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OSS Music Composer Gaining Attention
An anonymous reader writes "Following in the footsteps of Psycle, VioLet Composer is a completely GPLed music composer for Windows that has slowly but surely been gaining attention. In an interview at Laptoprockers the author covers not only the program itself but the his reasoning behind choosing to open the source using the GPL."
I have been keeping an eye out for a digital music workstation app that fits in between GarageBand and Logic, and runs on one of the BSDs or Linux. This is promising but doesn't appear to be there yet. IMO it appears in the screenshots to be a little heavy on the geek factor. For composition or improvisation you expect to see a timeline horizontally, and a stack of instrument voices vertically, and some kind of panel or pane in the UI , a library from which to choose instruments.
Hey, know anyone good with Mono and Linux audio? You could have him/her work with them, then you wouldn't need wine.
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But the powerful thing about OSS is that it tends to get better. Sometimes improvements are slow and dependent upon a particular developer, but more often there's rapid change.
The same can easily be said of closed source. Or are you trying to tell me that Adobe Photoshop has always remained the same and that this is the side effect of closed source?
At some point it crosses a threshold where it's not only good enough but something of a standard.
Standards are easy. Anyone can write up a standard. It's a question of the overall validity of this standard in any particular market that determines if the standard applies.
So, aside from Linux tell me where this accepted standard in the world of open source vs. closed source exists?
Not to harp on the OSS movement because there is something of value there but you're trying to make it seem like the way that open source progresses and it's acceptance is somehow different from closed source. It's simply not. Maybe more eyes get to see the workings of the OSS project but that doesn't always mean better and upto this point in time there is little evidence of it.
I'm glad that there is stuff out there so the novice can work on this type of software without breaking the bank or turning to illegal methods to gain the software but the bottom line is that this, like most OSS, is not ready for primetime on the professional market.
Also, I feel where you think the strength of open source exists is not the real strength at all. For one, the values you're putting on OSS as a strength really hasn't appeared to be one because of dominating closed source pro-tools. Second, I feel you're missing the point of having something that people can work with on their own to produce something that is closer to what they need while the same feature may not have real marketability. This is the only real plus I see to OSS; the ability to make mods where you need them the most. The sad fact about this is that if someone else hasn't already adopted this mod into a OSS (or closed source model for that matter) project than there probably isn't much of a call for it.
I find it fantastic that Google can mod Linux to be what they need it to be without any baggage to make for some really kick ass servers that suit their needs but unless you're doing modifications on an OSS project to suit your needs the only thing that is progressive about it is the savings in software costs. And I'm still a fence-sitter on the question of that being progressive. Profit is still the largest motive in innovation.
...there is also a cross-platform Buzz-port titled Aldrin which is actually comparable if not more mature than this software. It has already a majority of Buzz objects ported over and has gained some momentum among the Buzz community. And yes, it does run on Linux...
I think you're looking for ProTools. It does pretty much what you say. It is, however, quite expensive and needs specialized hardware to be used to the full extent. Hence the Pro part of the name. I don't know if it natively works on a note by note basis, I think conceptually it's more of a software based multi-track recorder. It does, however, have plug-ins that allow for such thing as locking pitch/etc. You know, all the effects used on pop-divas to make them actually sound bearable.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
Anyone got his running on Linux using Mono yet?
Thank you! I switched to Lilypond several months ago and never looked back. It is so much more flexible than Finale and its ilk due to the fact that it isn't constrained by a graphical representation. I also find that writing music in text is a lot faster than point-and-click or even recording and going back to adjust all of the quantizing problems.
I love the ability to use music variables to hold repeating sequences. I love the programmability (even better with the new streams model). It's extremely easy to write parts for each instrument and mix-and-match them into different scores. I find that, for example, some people in choirs like to see the full SATB parts in a traditional two-staff layout, others prefer a four-staff layout while some prefer just to see their own part. The pianist really wants to see the SATB put on a standard two-staff piano score. No problem with lilypond, I can tailor the presentation to each individual choir member if I wish.
And it makes beautiful engravings, too!
In my opinion, Lilypond completely outclasses commercial and proprietary music scoring software.
Hi, I'm the developer. Can I ask what hardware you're running? VC runs pretty nice on my 3800+ X2, but I'm not sure what sort of hardware it *won't* work on. Well, I do know it doesn't work on a Celery 650 with 64 megs of RAM running ME, but that isn't really surprising. :-D
It's OK Bender, there's no such thing as 2.