Am 29.03.2014 12:25, schrieb Patrick Shirkey: Feel free to use any of these: http://lapoc.de/samples/ Another problem in this regard may be, that many people in our realm are individualist, who like to do things, that are not that mainstream to fit the needs of a sample-collection for general use(whatever that may mean).

On 29 marzo 2014 12:25:51 CET, Patrick Shirkey <pshirkey(a)boosthardware.com> wrote: Instead of include samples in a frees software what about use existing open collections like the mentioned ccmixter (or others) integrating them via api? Solution1 : use web collections via api directly from the music application Solution 2 : create a gateway application that permits to collect, rate, organize my preferred tracks/loops (eventually from several sites) and a standard interface to be used by all other musci software Ivan

On Sat, 29 Mar 2014, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote: This should I think be a part of jack. I have a delta 66 which means capture 1 to 4 are analog in, capture 9 and 10 are spdif in (analog 5 and 6 for me) and capture 11 and 12 are monitor mixer in. Capture 5 to 8 are not usable and it would be nice to not show them at all, but it would be nice to at least label them "NA" or "not in use" or something. Playback has similar issues though I can at least use all the playbacks as inputs to the monitor mixer... if I actually made use of it :) But labeling (which affects ordering in displays BTW) would be really nice. I could make a fake device with 6 inputs and 6 outputs which would be next best... -- Len Ovens www.ovenwerks.net

I like the way you can change views. From Arrange to Edit view. This works better for me then Qtractor for example, which opens a new window when you edit Midi events. It seems to have quite some options to help you to make a (complex) rhythm pattern. It seems to make you possible to edit every single parameter on the grid The GUI looks and feels nice and fast.

What we can learn from Bitwig is that they base their work on musician's needs. And their whole application is tailored towards a musician getting his work done easier and more efficiently. In Linux Audio very often the basis is a curious technical idea that might have little to do with doing music. As a made-up example "why not create a framework that will have all the midi connections in one place and it will dynamically reassign those connections and plug them using my new format that everyone will have to adapt because it is such a great and efficient format". This is a strictly technical passion. Commercial projects tend to figure out what their users actually want. Even right now in this thread I see people suggesting many cool technical feats, but I see little interest in trying to understand what musicians might want. As I usually write, sometimes getting heated metaphors back at myself for that, often a musician needs some basic stuff first. I spoke about no Linux sampler supporting WAVE loops, although all Windows DAWs do. Or that no sf2 player has volume envelope, although most non-Linux sf2 players do. And the reason for this is because people are doing software for themselves and not necessarily for others. This is not good or bad, this is just how it is. You decide whether you want to change this or not. Louigi. http://www.louigiverona.ru/

Please excuse this somewhat off-topic rant, On 03/30/2014 01:00 PM, Ralf Mardorf wrote: There are many *do* use Linux for professional audio work and A/V post-production. Ever heard of Pixar? It's also not uncommon in various huge post-prod houses, heck even the NASA control center uses Ardour [1]. They're certainly not hobbyists nor amateurs. Then there's the Miraverse [2] and the list goes on and on. Some vendors use embedded linux inside instruments. Just because there's no Linux on the label does not mean it's not used. Opening the field a bit more to GNU/Linux Multimedia: blender.org is also doing a fanatic job. There are likely more non-professional (not making a living with) users of Linux Audio but that does not imply that Linux Audio is not professional or can only be used by some elite for professional work. Don't confuse setup with use. The big strength of Linux is the possibility to customize it. You can tailor it for a given workflow which indeed requires investing (time|money). But once it is set up, it can be very efficient to *use*. I think it's not a professional vs hobby distinction but rather style (and requirements) dependent. You just don't. There's no need for any casual musician to do that. Just like no few musician update the firmware of his/her Yamaha keyboard and most guitarists have a roadie to replace the strings of their guitars and tune them... Tweaking a distro today is no different than a 70's guitarist replacing the pickups of his guitar or changing the tubes or soldering some wah-pedal tweaks. It's also not Linux specific: getting ASIO to work, installing re-wire or whatnot on other OSses is similar. If you're not interested in this, just use one of the excellent ready-to-run Linux-Studio distribution and be done with it. 2c, robin [1] http://richwielgosz.com/2011/06/nasa-and-jpl-use-the-ardour-daw.html [2] http://manifoldrecording.com/studio/control-room.php

On Sun, Mar 30, 2014 at 04:05:40PM +0200, Ralf Mardorf wrote: A rolling release by its very nature is *not* 'stable'. In the Debian sense, stable does not mean unlikely to crash (although this is a pleasant side effect) but that it will stay the same on a daily basis while still keeping the system updated with security patches. It is my understanding that a rolling release is, by its nature, the complete opposite. -- "If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing." --- Malcolm X

PS: Robin, I guess you remember that you once made a remix and sent it to LAU, claiming you didn't have enough time to find out how to mix the bass correctly ;). I sometimes need days to do a Linux mix that is less good, than doing a mix in 5 minutes on a Neve.

On Sun, 2014-03-30 at 16:44 +0200, Robin Gareus wrote: My apologies, however, I'm sure using a professional analog mixing console or even a middle class Soundcraft you would have been able to do a better mix, by needing less time to do it.

On Sun, 2014-03-30 at 17:06 +0200, Ralf Mardorf wrote: PS: Assumed you are aware about a EQ you like, you still need time to add it. An EQ should be something that is a default feature, even for a virtual mixing console.

On Sun, 2014-03-30 at 09:19 -0700, Len Ovens wrote: Mixbus, EnergyXT and perhaps Bitwig might or might not provide it. Assumed I will go off-line within the next minutes, I'll likely have time to test Bitwig tomorrow. They aren't free as in beer, so I would call them "proprietary" DAWs. It's ok to pay for a Linux DAW, especially if people should use it for professional work. For my home recording I prefer to use legal gratis software. If we look out what other home recording folks use, we often will see them using cracked software for other operating systems. Btw. we could use templates for Qtractor, Ardour and other Linux DAWs that provide tracks with EQs, I don't claim that using "free" Linux software doesn't provide a smoothly work-flow, but it takes some preparation and can't be done for all the musician's needs. Using Linux means to care about many things and it's not always easy.

On 03/30/2014 03:47 PM, Robin Gareus wrote: Nice, would even be better if there are pictures showing serious (electronic) musicians using Floss linuxaudio music production tools. :) That's part of the debate in this topic, if linuxaudio floss tools are good enough for musicians/music production. Regards, \r

On Sun, 2014-03-30 at 14:21 +0200, Alex wrote: Rui, Harry and many other developers care a lot about user feedback too :). That's the good thing when using Linux audio. The chance to talk to the developers of proprietary software is virtually zero.

