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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."
Congratulations to the developers!
Rosegarden in conjuntion with jack, ladspa, ardour and a lot of other packages are getting to the point where profesional audio in linux comes closer to a reality.
I know that it has still a way to go to be at the level of other platforms, but the gap is closing. It is already posible to work in audio with linux.
-- EOF
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
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.