[linux-audio-announce] ANNOUNCE: Rosegarden 1.4.0 released

[Chris Cannam]

ROSEGARDEN 1.4.0 RELEASED

The Rosegarden team are delighted to announce the release of version
1.4.0 of Rosegarden, an audio and MIDI sequencer and musical notation
editor for Linux.

   http://www.rosegardenmusic.com/

This is a particularly exciting release for the Rosegarden project.
It includes a number of interesting new features, many of which we
expect to build upon further in future releases.  It also contains
significant code contributions from a greater number of people than
any previous Rosegarden release, including D. Michael McIntyre, Pedro
Lopez-Cabanillas, Heikki Junes, Stephen Torri, Magnus Johansson, Vince
Negri and Martin Shepherd as well as Chris Cannam, Guillaume Laurent,
and a number of active translators.

Significant new features include:

* You can now record to multiple MIDI tracks at once from different
  devices and/or channels.

* There is a new track parameter box which can be used to select the 
  playback instrument for a track, recording filters, and the default
  parameters for new segments created on that track.

* You can now create tracks identified with particular real-world
  performance instruments, so that new segments subsequently created on
  those tracks inherit the right clef, transposition and note range for
  each instrument (notes outside that range are displayed in a different
  colour in the notation editor).  A database of around 300 instruments
  is included, courtesy of Erik Magnus Johansson of Eolin KB
  (http://www.kandav.com/eolin/).

* The composition no longer has a fixed duration.  In previous releases
  it was necessary to adjust the composition duration manually in order
  to record or create segments longer than the default duration.  As of
  this release, the composition extends itself as you record or drag
  out new segments.

* If you add a key change across multiple segments that differ in
  performance transposition, you can now choose to have the key
  transposed automatically for each segment.

* You can now enter special directives in the notation editor
  that will be interpreted when creating LilyPond output, to achieve
  effects that are possible in LilyPond but not yet supported in
  Rosegarden (glissandi, arpeggios, segno/coda etc).

* Soprano clef has been added.

* Lilypond export now supports LilyPond 2.8 and has a new feature to
  merge multiple staffs as voices into one LilyPond staff, a new option
  to group staffs with a system bracket, as well as a huge number of bug
  fixes and performance improvements, which have tremendously improved
  the reliability and usefulness of the export engine.

* You can choose to display the parameter boxes in a tabbed layout
  as an alternative to the default vertical stack.  In the tabbed
  layout you can display a much greater number of MIDI controllers
  than was previously possible.

* You can now cut, copy and paste "ranges" within a composition
  (cross-sections of all segments and tempo and time signature changes
  between two given end points in time).

* There are new functions to split selected segments at an arbitrary
  time, and to split segments according to the MIDI device used to
  record them (which can be applied retrospectively to recordings made
  with Rosegarden 1.0 and newer).

* The facilities for adding and editing markers (labelled positions in
  time) and setting loop ranges have been improved in a number of ways.

* Tempos can now be "ramped" (smoothly changing from an initial to a
  final tempo over a period of time).

* The tempo ruler has been overhauled and now permits in-place
  editing of the tempo map with the mouse (with undo and redo, of
  course).

* You can finally zoom in and out of editing views using the mouse wheel
  (with Ctrl pressed).

* The Panic function is now accessible from all transport toolbars.

* When step-recording notes from a MIDI device, you can now enter chords
  simply by playing overlapping notes.

* Rosegarden can now respond to MIDI Start, Stop and Continue system
  messages (as well as MMC/MTC), and send MMC Locate messages (as well
  as Play and Stop).

For more information about Rosegarden and what it can do for you,
please see

   http://www.rosegardenmusic.com/

Rosegarden is Free Software under the GNU General Public License.


Chris