm a musician. That's what I do with my time. As it stands, there are tools which I can use to do the things I do on computers, and they run on Windows or OSX and I'm quite happy to pay for them. I would ideally like to be able to move my music work to Linux too (already done it with my home office), but I don't see that happening inside the decade at this rate.

Re:ARGH!!!!

[fishbowl]

>Sometimes you can or do (e.g. Nvidia, ATI, Lexmark).

In those cases, I usually assume that you're getting the result of a modest effort by a manufacturer who sees a need to have a bullet point ("Linux support checked yes") but still wants to be completely unreasonable about releasing specs. I don't expect the manufacturer to make as sincere an effort at driver development, as someone like an ALSA project developer who is actually passionate about their work.

Re:ARGH!!!!

[Knuckles]

Qt on Windows is proprietary

Any chance on a Windows version?

[Guspaz]

Even one that uses Cygwin? I'd hate to have to try to run this thing in VMware (Unless somebody can point out a faster way to run Linux in Windows)

Re:Any chance on a Windows version?

[tajmorton]

This might help you...

Cooperative Linux is the first working free and open source method for optimally running Linux on Microsoft Windows natively. More generally, Cooperative Linux (short-named coLinux) is a port of the Linux kernel that allows it to run cooperatively alongside another operating system on a single machine. For instance, it allows one to freely run Linux on Windows 2000/XP, without using a commercial PC virtualization software such as VMware, in a way which is much more optimal than using any general purpose PC virtualization software. In its current condition, it allows us to run the KNOPPIX Japanese Edition on Windows (see Screenshots).

Re:Any chance on a Windows version?

[agraupe]

If you have a spare computer with decent specs, just network it, install linux, install all your wanted linux apps, and use them with Cygwin/X. That would be the fastest way, I think. If you need your windows files... try samba sharing.

Re:Any chance on a Windows version?

[Guspaz]

Looks interesting, but it doesn't seem to have sound support. Which is kind of handy to have for a MIDI sequencer :p

That's NOTHING

[Daedalus-Ubergeek]

like O'Reilly's last interview!

midi dependancy is a huge problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Midi dependancy is a huge problem for accurate music notation. There is a big difference between performance and notation.Great music notation is only a guidline for the performer. However a really great composer can through notation, get across very complex ideas and ideals. Just look at the original scores of Stavinsky.

The trouble I have with Linux music notation is that to use it one practically needs to be a skilled programmer not a composer. Lilypond is on the right track, being a very powerfull parser of an input script, it has the potential to become the very best notation engine around. Rosegarden is a valient attempt to do everything for everybody. So it has the unenviable task of trying to code for midi and notation.

Human performance, by nature is not perfect, the task of cleaning up notation created with midi can be very daunting indeed. The skills of a composer are needed, unfortunately these are skills that require study well beyond what the average musician of today has.

To get to the point, having midi input totally separate from the notation gui, and reducing the program overhead to facilitate notation is a goal that cannot be ignored. Perhaps a non midi dependant gui is the only real answer. Programs like Score, (San Andreas), Musedit, Speedscore, Finale and a few others already do this. However few if any have the scoring elegance of Lilypond. It would be great if a Linux gui like KDE or Gnome included an effective music notation gui.

Re:midi dependancy is a huge problem

[Anonymous Coward]

You're not explaining yourself very well. If you mean what you wrote literally, then you're wrong. MIDI input in Rosegarden is optional and completely separate from the notation GUI. You don't have ever to use MIDI input in Rosegarden. The timing information for playback is separate from the timing information for notation.

Good point

[thegnu]

Human performance, by nature is not perfect, the task of cleaning up notation created with midi can be very daunting indeed.

I have a client who uses Lilypond for music notation, and he tried capturing into rosegarden, then cleaning it up, but since he was used to playing pianos without pedals, he tends to bleed notes over, so it was unfeasable.

Speaking of Lilypond, help is needed compiling it for Arch Linux. You know. FYI.

When I hear "interviewed by O'Reilly"...

[embezzled]

I always think "Shut up! Shut up! Cut his Mike."

Re:When I hear "interviewed by O'Reilly"...

[Anonymous Coward]

I always think "loofah".

Or did he mean "falafel?"

Either way. Funny as hell, that O'Reilly fellow.

Are you serious?

[Anonymous Coward]

What "MIDI problems"? Can you give real examples of what you can do in these other apps that you cannot do with Rosegarden?

Re:Are you serious?

[Anonymous Coward]

NRPN's to CC's and back again.
Program a graphical interface to MIDI gear.
Track automation layers.
MIDI plugins.

Even things as simple as switching programs don't work flawlessly.

If the Rosegarden developers are reading this, it would be worth their while to spend some serious time with Logic and Cubase and some moderately complex MIDI keyboards and rackmount units.

Start by copying the features from the oldest versions of these programs (I'm sure an Atari + Cubase can be had for very little money), and work up, feature-by-feature. I think some perspective is needed in the development process.

Re:Are you serious?

[Anonymous Coward]

• NRPN's to CC's and back again.

Given that NRPNs are not portable between different manufacturer's MIDI devices how much do you use NRPNs and what do you actually use them for?

• Program a graphical interface to MIDI gear

What do you mean?

• Track automation layers.

What would they do?

• MIDI plugins

What's a "MIDI plugin"? Rosegarden does already have DSSI plugins for MIDI soft synths and LADSPA plugins for audio.

Re:Are you serious?

[Anonymous Coward]

NRPN's are expressed as 4 CC's. They're used if the synth sends and receives NRPN data. A fair number of synths use them to get up to 14-bit resolution on controls -- the resolution of a 7-bit CC is often not enough. Google groups will tell you more about which synths use them.

Logic lets you create a knob-and-slider graphical interface to MIDI gear that doesn't have an interface, and it can be fully automated.

