[LAD] automation on Linux (modular approach)

Ralf Mardorf ralf.mardorf at alice-dsl.net
Mon Mar 22 12:44:43 UTC 2010


Louigi Verona wrote:
> alex stone wrote:
> "The weight of alternate responses seems to be geared toward a precise
> definition of the use of automation, for a particular use case, which
> is outside of the worklfow of some."
>
> Yes, indeed. I, for instance, is an electronic musician. I do not 
> record stuff,
> I do not have takes. For me automation is close to 60-70% of the work, 
> because
> my tunes are tunes of sound manipulation. Most electronic music is not 
> note based
> music, that is, its beauty lies not in the notes it plays, but in the 
> way sound is manipulated,
> arrangement is built. For me automation is as important as an ability 
> to have a master sync.
> And automation is being put on a lot of things - on a lot of 
> parameters of synthesizers,
> on volume, panning, gating and God knows how many things.
>
> And at the same time my music is not "experimental" music like they do 
> with CSound.
> It is ambient, dub, it is usually pretty sweet to the ears (that is, 
> no harsh, non-melodic sounds)
> and to a person who is not familiar with the process of creation of 
> such a music it may be
> of a surprise that doing such music takes so much delicate tweaking.
>
> Louigi.

But among other kinds of music I'm doing this kind of music too and 
because of having just two audio IOs for my Envy24 based sound card I 
can't use my analogue mixing console, what IMO would be the best way to 
mix this kind of music. And just as one example, for this kind of music 
I do use synth sounds that do change the volume the way I need it, I 
seldom do it by a mixer.

IMO especially for music similar to this, we do need better sync. 
Automation for Linux is on the rise.

I've to admit, that I started as a classical pop, punk, rock, jazz 
musician and audio engineer, so perhaps I even would mix an audio 
collage in a different way. Please listen to orchestral atonal twelve 
tone music, e.g. to my favourite Arnold Schoenberg. It's unworldly to do 
heavy mixing. Perhaps you like Fred Frith & Otomo Yoshihide 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9aOWSemwcs&feature=related, if you like 
to do something similar with MIDI synth you need to do heavy MIDI event 
editing, but still less mixing. I know some kinds of music, were people 
from the MIT were using data gloves to mix music, IMO this are 
exceptional cases, needed by a handful of users.

Ralf



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