On Sun, 2014-03-30 at 16:33 +0400, Louigi Verona wrote: Sure, it's not just black and white ;). I made good experiences with several hardware vendors. They were interested in the issues I experience(d) with my hardware, when using it with Linux. E.g. Western Digital and RME seriously were interested what issues I experience and they were interested to help me, if possible. However, a lot of companies for proprietary software and/or hardware ignore customers.

On Sun, 2014-03-30 at 14:43 +0200, Tim Blechmann wrote: Ok, true and while some companies don't care about the averaged customer, they care if you call them when working for another company. When I worked for Brauner I could call some companies and they listened to me, but they won't listen to me, when I call them privately. That's not bad at all, since if you call company B while working for company A the averaged user will benefit too. But if you talk to companies there always is a communication chain, while for Linux audio we usually can directly get in contact with the developers, that's a nice advantage.

On 04/04/14 02:56, Tim Blechmann wrote: Where anyone can publish anything of course the user needs to do a fair bit of work filtering the worthwhile from the useless. That takes quite a lot of commitment and time as well as a deeper understanding the field. It is much easier to let someone else choose for you (perhaps pay them to do it), they'll give you something ready to use for the situations they are catering for. But then you are stuck with their notion of what is worthwhile, and whatever other agenda they have (e.g. extracting ongoing profits from their users). I'll put the time in to learn and choose myself, but it isn't quick or easy, just the way I prefer to work, as much because it leads to that deeper understanding of the field as anything else. Simon

On Fri, Apr 04, 2014 at 10:58:17AM +0200, Tim Blechmann wrote: or someone else's speakers or ears. And having to do 'a fair bit of work' separating the crap from the usable isn't going to improve a potential user's workflow either, nor his first impression of what Linux Audio has to offer. It's not just filters oscillating. I've seen delay lines blow up, compressors going to infinite gain, and all sorts of things producing loud bangs when connected, activated or coonfigured. And those are just the potentially destructive 'features', we are not even discussing basic processing quality. Yet all this stuff gets distributed, listed on helpful websites (look ! hundreds of plugins !), and nobody feels the need to weed out the crap. Wonder why some people don't take Linux Audio seriously ? Ciao, -- FA A world of exhaustive, reliable metadata would be an utopia. It's also a pipe-dream, founded on self-delusion, nerd hubris and hysterically inflated market opportunities. (Cory Doctorow)

On 04/04/2014 11:59 AM, Fons Adriaensen wrote: This is actually the reason I started writing the OpenAV ArtyFX [1] suite of plugins: a consistency and a quality that when you load a plugin you know how it will work, both in signal processing and in the user-interface to control it. There are some important daily plugins missing (a compressor and limiter come to mind), but fear not, they're in development at the moment. If you (the linux-audio-user) desire any specific plugin that doesn't yet exist (for linux audio), email me and we can discuss it's creation. Cheers, -Harry [1] http://openavproductions.com/artyfx

On Fri, April 4, 2014 8:59 pm, Fons Adriaensen wrote: It's the same on every platform. Look at the Android play store for example. Android being the most popular OS on the planet. That's a strange argument to make. As far as I know there is no one paying anyone to curate the penultimate collection of perfectly working open source plugins. However there are several people who go to very great lengths to weed out the crap and produce very high quality Multimedia Distros or collections as a result, yourself included. Seems like you are putting your own hard work down or at least making it appear as though you think your work is irrelevant to the discussion. You also dissed several other audio plugin developers in the process. We all know where you were going with the comment but you have cast the net pretty damn wide with this one. Almost like you are asking for punishment. -- Patrick Shirkey Boost Hardware Ltd

On Fri, 2014-04-04 at 09:59 +0000, Fons Adriaensen wrote: As already replied earlier, meta-packages, resp. packages that include several effects are a PITA for this kind of software. Each effect should get it's own package.

On Sat, 2014-04-05 at 11:07 -0700, Len Ovens wrote: I several times "planed" to become an *buntu/Debian and Arch audio packager, but I'm now certain to never ever become the maintainer of any official package for any distro, since there are too many barriers for my taste.

Hm you can make a simple beat with non-sequencer and Carla (in NSM) too :) http://ubuntuone.com/67nrp9TZsbsV9sQ89FodRi For more complex stuff you could load the midi files in bitwig It doesn't seems to be hard to get something interesting. It's harder to create something in your head and put that in the midi-sequencer

On Sat, Apr 05, 2014 at 07:35:42PM +0200, Ralf Mardorf wrote: You can't blame linux if somebody doesn't have a clue. -- "If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing." --- Malcolm X

On 03/30/2014 03:10 PM, rosea.grammostola wrote: Oh and we need to improve and polish our MIDI sequencers on Linux

On 03/31/2014 12:16 PM, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote: Heh, yeah. In terms of workflow, looks and feel. I guess that's hiding a big part of the Czechnology inside it for the end user :)

On 03/30/2014 03:10 PM, rosea.grammostola wrote: only for some kind of music. Bitwig is just a toy compared to for example Csound and Supercollider. I don't think it's much of a challenge. At least not challenge enough to motivate any of the people who volunteer their time to linux audio. Bitwig has a clear motivation for what they do. AFAIK, the interest of most linux-audio developers is otherwise. What we can learn from Bitwig is that, it can be done if you get a good team together, motivate them towards a common goal and make compromises.. but we knew that, didn't we? 2c, robin

On Mon, Mar 31, 2014 at 11:33 AM, Gordon JC Pearce <gordonjcp(a)gjcp.net>wrote;wrote: Lets keep "Use-case" in mind. Bitwig contributes in to certain use case, for making music (geared towards electronic styles, although not solely those). CSound & SuperCollider contribute to a very different use-case. Linux audio in general does not (IMO) offer a whole lot for the use-case of electro / radio styles of music, with software geared at ease of production of such music for musicians. Its a techie environment. My 2 cents :) -Harry

On Tue, 2014-04-01 at 22:29 +0200, Hartmut Noack wrote: MIDI wasn't made to play Ornette Coleman compositions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNbD1JIH344 And what's called (Free) Jazz nowadays usually has nothing to do with music. They even call Mike Patton a Jazz or at least an avant garde musician, for my taste he isn't a musician at all. MIDI was made to produce pop music and Linux MIDI sequencers have several weak points, that other MIDI sequencers don't have. 12-tone is something different, but you likely will use hard disk recording and less MIDI for 12-tone music too. And common for many, if not most Jazz compositions too. However, you can use MIDI for 7/8 as good as for 4/4. Perhaps you used the wrong sequencers or I didn't notice that your post is just an April Fools' joke.