By track automation layers I kind of meant two things. First, you want to be able to record a song and overdub knob and slider moves in the sequencer environment, just like real console automation. These moves then appear as separate sub-tracks that can be seen side-by-side. I can't remember if RG supports mixer automation or not (I doubt it, but it needs to). In Logic: http://logicfaq.omega-art.com/html/faq10.htm#10/

Also, it's important to have separate tracks for MIDI automation with a graphical view of what's going on. A typical synth track might have velocity, pitch-bend, mod wheel data, and you want to be able to see these events in parallel in separate sub-tracks. You also want to be able to do all the normal copying, pasting, and looping on these tracks.

As for MIDI plugins, I see none in the list at the DSSI page. I don't mean a MIDI wrapper around a LADSPA plugin (that's what DSSI claims to provide). I mean a plugin that operates exclusively in the MIDI domain -- it accepts MIDI as input and output. Even something simple like a transpose plugin would be useful.

Instead of treating me like a blowhard, offering fairly valid criticism on one of Linux's two flagship sequencer projects (I tried muse-seq, it was even more frustrating), go and play with Cubase and Logic and some real studio gear, and copy and improve on everything that you like. Or do this and then ask the developers to. If this is beneath you, then you'll never compete -- it's not like Steinberg wasn't up to date with each Emagic offering over the years and vice versa.

Re:Are you serious?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your questions indicate that you don't even have a passing understanding of some of the major features that make programs like Cubase and Logic so desirable.

"how much do you use NRPNs and what do you actually use them for?"

It's more a general problem of using SYSEX messages. You use them for everything local to every piece of outboard gear. Just in my little studio, that's 9 pieces of gear, each with different Sysex requirements.

>>Program a graphical interface to MIDI gear
>What do you mean?

You can create a controller that represents a piece of outboard gear, and often even give it a GUI, or just knobs buttons and faders. Something like a Fruity Dashboard would be a good example.

>>Track automation layers.
>What would they do?

Absolutely anything you can control with the software, in tempo, and preferably, with compensation for the latency delay (PDC).

>>MIDI plugins

>What's a "MIDI plugin"?

VSTi, DXi, RTAS instruments.

>Rosegarden does already have DSSI plugins for >MIDI soft synths and LADSPA plugins for audio.

Yes, this is one area where RG is getting there.

My baseline for functionality is EnergyXT. When I can do everything in Linux that I can do in eXT, we've arrived. My benchmark for usability is FLStudio. But my favorite application for mixing audio is Magix, and price has not entered into this evaluation! However, I made that choice before Audition was released, and it may change. But Magix is 1/10 the price of Audition, so then price may become a part of the equation again.

Yes, I'd rather use Magix for audio mixing than either Nuendo, Cubase, Sonar, or even Samplitude.

But I digress.

Your questions indicate you don't understand the issues of workflow that musicians and recording engineers face, so you underestimate the importance of certain requirements.

Re:Are you serious?

[Anonymous Coward]

By the way, there are three or four AC's posting here, two of which appear to understand the shortcomings with Rosegarden, and two of which don't. You and I are going to run out of AC posts soon enough (I think it's 10 per day per IP), although I might be able to get a different IP from my ISP.

Basically, I think calling it "1.0" is a little premature.

Re:Are you serious?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I'm sorry I'm only a talented composer, musician and software developer. Of course I wouldn't understand. At least my reply didn't indicate an unnecessary degree of arrogance.

He and I were talking specifically about his usage of NRPNs, not SYSEX messages. Please re-read my question carefully.

• You can create a controller that represents a piece of outboard gear, and often even give it a GUI, or just knobs buttons and faders.

Yes, that might be useful for some musicians.

• Something like a Fruity Dashboard would be a good example.

if you could explain what a "Fruity Dashboard" is.

• Absolutely anything you can control with the software, in tempo, and preferably, with compensation for the latency delay (PDC).

Useful but not yet supported in Rosegarden.

• VSTi

Already supported by dssi-vst which you can use with Rosegarden.

• Your questions indicate you don't understand the issues of workflow that musicians and recording engineers face, so you underestimate the importance of certain requirements.

Before you get carried away with your arrogance, I didn't express any opinion as to the importance of anything you or the previous poster said in this thread. But then what would I know being, as I said earlier, a talented composer, musician and software developer.

Re:Are you serious?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's some news for you: Rosegarden is open to improvement. Why don't you post constructive criticism of it on the rosegarden-devel mailing list and/or offer to implement a new feature?

Re:Are you serious?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the "previous poster" here.

Just a comment on arrogance: when people offer you valid criticism on a product, coming back with thread titles like, "Are you serious?", short questions that betray you didn't even do a quick google search, and remarks about how you are a talented composer, musician, and software developer, this does indicate a fair amount of arrogance on your own part, or at least an unwillingness to accept that there are major hurdles to overcome before RG can compete with Cubase and Logic. This is just my perception of what you wrote, it is nothing more, nothing less. In general, ad hominem attacks from somebody who is apparently a core member of the RG team posting as AC don't speak very well for the project.

The lack of SysEx features is up there with missing NRPN's (I want to use them with my Virus, MC-303, and my SC-880, amongst others). Seriously: copy down what we say, make a list of the points, and present them to the dev team, if you're not on it.

I would be very interested to see, on the Rosegarden homepage:

1) A detailed table-based comparison between RG, Muse, Cubase, Logic, and various other sequencers. In the spots where features are missing, it would be nice to see which Linux audio projects can be used to get the desired result, with a footnote or hyperlink giving a description on how best to set it up.

2) Some full songs recorded with RG, with details of how everything was done.

Take care, lets not have a silly flame war.

Re:Are you serious?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please, stop with the snarky remarks (above, "Here's some news for you: ..." I haven't been making any such remarks.

I have posted constructive criticism here in this thread (specific features that are missing), I'm asking you to please summarize it forward it to the rosegarden-devel ML on my behalf. Or you could send them a link to this post.

I would hope that you don't dismiss me as a Slashdot troll. I don't have time to track or help the project at the moment (sorry, there's only so much development / bug reporting that one can do, and I'm also not particularly fond of RG's development process), and given that it isn't near usable enough for my purposes, I suppose I'll just have to wait.

