[LAD] Something like Processing for audio

[nescivi]

On Sunday 28 September 2008 17:19:53 Darren Landrum wrote:
> Fons Adriaensen wrote:
> > Why do you expect making music on computers to be easy ?
> > Normally, to make music, you need not only the skills you
> > refer to above, but also those to play an instrument.
> > For traditional instruments that takes years of hard work.
> > What makes you think it should somehow be easy or automatic
> > when using a computer ?
>
> What the heck?! When I said "musical skills," that is *EXACTLY* what I
> meant! By musical skills, I mean the skills of being able to play an
> instrument or two, knowing music theory, harmony, singing, and whatever
> else that really has little to do with computers.

If you want to use digital audio well (which is what computers can help you to 
do), you need to understand digital audio.
If the computer (or maybe rather computation) becomes your instrument of 
choice to make music, you have to understand how it works.
That takes learning too.
I think you have to start seeing computation as another instrument to make 
music, and then you'll understand it takes time to develop skill at it.

> The point is, back when I messed with this stuff on Windows, it was
> amazingly easy for me to bring up a DAW, load a softsynth into it, and
> start laying things down on the keys. So far, my experience with Linux
> audio has been a lot less satisfying.

I don't know... it has become fairly easy over the last few years to install 
an audio targeted Linux distribution and fire up a DAW, fire up some soft 
synths, connect them through JACK and start playing around.
How does this not work for you?


Reading your arguments in the threads of this discussion, you seem to want two 
opposite things, which is confusing I find.
I think you'd do well, trying out a bunch of different programs that get close 
to what you are looking for, and then maybe look if there is a possibility to 
extend them to what you want to have.
Starting something from scratch, will get you on a long development path, on 
which all these other programs have already been... So unless you have a 
really radically different new approach to audio DSP programming 
environments, please start designing something new... but to know whether 
your idea is really radically new, you have to look in depth at the existing 
ideas...

sincerely,
Marije