On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 1:09 AM, Hartmut Noack wrote: Out of professional curiosity, where does one find out more of these intimate details? :) Alexandre

Am 01.04.2014 23:00, schrieb Ralf Mardorf: Of course you would play it and record to hard disk and that was what I meant. Could it be, that some people in fact think, that Bitwig is MIDI-only? It is not even really MIDI but OSC as I mentined before and of course it is a full-featured HD-recorder too (though not as strongly optimized for HD-recording as Ardour) Or perhaps you did not have a look upon the program yourself or maybe have lost the ability to thing a bit like Hannibal Lecter. I said it is *most easy* to work with *standard* 4/4 loops in Bitwig, and *not* that that is the only thing you can do. And it is so, because Bitwig comes with a Gigabyte of sampled loops, that are exactly that: standardized 4/4 segments for popular mainstream electronica.

Am 01.04.2014 23:34, schrieb Ralf Mardorf: So do I, also, because I am too lazy to learn, how to make some more than just basic stuff on MIDI-tracks ;-)

On Mon, Mar 31, 2014 at 11:33:02AM +0100, Gordon JC Pearce wrote: Define musician. The people who are able to use Csound and Supercollider can do it because they have invested time and effort in learning to do it. As has anyone who can play whatever instrument in a passable way (doesn't matter if it is a violin or a bass guitar). As has a composer who can arrange a song and write a score for it without needing a battery of synths to know how it will sound, or to check if his harmony is right. And no matter how you turn it, learning to do something difficult has beneficial side effects, apart from the primary result. Your 'musician' seems to be one for whom everything has to be prepared before and easy, so the only thing that remains to be done is some clicking on a screen. And then think him/herself a musician just as the kids wasting their time with shoot-and-kill games imagine they are soldiers. Your 'musician' is in fact just cannon fodder for an industry that is about making fast money and little else. And he wouldn't even be able to exist without the efforts of those who can rightly call themselves musicians and be proud of it. Ciao, -- FA A world of exhaustive, reliable metadata would be an utopia. It's also a pipe-dream, founded on self-delusion, nerd hubris and hysterically inflated market opportunities. (Cory Doctorow)

On Mon, 2014-03-31 at 07:55 -0400, Dave Phillips wrote: Music has less to do with the skills to use a computer or the skills about music theory and skills to play an instrument. Creativity is independent of those skills. A lot of genius painters try to paint as naive as unskilled children do. They have the skills to paint what ever they want and they know all about the theory, but the intellectual aspiration often kills the fantasy. Musicians more often than painters tend to ignore that fact, likely because they feel the need to demonstrate that they are skilled musicians. Skills are not always good for creative work. A basic craftsmanship is needed, but it's not all that is needed to make good music. What is the message of music? I'm better than you? I learned to use computers, music theory and how to handle my musical instruments? Or do I want to send a message, like love, rage, jealousy etc.? Emotions have less to do with know-how. For some kinds of music I need to be able to compose and to play my instruments, then I only need a button to start the audio recording, for other kinds of music I need a good work-flow to edit MIDI data, to piece together the music. In both cases most important is the fantasy. A lot of people who are able to compose and to play instruments did edited tape compositions that had less to do with the music theory they learned and the ability to play instruments they are able to play. There are different kinds and motivations to make art by using "noise".

On Tue, 2014-04-01 at 02:22 +1300, Chris Bannister wrote: I won't play the YouTube link, sine I'm not a fan of Stockhausen (anymore), but too funny, I indeed was thinking about some of his compositions, that btw. aren't bad, but relatively good, even while I dislike much of his music. You caught me :D. When I was young I liked Stockhausen, but I also liked Mozart *shudder*.

On Tue, 2014-04-01 at 13:19 +1100, Simon Wise wrote: There's the need to distinguish what abilities are needed at what stage of _making_ music. You can't take drugs when doing a mastering, but drugs might have pleasant results when making pop/rock music, likely bad results for classic music. Regarding to the used vocabulary, did I mention that I like Spencer Tracy films? "Inherit the Wind", OWTTE "use that kind of language people are intuitive able to understand correctly". IOW take care about the audience. "Tracy drank heavily during his years with Fox, and gained a reputation as an alcoholic." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencer_Tracy Seemingly he used drugs at the right time, but not when doing his job. Resume: What is the target group? What and how important is your message assumed there should be a message? When producing your _own_ music you can do what ever you want to do, but when recording and mastering the art of somebody else you need to care about the intention of this/those artist/s. There isn't a reference! You need to be empathetic!

On Tue, 2014-04-01 at 13:48 +1100, Simon Wise wrote: Good point! Often in my life I made/produced music just for myself, indeed, it perhaps isn't music by definition. When doing a job as engineer, I seldom did it just for the money only, usually I liked the artwork of the people I recorded. When you get paid to compose, you're trapped ;) ... what to do is decided by pure and clean ambivalence.

How I understand some points discussed here... First point: Make music is make the kind of music wich you learn to recognize how music (included the term "good music" at all). Second point: Make a perfect track can be beyond make a perfect music structure as make a good sound (included to make sound like mainstream does). I'm primarily a user, starting tending to developer recently, but my aims are make music, and help to make music easily. About the aim to make music, I'm using how first option Ableton Live9, and it can satisfy 90% of my needs, but this software are very expensive (it crashes with help to make music easily). But a great goals of this kind of software, like Live or Bitwig, are the clean interface, and drag and drop devices, witch frees the mind to create a musical or surrounding effect, depending on the know how. If the gay is starting, they have very usefull presets to impulse your sound. Another kind of think very important is the community, you can find a lot of tutorials in good quality of experient users making those tools to work well. Discriminating items in my comments that I would separate: - Interface designed at work creating the sound or musical structure as directly as possible. Here, FalkTX with KXStudio are doing a interesting work. I think all moment in something like Claudia Launcher in some space on the screen to select plugins, and in a first view, only drag and drop and it work. Can be considered an initial bundle that can only do a good sound (that good sound must be defined previously). I'm wasting long time experimenting interfaces, and I'm only starting to think this kind of thinks, but the primarly aim would an interface can access the stuff already created in linux ecosystem and organize in levels of complexity, first drag and drop, play the instruments, arrange, ou arrange and play wethever.. and play the song. The second level would a creative manipulation of outputs and inputs, like happens in patchbay or claudia. and at last third at level of programation new stuffs, like pd csound suppercollider, maybe only integrate some project of this (that's are the most difficult part I think). It's a idea and I'm collecting know how to implement it in some situation on the future... - Presets, that's a important and simple goal. If you don't know how to mix very well, first samples with pre-equalizations allowing loop a pre defined structure like Drum Bass and leader synth for example sound great only overlap. And some interesting aestetic stuff for a second level of mix, like presets to make sound more punchy, flat or muffled. We can think a lot of thinks here, both in quantity and when and how that amount available. - Tutorials in good quality. FalkTX, Rui Nuno Capella and LazerBlade are doing very good things accordingly. Every interface needs a time of learning, video tutorials in my vision is a great tool to maximize learning time. That's some thoughts I ever have, but I can't do much because I don't have know how to implement it, but gradually'm directing my ways for this to be allowed. 2014-03-31 9:21 GMT-03:00 Ralf Mardorf <ralf.mardorf(a)rocketmail.com>om>: -- Esteban Viveros (27) 98815 7170 | (11) 95761 4125 http://expurgacao.art.br/ https://soundcloud.com/estebanviveros http://projetobramaloka.tumblr.com