Re:Are you serious?

[Anonymous Coward]

• In general, ad hominem attacks from somebody who is apparently a core member of the RG team posting as AC don't speak very well for the project.

Your comment about me not understanding the issues musicians and recording engineers face was a tad arrogant, and unjustified too as I've gotten many years of music making experience. Talented musician - yeah, according to several pros. BTW, since I am not a core member of anything, posting AC is ok.
The original poster made some pretty vague criticisms of "missing a lot in the MIDI department" and "MIDI problems". To me "MIDI problems" could mean many things, e.g. some sort of bug in MIDI file parsing or in playback. I'd just like to know what they are.

1) As you seem to know lots about Cubase, Logic and Rosegarden why don't you write a detailed comparison yourself? Some or all your criticisms may be valid. Hell, just chip in to MuSe, Rosegarden, Lilypond, etc. It's not like they're closed-source apps like Cubase and Logic.

2) Isn't there a directory of music examples somewhere in Rosegarden?

No sign of silly flames yet.

Re:Are you serious?

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't seem like a blowhard job to me. You could have at least explained all that in your first post. Unrelated AC.

Re:Are you serious?

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't make the comment about "not understanding the issues musicians and recording engineers face" -- that was the other AC. I pretty sure he's only posted once in this thread.

I was that OP. I gave fairly detailed descriptions of the problems. You can go and read about how other products handle these features -- there are several 500+ page books on the market. There are also manuals and tutorials, some official and in pdf format, some legal to download, some not (depending on country of residence.

1) I don't have time. I want to make music. When it comes to development, I don't want to develop music software. I already write (open source) software full time. You need to move away from the "all users can be developers too" paradigm -- users only have so much time, and they can't help develop all of the software they use. Some of them, like you, can, and that's why open source ultimately works.

2) yes, but I want to hear mp3's / wav's done with hardware sound devices in a real studio as well, using RG as the centerpiece, not just examples with soft synths and stuff. If this means booking time in a studio to get it done, so be it. I want to the *best* that RG is capable of supporting. I think this would be a strong selling point, and would also help the team to flesh out the software -- if you want to be taken seriously, this has to move out of the bedroom / home.

Re:Are you serious?

[Anonymous Coward]

> I was that OP.

ACs all look the same to me :(

> I gave fairly detailed descriptions of the
> problems.

No details at all in the first post, which is the one I was referring to.

> You can go and read about how other products handle these
> features

Rosegarden's not my product or my responsibility. I just like using it for composing.

1)
> I don't have time. I want to make music.
> You need to move away from the "all users can be
> developers too" paradigm.

I'm a user too but it doesn't take me more than a mo to send an email to the rg lists with my suggestions. I can't believe you have time to post on /. but no time to email your suggestions to the rg lists. Writing down your comparison (plain text, no need for fancy tables) in an email shouldn't take you more than an hour at the outside.

2) Would you like some caviar with it too? Seriously how many free-software projects have the resources to make a slick marketing demo which seems to be what you're looking for? Personally I'd rather the developers focus their efforts on developing the apps.

Re:Are you serious?

[Anonymous Coward]

• I'm also not particularly fond of RG's development process

What's wrong with it? I've been reading the rosegarden mailing lists for some time and the devs always seem pretty much open to outside contributions.

Re:Are you serious?

[Anonymous Coward]

1) The thing is, it does take time. For software that I don't use, the two hours I've spent posting comments to you on /. are more than I really have. I know well enough that getting involved in development leads to discussions and bug-fixing and even more emails ... I don't want to go there, that's all. An hour for an initial post, but not for the follow ups. I've already seen Guillaume complain elsewhere in this topic that most people don't stick around.

Look: I've already said most of my criticisms here. I'd be very obliged if you would forward my suggestions to the list, so that they don't get wasted. Can you do this for me? Even just a link to this thread?

2) I just want to hear some real world songs written by musicians using RG. Do they exist? I mean, even real world songs written by people using Linux Audio are hard (if not impossible) to find. I don't care for a slick marketing demo, but I don't want silly RG-only examples either. I know I'm not alone in this opinion. It's not the kind of thing a developer has to do -- you yourself could post some of the songs you've made using RG and other linux tools, for example.

Re:Are you serious?

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Just post your suggestions and quit the mailing list! Don't bother following up!

I think this thread has already been picked up by the devs.

2) That comes back to the caviar. Real songs by real pros cost real money. I'd be very surprised if any pros were to offer any of their works for free to rosegarden. As for me I don't compose songs. Again, if you like making music like you say, why don't you contribute one of your songs as a MIDI file version and let the Rosegarden devs "port" it to a Rosegarden file?

Re:Are you serious?

[Anonymous Coward]

I prefer a model where people don't just hack on the trunk, but where there are project branches with differing levels of stability. Something that follows the Debian package management system is what I like. Stable, testing, unstable, and experimental. Probably experimental should be confined to one user's sandbox, and "bleeding edge" people will want the unstable branch. It's just a personal thing: I don't want to get involved in a project where everyone hacks on the trunk. That CVS is used instead of SVN is also a concern.

That outside patches can get applied to the trunk so quickly is IMO not a good thing. But I'm not here to criticize the development model -- I'm just stating one of my reasons (besides time commitment) for not wanting to get involved.

Re:Are you serious?

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as I know there are at least two branches in Rosegarden CVS - HEAD for stable releases (currently for 1.0) and 1.1 for really new stuff. I like SVN too but I don't think sourceforge supports it. Do you think outside patches have been getting into HEAD too quickly? I've been following Rosegarden's HEAD for a while and haven't noticed. Any examples you care to point out?

Re:Are you serious?

[Anonymous Coward]

That RG crashes with a relatively high frequency indicates that strictness wrt what gets committed is far too lax. I would say that it crashes more than any other app I've tried to use seriously that wasn't alpha alpha software. Basically, if something crashes, whatever made it crash should be rolled back until the offending change set works perfectly. I was following the development in 2003 for a while, but I don't remember specific stuff from back then and unsubscribed over a year ago.

