[linux-audio-user] Looking for a software drum machine usable on stage

Jan Depner eviltwin69 at cableone.net
Tue May 11 04:57:24 EDT 2004


Have you looked at Hydrogen?

Jan

On Tue, 2004-05-11 at 01:38, Charles Goyard wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> this is my first post on the list, so I'll introduce myself shortly. I
> play (bass guitar) in a punk rock band with a drum machine (an old Boss
> DR-5). We are kind of limited by the drumbox, because of the small
> memory size (200 patterns, 20 songs), the non-extensible and boring drum
> kits and the lack of certain features. As a system administrator with a
> bits of programming knowledge (I know Perl, a bit of C and some other
> useful things) and a free software fan, I said to myself : let's get a
> software drum machine on a laptop, it should have unlimited features.
> 
> So far I looked at a number of projects, but none is usable on stage.
> 
> Here's what I need :
> 
> 1/ A simple programming interface (Hydrogen is perfect). It can also be
> something like a simple programming language editable in a text editor.
> 
> 2/ For length-fixed songs, it's just a playback of a .wav, no problems.
> 
> 3/ On some songs, we stop the drumbox, play a bit, and start it again.
> When I hit the stop pedal, it stops immediately (and therefore I need to
> hit "reset" to be sure to be at the beginning of the pattern when it
> starts again). It would like it to stop at the end of the pattern if I
> hit the stop button.
> 
> 4/ It should "know" the song structure:
> 
> "start" : plays part1 of song
> "stop"  : stops :)
> "start" : again part1
> "stop"  : still stops
> "start" : plays part2 of song
> 
> 5/ We need programmable tempo changes.
> 
> 6/ Big display, playlist control, easy to load songs ! We're on stage,
> it's dark,, there is smoke, and it's not very practical to
> "file/open/click/click/click..." with a guitar in the hand and people
> jumping over you. Song name should be displayed BIG (full screen), the
> name of the next song should be already programmed, so I just have to
> press space (or a pedal wired to the parallel or whatever port) to jump
> to the next song.
> 
> 
> I just spoke about a pedal. I can build a "stop/start, next song" pedal
> and code something that reads events and make it to the audio app.
> 
> 
> 
> For some songs, just chaining two or three .wav files works well enough.
> But when it comes to things more elaborate, I have been unable to find
> something appropriate.
> 
>  == The point is to have something simple to use on stage. ==
> 
> 
> I imagine a little program that feeds a software drumbox MIDI (or JACK?)
> events for stop/start/jumpto/tempo changes. I just don't want to
> reinvent the wheel.
> 
> 
> If someone has something that does the job or some hints/useful
> libraries/glue, I would be happy !
> 
> 
> Thanks for your reading, enjoy music !
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Charles
> you can listen to some of my music on http://www.raia.info/
> (french web site, sorry for non-french-speaking people)





More information about the Linux-audio-user mailing list