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Rosegarden 1.0 Released
bonch writes "Rosegarden 1.0 has been released for Linux. From the website: 'Rosegarden is one of the most comprehensive Linux music software projects, and is the only Linux application to offer full composition and recording capabilities to musicians who prefer to use classical notation.' Rosegarden is free software under the GPL. Take a tour or find a package for your distro."
There have been lots of exciting developments in OSS music software in the past year or two.
If I imagine a noise and manipulate the controls of Rosegarden expertly, will I get the noise that I'm looking for?
To be able to do that, you'll probably want something like a modular softsynth. For Linux, there's ams. That combined with a virtual keyboard like vkeybd is enough (given the "expert manipulation" part). Something like Rosegarden could then act as the "player" of the synth (which is like the "instrument").
If you really want to get down to the bits and bytes, there's pd.
The easy road to all this is to install the AGNULA Linux disribution, which comes with a shitload of software.
For those of you interested in an multimedia distribution, I would recommend checking planet ccrmma (pronounced karma) http://www-ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccrma/software /
It is RedHat/Fedora centric, but it made me shitch from Debian for the multimedia workstation.
Works great with apt too!!
-- EOF
ardour is another good free recorder (ardour looks more like protools than cubase)
ardour
Studio to go. You don't have to line up any ducks, the ducks come pre-lined up.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
For example, I have a Creative SBLive! card which is supported. I load a patchset using the asfxload utility, and my hardware synth can be accessed at MIDI port 65:0. I also have Timidity+ installed, and it's found at port 128:0. And finally, I have an external MIDI keyboard (an old Yamaha PSR-300) which is connected via a gameport to MIDI adapter cable to the SBLive!. The external keyboard is at port 64:0.
Using ALSA's "pmidi" command, I can spool a midi file to any of these devices, so I can actually make the Yamaha play the file externally. I haven't checked out the latest Rosegarden yet, but if it supports ALSA now, then it should be able to output to any of these devices. Old versions only supported the old linux OSS device /dev/sequencer, or you could output a midi file and play it however works best for you. Supposedly you can also capture MIDI and WAV data from external keyboards and other sources but I haven't figured that out yet.
Rosegarden is very cool if you have ALSA sound. I use it to write sheet music scores for my drums, bass, and synth tracks. Then I play the midi file and jam along with my electric guitar which runs into the soundcard through an amp simulator on the line in port. The computer mixes the output together and sounds great. The amp simulator (Zoom 503) basically makes my guitar sound like its being miked from an overdriven Marshall stack and that way I don't have to have a bunch of effects pedals daisy chained together to get a decent sound from the guitar. There are newer amp simulators like the PoD units that are also ideal for running a guitar directly into a soundcard.
Yes, you too can be just like Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails, making weird music in your own home all by yourself with a Linux computer, Rosegarden, and some rather inexpensive equipment.
Another really cool music creation program to check out is Cecilia. It is a pretty technically oriented synthesizer package which can make some really weird sounds: think Pink Floyd. I haven't figured out how to really use it in combination with Rosegarden yet, but its a blast to play around with it and make strange sounds. Cecilia is pretty crashy and hasn't been updated in a while, but it's still a very nifty toy to fool around with.
Clickety Click
AGNULA is a Linux distribution preconfigured for audio, with everything you mentioned plus a lot more ready to go.
A couple of large soundfonts are here at this site: PersonalCopy.
These fonts suck up a ridiculous amount of RAM, like 500M or so, so use the ones from your CD if possible (I bought my card second hand so I had to scrounge around).
Honestly, the SBLive (emu101k) is probably the best supported modern sound card available for Linux. When you compile your kernel for ALSA, just check all the MIDI options and build them all as modules. In this case its better to make modules which you don't know what they are than to not make them.
If you are using some distro with a canned kernel, then try running "alsaconfig" which should set up the modules automatically. ALSA used to be a huge pain to set up but in the last year or so there have been some big improvements since it is now the default sound system for Linux and OSS has been declared obsolescent.
To test it out, use the "pmidi" command. For example:
pmidi -p 65:0 myfile.mid
If you don't hear anything then either your mixer has the "music" slider muted, you haven't loaded the right kernel modules, or you haven't loaded a soundfont. Once it is all set up its pretty sweet.
BTW, the OPL3 is just the (Adlib) FM synthesis chip, it doesn't have anything to do with MIDI for the most part.
Clickety Click
I have been using Cubase and other sequencers for since 1997 and I think that the Rosegarden project is great thus far, but IMO they will not gain many users until they support VST and or other software synths and effects. It can be done as Muse Research has produced a Linux based VST rack hardware device. Here's the link: http://www.museresearch.com/ Also check out http://bloodshed.net/wired/ another Linux based sequencer.
I'd imagine that audio is a difficult area to port because most audio apps depend heavily on standards not implemented in linux. ALSA is not nearly as low-latency as ASIO. Professional audio interfaces (think Creamware and MOTU, not Audigy) are quite often too obscure to have drivers for Linux. There is no true VST (and certainly no DXi) implementation available, so you immediately lose access to a vast majority of the software plugins available on the market today. I think we'll eventually get there, but building compatibility for existing standards will certainly expedite that process.