Re:Are you serious?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm gonna go to bed soon, I don't have much else constructive to add.

2) Because they would need my hardware: the sequencer is just a component of the studio. I suppose it would be quite instructive if they were to write a song in Cubase or Logic using some hardware that they actually own, and then port it to RG, and show how to achieve the same thing. Start with a simple song, and then do it for songs of varying complexity. By song, I mean any arrangement or recording, not the standard definition (noise recordings count).

Seriously: winning over Cubase and Logic users is a major concern in this field. Plenty of kids are using illegal versions of Cubase, and if they see that RG+Linux Audio is a viable alternative, it would provide a lot of incentive as they have no investment in the expensive software holding them back.

And, are you saying that no pro/semi-pro songs exist that were done with RG? Why not? Is it not suitable for pro work? I (and others) don't even care if they're closed source, low-bitrate mp3's. Does pro music done with RG exist in stores or on file-sharing networks? Does Linux audio pro music exist? Can you point to some examples? I'm intensely curious.

FWIW, I've almost completely stopped using software to make music, because I don't want to use closed source software and because the open source software doesn't provide me with the stability, workflow, ease-of-use, sound quality, and flexibility that I need. Not all of those essential features are direct comments on Rosegarden.

Re:Are you serious?

[Guillaume Laurent]

There are only 3 developpers working on RG, these days more like 2 (Rich became a father recently). So while we do occasionnally use branches, having a 1.0/1.1 tree split is just not feasible.

As for SVN, yes, we'd like to use it, but sforge doesn't provide it yet (they announced it was scheduled for 2005).

Regarding outside patches being applied : we get less than a dozen per year, most of which are very simple and can't represent stability issues. We've never had a stability problem due to an external patch.

I actually wish your criticisms were true, it would mean much more activity on RG's code :-).

Re:Are you serious?

[Guillaume Laurent]

That RG crashes with a relatively high frequency indicates that strictness wrt what gets committed is far too lax.

I'm sorry but you have no clue on what you're talking about here. 90% of the crash reports we get are actually due to the sound libs we depend on (generally people using old version of Alsa). Lately we've received only 1 in several months. Please don't just blindly give stereotypical arguments which simply don't apply to our case.

Re:Are you serious?

[Guillaume Laurent]

In general, ad hominem attacks from somebody who is apparently a core member of the RG team posting as AC don't speak very well for the project.

Uh, hello, none of us is clueless or immature enough to ever do that, nor would we even accept to work with someone who would.

Seriously: copy down what we say, make a list of the points, and present them to the dev team, if you're not on it.

Is it really that hard to log a feature request on sforge ? Anyway, we're reading you. No guarantee on when what you ask will be implemented, though.

A detailed table-based comparison between RG, Muse, Cubase, Logic

Why not, if we'd ever have the time for it.

Some full songs recorded with RG, with details of how everything was done.

We do link to some composers who use RG :
http://rosegardenmusic.com/resources/links/

though they don't give any detail to how they achieved what they did.

Re:Are you serious?

[Anonymous Coward]

I said "indicates" :] The above is what I observed, I would not post something I did not observe (this is already taking a lot of time). If it is 90% due to problems with sound libs, it still presents itself as an error in RG to me, the end user. Sorry, but that's reality. Perhaps you shouldn't use such experimental features of the sound libs (but then you say the problems are much better recently). I will give 0.99.1 a chance. I am not the only person to complain here about crashes, so I know that I'm not insane :]

I appreciate the time you take to read and reply. I'm glad you guys read this post. I don't actually bear the RG project any ill will, and when I interacted with you briefly in 2003 you were all very friendly. I just wish it did what I need it to do. See the comments about comparisons with Cubase and Logic.

Re:Are you serious?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wrote a long reply, but lynx died on me. The other AC defending RG is someone that I assumed to be quite close to the project. Otherwise I can't understand him replying so many times!

Anyway, about feature requests: just make it your goal to have RG assume ALL of the features of the various other sequencer programs out there (start with early, simple versions, and note that Cubase VST had things like mixermaps that were missing from later versions), and do a thorough job. I really strongly recommend setting up a Windows, Mac, or Atari machine dedicated to competing software, and getting a couple pieces of complicated outboard gear to test with.

I hope RG does well, I would really like to convert my friends to Linux, but they're all stuck with proprietary sequencer apps and see no reason to downgrade (and quite frankly, neither do I).

Have a restful and peaceful holiday season.

Re:Are you serious?

[Guillaume Laurent]

Anyway, about feature requests: just make it your goal to have RG assume ALL of the features of the various other sequencer programs out there

Get real, these products have resources we'll simply never match. This is a relatively small open source project with all the usual problems applying : lack of time, lack of manpower, slowness in communications because it's all done through email, etc... We have to keep realistic about what we can do. So we prefer to have less features working correctly (and even that is not easy) than a lot of half-broken features.

That said, yes, of course we look at Cubase, Logic, etc... for inspiration, and we listen to users. Purchasing old Ataris is not an option though :-).

Re:Are you serious?

[Chris Cannam]

Anyway, about feature requests: just make it your goal to have RG assume ALL of the features of the various other sequencer programs out there
Get real, these products have resources we'll simply never match.

The fact is, that would be a very poor goal. It's something we actively don't want to do, unless someone else is providing the resources to do it.

We have to balance the needs of quite a lot of different sorts of users. Matching all of the MIDI functionality found in Cubase may make an ideal program for some users, but if we spent all our time doing that, we'd be so behind on other features as to have a program that was useless for most of the people who want to use it now, including all of the developers who caused the project to happen in the first place.

This thread has so far followed the pattern of having one poster or another pronounce that Rosegarden "must" support feature X before it can even be considered 1.0, followed by Guillaume replying half-apologetically to say that we'd love to do that if we could find the time. The plain fact is that we've taken the decision that most of these things are not essential 1.0 features. And there's no reason we should apologise for that. You can disagree with particular instances -- clearly you do, and we'd encourage you to make feature requests with use cases so that we, and other developers, can take them into account when prioritising work in the future. But it's absurd to imply that a program isn't a worthwhile program at all because it doesn't do a particular feature that you personally want. That way lies madness, and/or Mozilla. Far better to accept that there is room for more than one program out there.

