28 Nov
2006
28 Nov
'06
4:38 p.m.
This is a request for information about which bit(s)
of software
people would recommend for a particular musical workflow. I build
my synthesizers in Puredata and I have an uc33 controller to do knob
tweaking via midi. This Christmas my girlfriend is getting me a USB
midi keyboard and I'd like to start writing some 'live' tracks using
that. Puredata's strong point is not sequencing and notation, so what
I need is an application that I can send midi notes and controller data
through, which will remember them and pass them on to Puredata. Ideally I
could go back after playing a track live, and shift notes around, modify
controller envelopes etc. I am happy to do something like use vmidi
loopbacks or whatever. I'm on Debian and my preference is for something
that won't pull in too many wacky dependencies, but please don't let that
stop you suggesting something. I use Fluxbox and mostly Gtk based apps.
I'd also say SEQ24 is your best run for your time. GTK, very lean, very
simplistic. Does what you want. One drawback: Sequence lengths cannot be
arbitrary, 1,2,4,8,16,32 or 64 bars. If this is a showstopper I would
recommend writing to the author (or starting a campaign for people to
write to the author) and ask for that.
The next closest bet would be Rosegarden, but that's a full-fledged KDE
App, which is why I stay away from it.
Another option is Jazz++, which is fairly good but doesn't get a lot of
press for some reason. It's cross-platform but fairly lightweight on linux.
Still, I'd love to see Seq24 implement arbitrary sequence lengths
myself... and it's such an exceptional program in how useful it is and
how simple it is at the same time.
Carlo