[linux-audio-user] buzz tracker

[Rob]

On Wed October 12 2005 17:26, Mark Knecht wrote:
> > Are there any buzz-like applications available for linux which
> > are as flexible as buzz is?
> Cheesetracker?

Cheesetracker is just a traditional sample tracker.  Buzz was like a 
tracker plus Pd (with a slightly less crappy interface) plus 
SpiralSynth Modular plus a pile of native effects (both MIDI-oriented 
and DSP) and instruments (virtual analog, sample playback, FM, etc.) 
plus the ability to use VST/VSTi and DX/DXi instruments and effects 
and render in realtime to the speaker or with higher quality to disk.  
It even accepted MIDI input, albeit only for step entry.

Simply using all the programs I mentioned above might let you 
reproduce your Buzz work, but will not let you go "File/Save" and 
save all your instruments with all your parameters and all your 
routing as you could with Buzz so that you can subsequently 
"File/Open" mysong.buz and have everything be exactly as it was when 
you left off.  (Neither will running Buzz under Wine, or at least 
when I've tried that, File/Opening one of my songs would always crash 
it due to some misbehaving VST effect or instrument.)

Buzz is easily the most powerful free (as in beer) compositional tool 
I've ever used, but it was designed for like Windows 98 or something 
and since the source has been lost (and was never released in the 
first place) there's been no new code written for it and probably 
never will be.

Fuzztracker, GNU Octal, and others have tried to pick up where Buzz 
left off, and somehow no one's been able to do it.  I look forward to 
the day when someone does, because my attempts to use Rosegarden with 
Timidity and AMS have accomplished nothing but pissing me off.  
(Rosegarden is an incredibly nice and professional-feeling program, 
but for example, even the crap Voyetra sequencer that came with my 
sound card back in 1995 let me select a group of notes and drag a 
certain way to change their duration.)

It could be that LMMS and other new software like it, combined with 
decent interfaces to LADSPA plugins and DSSI instruments, will 
eventually gain critical mass and succeed where Octal, FT, et al. 
have failed.  In the meantime I'm just frustrated.

Rob