On Mon, Mar 31, 2014 at 07:55:27AM -0400, Dave Phillips wrote: My remark wasn't about musical genres, to each his/her own. And I know some nice music made by arranging samples on a timeline - it's just very rare. The point is that anything that doesn't require any effort or background to make it is very likely not going to be interesting [*]. Those who know their art by training, study and experience will always be at an advantage and dominate a scene, just as a trained sportsman will win any competition against someone who doesn't care about training. Ciao, [*] except maybe as a overhyped fashion, as happens in the figurative arts. -- FA A world of exhaustive, reliable metadata would be an utopia. It's also a pipe-dream, founded on self-delusion, nerd hubris and hysterically inflated market opportunities. (Cory Doctorow)

On Monday 31 March 2014, Fons Adriaensen wrote: Very well put

On Mon, 31 Mar 2014, Ralf Mardorf wrote: I think that is what was being said. Music today seems to be no longer about communicating anything at all... merely soundiing somewhat pleasant, or showing off some vocal (or other) gymnastics seems to be most of it. Actually communicating what is in the artists heart is rare and too hard for a money making organization to quantify, so they have gone for what is quantifiable: Take a song that is already a hit, use a producer that we know makes us money, get someone with a strong voice who can hit all the notes and doesn't care too much what they sing so long as they get paid. "Music" making tools that help that process are going to be what sw makers are going to look to for their bread and butter. It may be possible to make actual music with those tools too... -- Len Ovens www.ovenwerks.net

On 31.03.2014 23:09, Louigi Verona wrote: +1000 Internets.

On Tue, Apr 01, 2014 at 10:57:44PM +0200, Hartmut Noack wrote: There's a daily program on RAI radio 3 (the cultural channel here in Italy) called 'alza il volume' or in plain English 'pump up the volume'. It keeps a look on the 'non mainstream' music scene. Much of what it outputs is just entertaining and at times plainly boring, but every now and then there will be some real gems. And most of those gems are very probably produced using software such as Bitwig, and would not exists without it. So in that sense you are certainly right, this *is* an interesting time for music production, at no time before there was such a range of tools available as we have today. But at the same time there's an incredible number of people who are using these tools but absolutely fail to produce anything that stands out, to put it mildly. If music is about 'communicating' anything, it should probably (IMHO) first communicate itself. There's nothing more boring than an artist trying to communicate his or her very personal feelings, be they sorrow or anger. The very least you need is a wider context that is relevant to others, and the music (or any form of art) that will most strongly communicate anything but itself will be the one that in which the creator himself disappears completely. Ciao, -- FA A world of exhaustive, reliable metadata would be an utopia. It's also a pipe-dream, founded on self-delusion, nerd hubris and hysterically inflated market opportunities. (Cory Doctorow)

On Tue, 2014-04-01 at 23:56 +0200, Ralf Mardorf wrote: PS: Chain gang music or slave music? Is it bad music for your taste?

On Tue, 2014-04-01 at 22:08 +0000, Fons Adriaensen wrote: And how do you rate the music of a coal miner with an IQ much lower than yours, without a musical education, but with an emotional message? Resp. "Chain gang music or slave music?" How do you rate their music?

On Tue, 2014-04-01 at 22:37 +0000, Fons Adriaensen wrote: For my taste this is a good reply :). For my taste this is a bad reply :p. Just for entertainment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51A1rhLqS_E A chain gang like song, packaged into some ugly modern music like style. No music I like, but it anyway has got some charm. PS: I wonder if it might be a chain gang song sample?

On Wed, 2014-04-02 at 08:48 +0200, Tim Goetze wrote: "Ausdruck befreit vom Sinn" (translated something like "Expression freed from any statement") - more or less the words of Christoph Schlingensief I can't agree with this as something good, it's evil, music is alive when there is a statement, when there are emotions by the artist who makes the music. Music made without personal feelings is a lie, a long time before we got scripted reality television, humans already made music comparable to scripted reality. It's even better to make music with emotions that belong to the couch doctor, than to follow Fons ideology. Sure, the musician must be able to stand the feedback of the audience. Take a look at old Black Flag videos, Henry Rollins has been laughed at. They double up with laughter, years later the same people who made jokes about him, became Fans of Rollins Band. There's no need for music to describe reality, but even fantasy stories without political or psychopathological statement needs true emotions. If the creator disappears completely, how should the music get alive?

On Wed, Apr 02, 2014 at 09:25:04AM +0200, Ralf Mardorf wrote: Every few weeks on R3 here there is a live transmission of some opera from the NY Met. Last year we had Verdi's 'La Traviata'. Usually you can hear the American radio presenter talking over the final applause. Instead of commenting on the performance (as do the Italian presenters) she went something like '... and so the poor girl dies in the arms of her lover bla bla bla bla'. If this is the way in which the American audience understands La Traviata then there is some cause for concern. One level up from the melo would be to say that the opera (and the novel it is based on) is a denunciation of 19th century bourgeois moral hypocrisy. This is the interpretation offered by many of today's directors. Verdi must have had his share of that, having lived together but unmarried with la Streppina for some years, something not tolerated in the society of his time. But is that why he wrote the opera ? I doubt it very much. The are some very strong emotions in La Traviata, and they are expressed by the music, but they are certainly not Verdi's, neither those of the performers. The belong to the characters portrayed, and those are fiction, repeat fiction. They are also presented in a context that easily trancends the strictly personal. It's this that allows the work to have appeal beyond the level of tearjerking. And of course the music itself. Ciao, -- FA A world of exhaustive, reliable metadata would be an utopia. It's also a pipe-dream, founded on self-delusion, nerd hubris and hysterically inflated market opportunities. (Cory Doctorow)

On Wed, 2014-04-02 at 11:12 +0200, Ralf Mardorf wrote: PS: You also could play a musical character, if you dislike the character you play and you make this the emotion that should be transported, instead of the emotion the character should feel. Btw. music often should cause fun and not transport political statements, however, if you sing The Wild Rover it might be less entertaining when you're living Straight Edge. Btw. you first claim that music should speak for itself, there shouldn't be the need to know the background and then you're terrified when an American reporter nowadays doesn't understand oldish European music ;).