Re:Are you serious?

[Guillaume Laurent]

We know that for some people, RG is unstable. For others, it's quite reliable. No, we're not using experimental features. Just like implementing features, we don't have the means to maintain a test suite of dozens of distrib/hw config combinations, and sound is still a bitch to configure properly under Linux. Again, we have a clue about software development, we don't release something which easily crashes on our respective setups. The crashes we can reproduce are generally fixed within 24h. But in many cases, the problem just isn't with our code, and we can't do anything about it.

Re:Are you serious?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about collaborating with the MuSe guys, if manpower is really that short? It appears redundancy is only hurting both groups at this level.

I realize I went a bit crazy here. I should not pass judgment on years of hard work.

RG claims to be the closest equivalent to Cubase for Linux on its homepage (or rather it presents a quote from Sound on Sound, same thing really), and bearing that in mind I thought it would want to know about what specific things I think would bring it closer.

At first it was just an off-handed comment, but then that other AC kept asking me to justify myself, and I kept doing so. I'm glad I posted as AC because I made a bit of a fool of myself, you're right, the comment about it being premature to call it 1.0 was unfair. I hope you don't dismiss everything I've said, and can devote some time to getting RG to be better in the MIDI area.

Re:Are you serious?

[Guillaume Laurent]

How about collaborating with the MuSe guys

I'm afraid both programs are way too evolved for this to achieve any real results. One program would pretty much have to be thrown away and rewritten to the other's fashion.

what specific things I think would bring it closer

No problem with that, as I said a well-detailed feature request on sforge is the best thing to do. Keep it short though, A laundry list of 100+ items won't help :-).

I hope you don't dismiss everything I've said

Not at all.

You must mean Bill O'Reilly

[gad_zuki!]

BO: Tell me comrades, what makes you want to give away these products and go open source? Communism? Beatles music? Liberal guilt!?!?!

Guillaume Laurent: Well, first off..

BO: Wait, are you french?

Guillaume Laurent: Yes I am from France and I don't see why that should be held against me, in fact the relationaship between the US and France has always been one of [interuption]

BO: Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!

Re:You must mean Bill O'Reilly

[Guillaume Laurent]

Even worse, I live just a couple of miles away from the building in which Michael Moore was given his Palme d'Or. Imagine that. :-)

Here's how you'll get a Windows version

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want a Windows version of Rosegarden so badly, I'm sure you could find ten of your Windows-loving friends and family, get together and each pay $150 towards the $1500 Qt licence fee. That's what it will cost to get you your Windows version of Rosegarden.

Why bother with Lilypond?

[Anonymous Coward]

Rosegarden's notation and typesetting is good enough for a lot of single stave and 2-stave classical music. The What's wrong with music notation software section you cited gives only one serious typographical flaw -- the misplaced accidental -- in the output of Finale. The other flaws are really just nit-picking.

Re:Why bother with Lilypond?

[gidds]

The other flaws are really just nit-picking.

Maybe -- but it's the same sort of nit-picking as complaining about books printed using monospaced fonts, or dot-matrix quality print. Other computer-generated scores may have the same information, and may even look superficially similar, but they do tend to be a bit robotic and inelegant. LilyPond's output is clearer, more natural, and easier to read. Which is exactly the point.

LilyPond isn't perfect; there are some things it's still not easy to do (e.g. vocal scores where lyrics are shared or voices switch between staves, or pieces in free time), and placing of marks like dynamics isn't always ideal. (Though I'm stuck with an older version, so it's probably improved since.) But it has far far better instincts about layout than anything else I've used (Cubase Score and SX, Finale, Harmony Assistant). Although the initial entry may take a little longer than other packages, it needs much much less tweaking afterwards, so it works out quicker overall, as well as producing much more professional output.

Result: even though I've shelled out lots of the folding stuff for Cubase SX, I haven't touched its score editor since installing LilyPond. Those nits can turn out to be more important than you'd think.

Any documentation for Powertabs file format?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not yet but it could do very quickly if you were to provide a pointer to any freely available documentation about the design of the PT file format - is there any such documentation available?

Re:midi dependancy is a huge problem yes but???

[Anonymous Coward]

yes but??? can I compile it --without alsa and jack. Or install the notation gui without the midi inyourface guis. Same thing as Noteedit no tse or some godforsaken midi button gui crap... no compile, period. I will have another look at the ./config and makefiles to see if it can be done. However I doubt it. In my experience (5 years) nothing causes more crashes in KDE and Gnome than button driven midi interfaces! BTW it was Stravinsky...Stavinsky was a two bit Hollywood copycat.

Re:midi dependancy is a huge problem yes but???

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to understand what you're saying but your English is very hard to understand (sorry if English is not your first language). You were originally complaining about Rosegarden requiring "MIDI input". That's a different problem from compiling without alsa and jack, which should work ok.

What do you mean "install without the midi inyourface guis"? Which "in-your-face GUIs" are you talking about?

I haven't mentioned Stravinsky until now. What are you talking about?

