Re: [linux-audio-user] Any MIDI apps that don't suck?

I want to do some recordings for my grandmother. Christmas music. I want to take a bunch of MIDI files, re-arrange them, add little intros to count me in, then play the melody line while my synth does the accompaniment. I could have gotten all of them done days ago on Windows, using my trusty 10-year-old version of Cakewalk in conjunction with Noteworthy Composer. I need to arrange the parts for playing, and print a score to play my part from on my flute. None of the MIDI files I have are suitable off the shelf, and arranging new versions from scratch is even more time consuming. Either way, I have to play with this a bit to get where I want to be. I'm trying to get away from Windows. Cakewalk doesn't run under Wine, and Noteworthy Composer is useless, because Wine (or X) doesn't let it have its dedicated font. I don't _have_ Windows, and can't really re-install it, so I'm finally having to suck it up and figure out how to do this from Linux. Can someone point me at something I've missed? So far the most promising things I've played with, and my experiences with them are: NoteEdit: editing sucks because block functionality is really crude. Printing music is tedious, since I can't just hit the print button. I have to export to lilypond format and fiddle with it from there. Anthem: editing is not possible. I don't see a way to get into a notation or matrix mode to alter the MIDI data. It crashes frequently anyway, so I haven't really dug into it deeply. Rosegarden: MIDI is still broken. I compiled the CVS yesterday, and it's working better, but it's still dropping notes at random and having other unacceptable problems. It looks most suitable overall, but it can't accurately record or play back MIDI, and the developers seem to have the attitude that MIDI is something that's not particularly important to them. It's looking like my most reasonable chance of success at this point is to hand edit some Lilypond stuff and go from there. That seems like an enormous PITA for what should be a simple project. Why, with all the projects out there, is there nothing that can even remotely approach the functionality of an ancient WIN16 version of Cakewalk? Is it just me, or does the available software for this kind of stuff really seriously suck? -- Michael McIntyre USDA zone 6b in SW VA, USA Silvan Pagan [silvan(a)windows-sucks.com] Linux Druid ---------[ registered Linux user #243621 ]--------- http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/5407/index.html