On Wed, 2014-04-02 at 09:48 +0000, Fons Adriaensen wrote: Because they learned method acting, but they only visited acting schools payed by their parents, they never had a real live, so they don't have a stock of experiences and usually they care about the money and play characters for weak stories. JFTR even many good stories aren't realistic, they are fictional. However, why doesn't listen Fons and Ralf to Justin Bieber? IMO the difference between operas and a Justin Bieber song is that the opera is made by emotions (and musical know-how, but there is good emotional music, e.g. a lot of Rock'n'Roll made without theoretical musical know-how too). JFTR the Wiki claims that Justin Bieber is also an actor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Bieber . https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/01/Believe_Tour_13,_… Taking a look at his filmography, I'm only willing to watch The Simpsons, likely he didn't play the role, I suspect it's a painted character.

On Wed, 2014-04-02 at 12:20 +0200, Ralf Mardorf wrote: Some of the "few" others are Tony Richardson for The Hotel New Hampshire (1984), David Lynch for The Elephant Man (1980), John Sturges for Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), King Vidor for Northwest Passage (1940), George Stevens for Giant (1956), Richard Brooks for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), Jack Arnold for all his superb B-movies. Richard Wallace etc. pp.

On Wed, 2014-04-02 at 22:14 +1100, Simon Wise wrote: Yes, but then the emotion that is transported is irony, because the nice stories became completely grotesque.

On Wed, 02 Apr 2014 09:25:04 +0200 Ralf Mardorf <ralf.mardorf(a)rocketmail.com> wrote: Well, have fun with 'good' and 'evil'... How, pray tell, would you know what the feelings of the composer or performer was when you hear a recording? Which one matters? I'd say that this is something you can't tell, good luck with that approach. Regards, Philipp

On Wed, 2014-04-02 at 09:21 +0200, Hartmut Noack wrote: Likely because Portishead is from the 90ies ;).

On Tue, 2014-04-01 at 22:18 -1000, david wrote: I've got the impression that Franz Schubert's intention to make music wasn't the money. I even have the impression that Ozzy Osborne's reason to make music isn't the money.

Am 02.04.2014 10:18, schrieb david: No, they wrote the music to become famous enough to get a well-paid job. Some tunes they where paid for directly but that was: "Oh, I am lucky enough to have this famous Gustav Mahler being kind enough to write music for my humble orchestra." And there was no producer, who controlled and influenced the writing and if the work would not be asuccess, it may have had impact on the the fame of the composer but not the payment directly. Bach wrote some of his now most famous(and influential) works for the drawer as some kind of theoretical research on contrapunctus etc The art of the fuge was seldom performed in his day for a small circle,of specialists.

any opera especially, big stagey spectaculars to pull in the box office. That a just continued a very very old tradition, but its only one part of music.

On Wed, 2014-04-02 at 19:26 -1000, david wrote: I dislike Pinball Wizard, but like Pete Townshend and to be honest, e.g. The War of the Worlds has some nice songs, but IMO it isn't good as a complete classical opus. Rock musicians shouldn't try to make "concept album" or "operas". The oldish, classical operas tend to be crap and and all "modern rock" operas usually are crap². Musicians (especially Rock and Jazz folks) usually don's stick on banal things long enough to make an opus out of it, this is a task for the people how are boring and stiff as a poker.

On Mon, 31 Mar 2014 15:29:08 +0200 David Olofson <david(a)olofson.net> wrote: Now that's interesting. Why exactly does it need to be pleasant sound, and what do you mean by that? Pleasant to whom? I think my definition would be even more general: "Someone who makes sound on purpose." Maybe an even more extreme definition is needed: "Someone who makes sound." Regards, Philipp

On Mon, 31 Mar 2014 18:09:23 +0200 David Olofson <david(a)olofson.net> wrote: I simply wanted to include noise musicians ;) It's fascinating to me to hear sounds and not being able to tell how they were produced and consequently being unable to reproduce it. It's also fascinating that this sort of music, being 'outside' of conventional musical systems is also neither 'right' nor 'wrong', you can just like or dislike it. As reference, I'm thinking about this sort of stuff I have the music of Maurizio Bianchi in mind, not some watered-down stuff like power noise, noise rock or stuff like that. https://archive.org/details/mir017 I don't see that infinite recursion here. If I make one definition for the sake of having a definition I can stop right there, although I could also go on indefinitely, which I guess is what you meant :>. With the two definitions above I had woodpeckers and various other birds in mind. I also find the sounds my dishes sometimes make when they slide into the sink, under water and hit the wall of the sink rather interesting. Regards, Philipp

On 03/31/2014 06:13 PM, Egor Sanin wrote: a slightly more mundane process (percolator), but nonetheless a modern classic: http://stackingdwarves.net/download/kai_vehmanen-making_coffee.mp3 hat tip to kai vehmanen, creator of ecasound. we used this as a stream outage clip for a LAC many years back, people were almost disappointed when the stream would come back :) kai, if you read this: how could you allow this tune to fall off the net? -- Jörn Nettingsmeier Lortzingstr. 11, 45128 Essen, Tel. +49 177 7937487 Meister für Veranstaltungstechnik (Bühne/Studio) Tonmeister VDT http://stackingdwarves.net

On Mon, Mar 31, 2014 at 3:26 PM, Fons Adriaensen wrote: For some reason the Linux community tends to promote radical views without the need to resort to the "golden middle", as seen above. For instance, a plenty of presets and samples shipped with a DAW means: 1) It's easy to learn how to use the DAW and its tools and then move on. 2) Granted, it's easy to abuse presets and prerecorded samples. Robin might correct me if I'm wrong, but the primary objective of him creating Reasonable Synth shipped with A3 is that A3 used to produce _no sound whatsoever_ when you tried to play back a .mid file in the importing dialog. And there had been no synths in the binary bundle before either, AFAIK. Moreover, not producing any sound by default from MIDI data is exactly the problem that Rosegarden specifically had to address in the _FAQ_ (not even actual features). And Qtractor doesn't make it a lot easier either. Don't you see what's wrong with this picture? If getting started and/or having a smooth composition workflow is too difficult, it doesn't really matter how powerful your software is. People just give up. That said, Linux DAWs are not yet ready for instruments with tons of presets anyway. Try navigating Amsynth with its hundreds of patches from a plain list in either A3 or Qtractor, and you'll soon give up too :) Alexandre