Bugs in Lilypond 2.4.1

[Anonymous Coward]

Lilypond 2.4.1 fails completely on several Mutopia files including chopin-op-25-01.ly and also Lilypond itself doesn't compile without a lot of tweaking. Do you have a bug tracker? I couldn't see any mention of one on Lilypond - Development - Participate.webpage

Here's the error for that .ly file:

error: Error found in this music expression. Ignoring it
Backtrace:
In unknown file:
?: 0* [lilypond-main ("chopin-op-25-01.ly")]
In /usr/local/share/lilypond/2.4.1/scm/lily.scm:
596: 1* (let* ((failed #) (handler #)) (for-each (lambda # #) files) ...)
598: 2* [for-each # ("chopin-op-25-01.ly")]
In /usr/share/guile/1.6/srfi/srfi-1.scm:
661: 3 (if (null? rest) (letrec ((lp #)) (lp list1)) ...) ...
665: 4 (begin (f (car l)) (lp (cdr l)))
666: 5* [# "chopin-op-25-01.ly"]
In /usr/local/share/lilypond/2.4.1/scm/lily.scm:
600: 6 [catch ly-file-failed # #]
In unknown file:
?: 7* [#]
In /usr/local/share/lilypond/2.4.1/scm/lily.scm:
600: 8* [ly:parse-file "chopin-op-25-01.ly"]
In chopin-op-25-01.ly:
205: 9* (paper-set-staff-size (* 6 mm))

chopin-op-25-01.ly:205:26: In expression (paper-set-staff-size (* 6 mm)):
chopin-op-25-01.ly:205:26: Unbound variable: paper-set-staff-size

Here's the error for compiling 2.4.1
rm -f ./out/volta-engraver.dep; DEPENDENCIES_OUTPUT="./out/volta-engraver.dep ./out/volta-engraver.o" g++ -c -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -DSTRING_UTILS_INLINED -Iinclude -I./out -I../flower/include -I../flower/./out -I../flower/include -O2 -finline-functions -g -pipe -I/usr/share/texmf/include/ -I/usr/include/python2.3 -O2 -finline-functions -g -pipe -I/usr/share/texmf/include/ -I/usr/include/python2.3 -W -Wall -Wconversion -o out/volta-engraver.o volta-engraver.cc
flex -Cfe -p -p -oout/lexer.cc lexer.ll
"lexer.ll", line 638: warning, -s option given but default rule can be matched
rm -f ./out/lexer.dep; DEPENDENCIES_OUTPUT="./out/lexer.dep ./out/lexer.o" g++ -c -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -DSTRING_UTILS_INLINED -Iinclude -I./out -I../flower/include -I../flower/./out -I../flower/include -O2 -finline-functions -g -pipe -I/usr/share/texmf/include/ -I/usr/include/python2.3 -O2 -finline-functions -g -pipe -I/usr/share/texmf/include/ -I/usr/include/python2.3 -W -Wall -Wconversion -o out/lexer.o out/lexer.cc
out/lexer.cc:3457: warning: 'yy_start_stack_ptr' defined but not used
out/lexer.cc:3458: warning: 'yy_start_stack_depth' defined but not used
out/lexer.cc:3459: warning: 'yy_start_stack' defined but not used
out/lexer.cc:3461: warning: 'void yy_push_state(int)' declared `static' but never defined
out/lexer.cc:3464: warning: 'void yy_pop_state()' declared `static' but never defined
out/lexer.cc:3467: warning: 'int yy_top_state()' declared `static' but never defined
bison -o out/parser.cc parser.yy
mv -f parser.yy.tab.c out/parser.cc # bison 1.30
mv: cannot stat `parser.yy.tab.c': No such file or directory
make[1]: [out/parser.cc] Error 1 (ignored)
rm -f ./out/parser.dep; DEPENDENCIES_OUTPUT="./out/parser.dep ./out/parser.o" g++ -c -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -DSTRING_UTILS_INLINED -Iinclude -I./out -I../flower/include -I../flower/./out -I../flower/include -O2 -finline-functions -g -pipe -I/usr/share/texmf/include/ -I/usr/include/python2.3 -O2 -finline-functions -g -pipe -I/usr/share/texmf/include/ -I/usr/include/python2.3 -W -Wall -Wconversion -o out/parser.o out/parser.cc
out/parser.cc: In function `int yyparse(void*)':
out/parser.cc:5540: error: expected primary-expression before "__attribute__"
out/parser.cc:5540: error: expected `

Re:Bugs in Lilypond 2.4.1

[hanwen]

Bugs may be reported to bug-lilypond@gnu.org ; as for the Chopin piece, pay some attention to the error messages lily is spitting out. You're shoving a 2.2 file down 2.4 ; you need to run convert-ly first.

Re:Bugs in Lilypond 2.4.1

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the reply and the tip but those errors on that 2.2 file don't make any sense to an ordinary user like me. Do you mean those errors are meant to explain the problem is due to a lilypond 2.2 file being processed by lilypond 2.4? I can't see anything in the errors about 2.2. They just say "unknown file". Which bit of the error messages should I be looking at to find out it is because of the file version? Why don't you make lilypond 2.4 recognize 2.2 files and automatically run convert.ly on them? That would seem much more user-friendly.

Re:Bugs in Lilypond 2.4.1

[hanwen]

Which bit of the error messages should I be looking at to find out it is because of the file version?

Probably the first one, saying "error: Incorrect lilypond version".

Why don't you make lilypond 2.4 recognize 2.2 files and automatically run convert.ly on them? That would seem much more user-friendly.

because 1. some conversions need minor hand-editing 2. because we want to encourage users to upgrade their files.

Re:Bugs in Lilypond 2.4.1

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you. Yes, the error was there on lines 4 and 5 but I missed it. It was a case of information overload from having 125 lines of error messages dumped on stderr for that one file. Anyway, that's not Lilypond's fault and the Lilypond pdf output does look great!

How about Lilypond doing an automatic conversion for 2.2 files that Lilypond knows will not need any hand-editing, and Lilypond also asking the user to confirm whether they want the existing file to be replaced or overwritten with the upgraded 2.4 version? And for files which Lilypond knows will need hand-editing, Lilypond could complain and say it is the user's job to deal with upgrading them.

A final question: does Lilypond have a way to output geometric information such as (x,y) position and maybe orientation too for all the notation objects it lays out on a score?

Great paper?-Commercial.

[Anonymous Coward]

" The unfortunate reality is that revenue in the serious music publishing business is in decline. This makes good-quality engraving (which requires a lot of work and skill) unaffordable except for the most famous composers of the most prestigious publishers. LilyPond is our try to counter that trend, by making software that produces good output without requiring lots of work or lots of knowledge."

So are there any commercial entities using Rosegarden, or Lilypond?

Do it!

[bluGill]

Its open source. By definition that means the source code is there and waiting for you to do the work. The Rosegarden developers don't care about MS Windows, because that have linux. If you care, either do it yourself, or hire someone to do it for you. For $250,000 I'll port it for you. (It should be easy for you to find someone willing to do it for less, I hate Windows development so I'm charging a lot extra for the pain of doing something I don't like to do)

So there is water in Hell?

[Anonymous Coward]

Methinks your attempt at wit has over-extended your faculties.

Re:midi dependancy is a huge problem clarification

[Anonymous Coward]

Rosegarden notation operates in a child window, how does one go about using the child window without a huge portion of main()...? I think that castrating the pipes between the main functions and the notation gui could cause all sorts of problems. I have done this before and found the program almost unusable. I had a good look at the code 2 years ago and found that to run the notation gui without all of the main functions was a real challenge. I find it easier to write a good 4 part fuge than to take apart and recompile source code, so maybe there were some things that I missed.

I did have Rosegarden running without alsa and jack but found that it crashed big time when I used the notation window. There was no indication of why, doing a demesg didn't help and KDE gave me the usual equivelent of a windows illegal operation message after it crashed.

Yes, BTW, I am dyslexic and find writing complex polyphony easier than the English language.

My original post was not a flame. All I was trying to say was that to write a great music notation GUI the kiss principle somehow gets missed by just about everyone. Look into (the late) Frederick Noads Mac program Speedscore, http://www.noad.com/Nsoft.htm he resisted midi for years...for good reason, too bad the guy who now owns the code won't let it out!

I will give Rosegarden another try though, as I do really enjoy causing software crashes. Gives me a good excuse to get out the pen and paper, and do real music notation!

The league for abused ESL bots

Re:midi dependancy is a huge problem clarification

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, thanks for the clear explanation.

You're right you cannot run the notation GUI without also running it as a child of the main window, but why does it bother you? Did you know you can type "rosegarden myfile.rg" which automatically opens your previously saved composition from "myfile.rg", hit Control-A which selects all segments on all tracks and hit Enter which immediately opens the notation GUI? You can ignore the main window most of the time and do all your composing using the notation GUI which incidentally has improved a lot since two years ago.

If you compile Rosegarden after "configure --enable-debug", you can use "gdb rosegarden" to start it and "run --nofork" from inside gdb to run it. That should always get you a useful stack trace from gdb ("bt" command in gdb) if Rosegarden crashes.

I don't have a Mac so I can't try the software you mentioned. I'll look at the website instead.

Re:midi dependancy is a huge problem clarification

[Anonymous Coward]

But the problem is, Rosegarden *shouldn't* be frequently crashing, especially if the project is this mature. Not everyone knows how or wants to compile and debug applications in order to use them -- they're just going to give up.

Re:midi dependancy is a huge problem clarification

[Anonymous Coward]

Disclaimer... parent not written by original dyslexic musician!

Re:midi dependancy is a huge problem clarification

[Anonymous Coward]

"Rosegarden *shouldn't* be frequently crashing" Which version are you using? The old versions like 0.9.8 did have quite a few crashes but not the more recent ones. Try out 0.9.91. I haven't seen it crash yet.

Charge for the Windows version

[CustomDesigned]

If people insist on spending money for Windows, they can also spend money on programs for Windows - especially when relevant APIs are very different (MIDI and audio stuff). I've noticed a number of open source projects that provide the source for free (as in beer and freedom) but sell the (supported) Windows build. Sounds reasonable to me.

Re:midi dependancy is a huge problem clarification

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the useful info... I will try Rosegarden again and give it a big look. It should work ok in SLACK 8..I hope. That is the last place that I had any luck with it in conjunction with Lilypond, I cannot seem to get Lilypond to compile under Slack 9-10. I will carefully try to tweak it for quick notation.

If I take the .lily out and use Lilyponds polyphonic abilities and special characters I should be able to effectively notate complex polyphony. Cross bar ties, as polyrythms in the inner voices are very important in my musical notation.

I am currently writing a piece for 6 voices, and setting some beautiful Canadienne Francais folk songs for orchestra, with the idea to combine the two.

upgrades reqd from Slackware 8

[Anonymous Coward]

Just put each voice in a different Rosegarden segment in the main window, and put each segment on a different track (if you want each stave to have only one voice) and then move some or all the segments onto the same tracks (if you want some staves to have more than one voice) and finally select all the overlapped segments using Control-A and re-open the notation GUI.

The gcc tool chain in Slack 8 has problems with modern C++. You'll definitely need to upgrade kde, qt autoconf, automake, gcc, libc and /usr/include headers to the latest Slackware 10.0 or latest versions. It's a straightforward upgrade from ftp.slackware.com

Nashville notation?

[smartfart]

Rosegarden looks neat and all, but does anyone know of an app that does Nashville-style chord notation? I can't seem to do it in HTML, and MathML syntax totally escapes me, though that might be able to render it well enough.

What is it? I guess it's called other things, but basically it's chord progressions jotted down as numbers. Instead of

C...F...G^7...C
Am..Dm..G^7...C

you would write

1...4...5^7...1
6-..2-..5^7...1

Also, instead of putting chords directly above the words, like most guitar charts do, the words are separate from the chords, with the chords commonly in groups of 4 bars per each line, as above.

Re:Nashville notation?

[xerxesdaphat]

Sibelius 3 does it - Sibelius is fast beginning to replace Finale as the preferred notation programme. I use it, as a composer, and it works better than anything else I've ever used. Notation also looks a bit nicer than Finale, and most other things - apart from LilyPond of course :-P i just need to work out a way to get Sibelius to export to LilyPond. If you're under linux, I think you might be in strife though, although there is a OSX port I think. For memory, Sibelius 2 worked fine under WINE when i tried it out under Red Hat 9 a while ago. But yes, it does do Nashville-style chord notation - why you'd use that instead of standard jazz notation is beyond me, it pisses me off - to me the key the music is in is important, when I'm writing for wind instruments I will choose different keys depending on what feel I want - a trumpets G above the staff is slightly sharp, for instance.