On Mon, Mar 31, 2014 at 6:14 PM, Fons Adriaensen wrote: *facepalm* Seriously, Fons? Basically you've just admitted that you have no hands-on experience with Bitwig. What's worse, you appear to have no hands-on experience with Ardour 3. The thing is, neither Bitwig nor Ardour 3 use default synths for MIDI tracks (A3 does it only for importing). In both cases you specifically pick the ones that you want. The difference between Bitwig and e.g. Qtractor is how long it takes you to do that. *double facepalm* Alexandre

On Mon, Mar 31, 2014 at 6:51 PM, Fons Adriaensen wrote: They were in the context that you appear to arbitrarily keep or drop :) OTOH, I'm not sure why it should matter at all given that you seem to have very little (if any) use for MIDI tracks. Given your background, we might as well argue whether Pianoteq is a blasphemy :) This is simply not the point. The point is that free software could be made easier to use without (much) introducing the "dumbing down" aspect. The question is if developers choose the sorry status quo or if they are more open-minded. Because pretty much all lessons we can learn from Bitwig end up in actually changing source code. Alexandre

On Mon, Mar 31, 2014 at 07:16:16PM +0200, Nils wrote: Come to Karlsruhe, offer beers and/or wine. Ciao, -- FA A world of exhaustive, reliable metadata would be an utopia. It's also a pipe-dream, founded on self-delusion, nerd hubris and hysterically inflated market opportunities. (Cory Doctorow)

On 03/31/2014 04:02 PM, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote: Any MIDI track, actually (midi auditioning only came later). well yeah. The primary objective was to no longer answer the recurring question "Why can I not hear MIDI?" Even though the way we preempted that question won't make the user any wiser about why s/he cannot hear MIDI, adding a synth was deemed the most _reasonable_ reply :( yes, using proprietary DAWs dumbs users down. 2c, robin

On 03/31/2014 04:56 PM, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote: the tools have nothing to do with the artistic quality of the outcome. (even though a large part of the music industry works by making people believe just that). all they can do is let you arrive at a good result more quickly or more easily, or inspire you to try new things. the problem with the latter is that many people will get inspired in pretty similar ways, and the result of that you can hear on the radio. i have worked on quite a few proprietary DAWs, and i still can't believe the fiery hoops they make me jump through. just this week i've had to decide to do a short film sound do-over on $PROPRIETARY_TOOL, because i can't import the EDL into ardour (yet), and manually syncing 75 clips is not an option (no timecode on location, unfortunately, and now all i have is an OMF file). i thought, hey, let's import the session and bounce it out with all regions expanded, so i can finish the job on ardour. alas, $PT decides to bail out halfway through the export with a totally unhelpful error message. sigh. now i'm stuck with it. latest brickwall i ran into is that $PT (after taking 10 years to support native audio hardware at all) has this totally arbitrary limit of 32 channels of simultaneous native recording. you need more? buy the box. oh, you already have far superiour audio hardware and the studio is running dante? too bad. buy the box, and buy a dante bridge. right, that's the company which has been too stupid to get their accounting done properly for more than two years and got kicked out of NASDAQ for that. now that's two epic facepalms for the product that is responsible for most of the really professional content out there, whatever that means. which, to conclude this little rant, makes it very hard for me indeed to avoid that fuzzy feeling of intellectual superiority, even though i agree it is a bad habit. -- Jörn Nettingsmeier Lortzingstr. 11, 45128 Essen, Tel. +49 177 7937487 Meister für Veranstaltungstechnik (Bühne/Studio) Tonmeister VDT http://stackingdwarves.net

A software tool should make tasks easy, so you don't waste time on cumbersome workflow, bugs and missing features, but focus that time and energy on making music. This has nothing to do with the intellectual level of the music or musician. It's probably just that proprietary software projects have more money, working hours and better cooperation/teamwork and better knowledge of GUI design to get this done. Using software on Linux makes you pretty often loose time on bad workflow, bad integration, bugs and missing features. The process of creativity or producing your creative work, stucks in the middle too often. I guess this is more true for MIDI then for audio (not surprisingly that Fons, Jorn, Robin work mainly with the audio part and have little to complain). One acoustic guitar can play smooth and gives you joy and satisfaction. An other guitar can give you blisters, no good sound, it doesn't help you to produce your creativity and is frustrating ... On Mon, Mar 31, 2014 at 5:40 PM, Jörn Nettingsmeier < nettings(a)stackingdwarves.net&gt; wrote:

On Wed, 02 Apr 2014 17:01:46 +0100 Chris Cannam &lt;cannam(a)all-day-breakfast.com&gt; wrote: Hi Chris, Nice to see you here again - and talking about Rosegarden after so long! This MIDI issue strikes a chord with me. As a new and (very) green dev for yoshimi, functionality that I want to add, looks comparatively straightforward with JACK, but a right can of worms with ALSA MIDI :( -- Will J Godfrey http://www.musically.me.uk Say you have a poem and I have a tune. Exchange them and we can both have a poem, a tune, and a song.

On Wed, 02 Apr 2014 22:25:08 +0100 Chris Cannam &lt;cannam(a)all-day-breakfast.com&gt; wrote: We might get a chance for a chat then ... unless you see me first :) -- Will J Godfrey http://www.musically.me.uk Say you have a poem and I have a tune. Exchange them and we can both have a poem, a tune, and a song.

On Monday 31 March 2014 10:36:30 Fons Adriaensen did opine: +1 Fons. Cheers, Gene -- "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>

On Tue, Apr 01, 2014 at 10:42:16PM +0200, Hartmut Noack wrote: I agree. But then almost everything, in the right hands, has the same potential. Ciao, -- FA A world of exhaustive, reliable metadata would be an utopia. It's also a pipe-dream, founded on self-delusion, nerd hubris and hysterically inflated market opportunities. (Cory Doctorow)

On Mon, Mar 31, 2014 at 12:33 PM, Gordon JC Pearce &lt;gordonjcp(a)gjcp.net&gt; wrote: [...] Wouldn't say I'm either of those; just a rather experienced programmer with an interest in music... Either way; I used to think of this kind of tools as basically just powerful synthesizers, and controlling them from a "mainstream style" sequencer with a master keyboard and stuff pretty much seemed like the only viable setup. I've used various versions of Cakewalk and Sonar through the years, but obviously, I'd much rather use Linux, as that's what I use for practically everything these days. I just haven't been able to find a stable Linux sequencer that does what I need. (Would seem like very basic stuff, but I guess not... o.O) Then I started writing the synth/sound engine Audiality 2. It has a realtime scripting language that was originally just intended as a small but flexible replacement for the usual "five million" hardwired features you need to do much more than playing back dry samples. I intended to use it for both sound and music, but I was planning on using a MIDI sequencer for the latter. However, when testing and playing around, I discovered that just hacking music in the same scripting language was a surprisingly viable option, and as a bonus, offered tremendous flexibility through the seamless integration of sounds and music. So, I actually haven't bothered much with sequencers since! It would be nice to have the option of recording from MIDI controllers, since that's definitely the easiest, quickest and most natural way of doing many things - but I think I'd actually prefer a "sequencer" that just pastes code into my editor. :-) What weirdness came out of this episode of insanity, then? Well, some works in progress, mostly "chip inspired" stuff for a game I'm working on: https://soundcloud.com/david-olofson/sets/audiality-2-projects Oh, and that engine; Free/Open Source (zlib), of course: http://audiality.org/ -- //David Olofson - Consultant, Developer, Artist, Open Source Advocate .--- Games, examples, libraries, scripting, sound, music, graphics ---. | http://consulting.olofson.net http://olofsonarcade.com | '---------------------------------------------------------------------'

On Mon, Mar 31, 2014 at 6:33 PM, James Harkins wrote: Er, isn't it just a matter of taste? :) Gordon basically summarized (in a rather arguable manner) a point that we've discussed time and time again: if Linux audio is for geeks or for full-time musicians. In the eyes of slightly informed masses, Linux audio either doesn't exist, or is closely related to experimental electronic music (alternatively, to death metal bands). The big win for LMMS and Qtractor (with all their disadvantages) is that they are changing this perception towards (reluctantly) including EDM to this list. So what did you expect? :) Alexandre

Alexandre Prokoudine <alexandre.prokoudine@...> writes: I don't see it. Surely, if he had wanted to make that point, he could have said it plainly? I'm interested in music that seems like it's repeating but doesn't actually repeat loops exactly. Even when I was using DAWs, I was doing that (painfully). In SC, instead of tweaking MIDI notes and rhythms by hand, I can develop constraints that generate notes and rhythms that always vary, but maintain some sense of coherence. Like, the other night I was fixing some mistakes in a chord player that: - Chooses 16th-note time points within the bar, according to some rules that make it less likely to have chords in successive 16ths; - Chooses the top note of the chord mainly by stepwise motion; - Weights the remaining scale degrees to have a higher probability of choosing the third and fifth above the current bass note, medium probability of the seventh and ninth, and lower probability of the fourth and sixth (since these can change the chord function). The resulting chords actually do sound like they fit in the harmonic context, and it can keep going like that, without ever looping. That's one way that SC is the best tool for me to make the kinds of evolving processes I like to hear. The point being that this sort of geekery a/ comes directly from a musical impulse (I can hear if the implementation isn't doing what I heard in my head) and b/ is grounded in a musical understanding of harmony (in fact, it models part of my thought process when I'm writing harmony by hand). But never mind that -- if I were writing dots on paper and debating whether to use interlocking woodwind voicing or not, THAT sort of geekery would be perfectly musical, but the fact that this particular music geekery is in SC means that it's... what was the phrase? "Autistic savant computer genius" territory. I don't know Bitwig, so I have no basis to evaluate Robin's assertion that it's a "toy." If he had said DAWs are toys compared to SC, I'd call that idiotic -- but he said that of only one DAW which is relatively new and may not be full-featured yet. I understand the wish to evangelize on behalf of under-appreciated software (you should see me rub LilyPond in Finale users' noses), but I would not claim SC to be inherently better than other electronic music workflows (e.g. DAWs). But to claim, as Gordon did, that there is not even one single musical impulse for which a domain-specific programming language is an appropriate tool? Just... wow, seriously? Oh! I just remembered, it's April 1. Silly me, Gordon must have been joking! Carry on, then. hjh

On Wed, 02 Apr 2014 17:50:29 +0200 Robin Gareus &lt;robin(a)gareus.org&gt; wrote: Also, we learn some people think their snobbish opinions about music matter.

On 04/02/2014 06:01 PM, Robin Gareus wrote: I was reminded some time ago, by a developer, that LA is made up of devs choosing to scratch a particular itch, and they have the right to do that without having to answer to anyone. It was at that point that i took a step back, examined what i already have as an LA user, picked out what i could use in my particular use case, and discarded my efforts to present my use case, and offer user help with tutorials, wikis, etc.. to the rest, whose apps i don't use. It was a good reminder at the right time. I'm no longer trying to contribute my user experience to LA almost full time, which i did for over 5 years, with the personal and altruistic intent of widening potential user base. I came to realize that many devs don't want or need a bigger userbase, as their intent is not to chase users, but write code that suits themselves, be it for academic interest, personal use, enjoyment, whatever. I learned that my many years of "mainstream" user experience using commercial apps is not a desired commodity by all devs, in fact it's quite the contrary, as many LA devs seek new and exciting ways of designing their apps, and the way interested users might interact. It's their call, not mine, in other words. I finally "get it" about the user/dev relationship from most devs POV, and have tempered my user expectations accordingly. In fact, i don't expect anything anymore. If it works for me, then terrific, and i have done/will contribute to specific projects financially or with my time and effort while my user case is relevant. I have a lot more of my increasingly valuable time (as i get older) to pursue my own goals, rather than work for hours a day on "contributing", simply for assuming my experience is desired, or wanted by the majority of LA devs. I can only apologise to those devs who felt i was wasting their time, and missing their particular design point, or application design intent, over these last ten years. Lesson finally learnt. Alex.