Re:Nashville notation?

[cammoblammo]

a trumpets G above the staff is slightly sharp, for instance.

Any trumpet player who is confident of playing this note in a public setting should be quite capable of allowing for these mistunings without even thinking about it.

If they can't, I don't think changing the key's going to help.

Good point though.

Re:Nashville notation?

[smartfart]

But yes, it does do Nashville-style chord notation - why you'd use that instead of standard jazz notation is beyond me, it pisses me off - to me the key the music is in is important

I agree, but feel that the benefits are worth it. If your band has enough brains to decypher number-based "hieroglyphics" (now there's an old term for you), it's a joy to not have to hold their hands while they figure out how to play a tune in a different key, or modulate a half-step in the middle of one.

Once I figured out Nashville-style, I forgot about all that I[6/4] stuff I learned in music theory. I think in chords, so the key isn't an issue to me... I can play any tune in any reasonable key.

Re:Nashville notation?

[xerxesdaphat]

You're quite right - of course most people will not notice that a trumpet's g4 is a cent or two sharp when played by a professional trumpet player. My point was, there are subtle differences in woodwind instruments - bringing the g4 into correct pitch by slightly loosening the lips makes a slightly different tone, for example. There is also a significant difference in tone between a c4 and a d4, because they are in different harmonics - even the best trumpet players cannot hide that. A clarinet's middle range and top range have very different timbres. Identical pitches played on different strings of a cello sound different depending on which string they are played on. If you transpose a piece of music even a 2nd, you still are going to change some of these delicate variables. I might sound pedantic, but when I write music i want it to sound a particular way, and all these things build up to give an overall impression. Maybe its only me that notices the difference, but I still want it to sound the way I want.

Re:Nashville notation?

[cammoblammo]

Yeah, don't worry about me---it was way too late for me to be reading /.!

Fussiness is good, and I think today's era of scores being proofread by midi instead of real musicians somewhat parallels the way that people think they can write because the grammar checker in Word passes whatever it is they wrote.

You got me thinking about the differences in tone in brass instruments (which is all I really know.) Even two instruments of the same make and model---even the same batch number---can be out of tune on any particular note, and the tones can also be quite different.

This isn't restricted to cheap instruments---I'm thinking in particular of two AUS$2000 cornets, which is top of the range amateur/okay for a pro sort of range. The nature of the brass instrument manufacturing process is such that no two instruments will sound the same over their whole range.

Even the same instrument will sound differently according to temperature and humidity. I played a concert a week or two ago and my instrument was a whole semitone flatter at the end than when I started.

A musician may use different mouthpieces on the same instrument, which will change the tone quite dramatically, especially in the top and bottom registers.

Add to that the fact that musicians have different tones according to a whole lot of variables, including their own natural acoustic properties, muscle strength, mouth shape and so on. Indeed, a brass musician takes a lot of pride in cultivating their own particular tone. A really obvious example is Louis Armstrong. I'm convinced the distinctive tone he had was more to do with the fact that he originally learnt to play a cornet, not a trumpet.

Having said all that, your point is well taken. For technical reasons (ie, the piece was too difficult in it's original key) I recently lowered the key of a piece I'd arranged by a second. Even though the musicians were able to play all the notes, it took on a completely different feel, and didn't seem right. It was incredibly harsh. After a few plays, though, it had softened up---I think most of the musicians were unconsciously changing the tuning to match what it was they were doing. This was a Brass Band, so everyone could do this. I guess it'd be a whole lot different in another setting where tuning can't be changed on the fly.

One reason projects are hard

[Wrataxas]

>...we neither have the time to fully document the code...

This is so totally untrue that it is sad the people still say this. Documentation is essential for both bug fixing and new features even if it is a one-person project that is going to last more than a few months. The time saved is enormous when you have to revisit code you wrote some time back. Not only in understanding the code but also to help not writing additional code that breaks previous code. And if there is more than one person on a project, lack of good documentation causes time and quality losses to go through the roof.

It does take a bit of discipline. A couple rules of thumb help tremendously: 1) code must be commented the same day that it is written, and 2) never check in code that's not documented.

Re:One reason projects are hard

[Guillaume Laurent]

It does take a bit of discipline

To say the least. There's gotta be a reason why, in my 10 years of working as a software engineer, I've never seen this done on any project in any company.

The reason is that beyond discipline, maintaining code documentation is also a huge time eater (it does save time too but it's no free lunch). That is, even a simple refactoring will take like 3 times as long because you'll have to update the doc accordingly. And when you're working in fragmented time like it's generally the case, the doc quickly falls behind.

In the beginning I actually tried to maintain a coherent code doc for about a year, and eventually gave up. We even have a doxygen-generated code ref which used to be daily generated, but doxygen had trouble with our templates so the result didn't look too good.

Works for me!

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Rosegarden regularly and I love it. I wouldn't say it works flawlessly all the time, but certainly well enough to be getting on with some composition. I find it all relatively easy because I'm using AGNULA/DeMuDi - based on Debian GNU/Linux - which pretty much set the whole sound system up for me and installed all the applications, although I did compile this version of Rosegarden from source.

It's really worth considering double booting if you're a Windows user, because the beauty of Rosegarden is in its interaction with other Linux Audio tools. Windows & Mac already have plenty of Music software, I don't really understand the whingeing to be honest. If you can't/don't want to pay the price of a new version of Cubase or Logic, why not buy a copy of Fervent's 'Studio to Go!' and support the development of a wide range of alternatives.

I'm really grateful to Linux Audio Developers because now I have a complete home studio for an initial outlay of about a couple of hundred quid. It all depends on your perspective I guess. Getting used to Linux is a learning curve yes, but this is ./ I don't see what's wrong with developing for a Linux Audio platform. Rosegarden does what it needs to do and does it well.

Happy 'Customer'