On Wed, 2014-04-02 at 18:01 +0200, Robin Gareus wrote: Our opinions about music (snobbish or not snobbish) determine the different work-flows we have got. Ignoring opinions about music does cause the lack. You can not fix technical issues by ignoring the cause and by calling the people who use the software snobs. ;)

On Wed, 2 Apr 2014, Robin Gareus wrote: Apples vs. penguins? :P Not meant to only reflect on this quote, but other comments too. If you're a casual blues guitarist, any computer OS/sw combination might be less useful than a bassoon. Computer music in general assumes some level of computer literacy. I personally find myself lost on a windows system (worse on an apple) till I "figure it out". Many people who use Linux start on an Apple or Windows system and move for some reason. I have never used either for my personal computing... I started on a sinclair, TI, Atari mega (where I learned about midi)... I learned enough about drdos6 to run a BBS which moved to OS/2 (2.*) because a friend who was using windows had to set a timer to kill his windows machine every day so he could go on holidays... Ya, windows 3.1. About 1993 or 4 I was looking at adding ethernet to OS/2 and figured out it would cost more for the drivers than I had paid for the OS and someone suggested Linux where I have been every since. I grew up on a Linux where any install included rolling a kernel that actually worked with my HW and where most computing was done CLI and X was started once in a while for the very few GUI programs around at the time. (slackware as happens) Linux/Gnu has come a long way since. Anyway, I have a skewed idea of how things should work... at least if you are used to a mac... and not saying one is better than the other either, just Linux is right for me. Anyway, all that to say... I had difficulty getting bitwig to make noise. It was not intuitive for me, I don't know that it was a lot harder than the first time I tried qtractor (ardour was midiless at the time), but, I am used to a tape studio both by my long ago broadcast training and work (which I have forgotten most of) but also from 8 track/hw sequencer years. The idea of having to connect an output to a sound module makes more sense to me than expecting the sequencer to make noice (nothing about right or wrong, just my personal expectations). Bitwig for me: - can't be run on my 32bit music machine. - has too much stuff which makes what I want hard to find - I found it difficult to use, but I am at the bottom of the learning curve, That would change quickly from some of the other comments in this thread. - could not see a running jack server - would not connect to alsa though it could see it. - Did work with pulse... and lots of xruns if I moved the mouse etc. Not a great first impression, but, having used Ardour and other DAWs, I can at least sort of see where it is going. I could learn it and make it work. It is more useful to me right off than LMMS, for example. I could, if it was what I had and no other choice, do anything I have done so far on it. I would have to learn it, but if it was what I had, I would learn it pretty quick. I am not saying any of my problems were bitwig's fault, in fact I expect they are all mine. In all honesty, I expect I would be quite happy using bitwig connected to alsa directly for almost all of my use cases. -- Len Ovens www.ovenwerks.net

On Sunday 30 March 2014 06:27:35 Louigi Verona wrote: Not disputing the general thrust of your post but: Commercial projects try to figure out what they need to do to get money out of their customers. If that involves giving their users what thjey want at times, they will try and do that. If they can get more money but not giving customers what they want, they will try and do that. all the best, drew -- This is drew's personal email account and is not related to Tribune Radio Ltd.

On Mon, 31 Mar 2014 18:23:02 +0400 Alexandre Prokoudine &lt;alexandre.prokoudine(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Sorry. I don't recognise this scenario. I turn on the 'big switch' and computer, auxiliaries and amp power up in sequence. For a new composition I click on my yoshimi icon followed by the rosegarden one. I select an instrument for yoshimi and play a few times then hit record on rosegarden. Switch both to track 2 and repeat. Repeat for 'n'. Save both the yoshimi parameter set and the rosegarden file. To work on an existing track I simply click on the yoshimi and rosegarden files to pull up the programs with the files loaded and ready to go. How is that taxing? Actually this *very* little routine is exactly right to get me in the 'zone'. -- Will J Godfrey http://www.musically.me.uk Say you have a poem and I have a tune. Exchange them and we can both have a poem, a tune, and a song.

If I have to apply a "we" to this subject, then probably Bitwig spends very little time defining the boundaries of music. :) Else, all i can express are my dreams occurring when i envision what a community like ours could achieve in the best of the worlds. Have a delicious week ya'all! -- Set Hallström AKA Sakrecoer http://sakrecoer.com

On Mon, 2014-03-31 at 22:03 +0100, Gordon JC Pearce wrote: A friend of me broke a window, by kicking his Apple out. I liked my C64 and Atari ST + click sync (C64) and SMPTE sync (Ataris ST) + analog gear for audio recordings. A demagnetiser and a little bit of alcohol was needed to maintain the analog gear.

On 31/03/2014 16:23, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote: Aren't DAWs supposed to be Digital Audio Workstations, i.e. dealing with digital audio material? I guess you mean a Midi Sequencer... MIDI is just a communication protocol to exchange 'musically-meaningful' data between digital instruments, thus it makes sense that you don't play it out of the box. Anyway... and With e.g. Rosegarden + Qsynth: [*] 1. In qsynth select a GM compatible (or GS) SoundFont (e.g. Fluidsynth one available on most major distros) 2a. Connect Roesegarden's default midi out to Qsynth's midi in [**] 2b. Connect Qsynth audio out to your system out device input in jack [***] 3. In Rosegarden press play button. 4. Enjoy your MIDI-sounding masterpiece :-) Ciao Lorenzo. [*] Assuming JACK is running, which is a precondition for the two software to be running. [**] Assuming the default midi out for individual tracks hasn't explicitly been changed to something else, e.g. a softsynth. But by default Rosegarden will use 'General Midi out' for new tracks or for imported midi files [***] Qsynth can actually be configured to autoconnect to jack Output. In this case this passage isn't necessary

On 01/04/2014 15:56, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote: [...] >>> count steps, then multiply it by 20 tracks to get a better idea of >>> boring work you need to do every time (Hint: A3 will win, because I >>> specifically bugged Paul about it). >>>> With e.g. Rosegarden + Qsynth: [*] >>> 1. In qsynth select a GM compatible (or GS) SoundFont (e.g. Fluidsynth one >> available on most major distros) >> 2a. Connect Roesegarden's default midi out to Qsynth's midi in [**] >> 2b. Connect Qsynth audio out to your system out device input in jack [***] >> 3. In Rosegarden press play button. >> 4. Enjoy your MIDI-sounding masterpiece :-) >>> Ciao >> Lorenzo. >> [*] Assuming JACK is running, which is a precondition for the two software >> to be running. >> [**] Assuming the default midi out for individual tracks hasn't explicitly >> been changed to something else, e.g. a softsynth. But by default Rosegarden >> will use 'General Midi out' for new tracks or for imported midi files >> [***] Qsynth can actually be configured to autoconnect to jack Output. In >> this case this passage isn't necessary > Yes, this is what I more or less expected to read :) So? Is it really _that_ complicated? How exactly would you like it to be? Lorenzo.

On 02/04/2014 14:01, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote: Then I misunderstood. I though you meant e.g. importing a midi file and having it play (all tracks) as quickly as possible. If we're talking about per-track syths, you can very easily do that in Rosegarden as well with a dropdown ;-) Lorenzo