Hi Stephen, Feb 7 2021, Stephen Stubbs has written: ... I have the two SRJV orchestral expansion boards for the JV/XP series. I can see what you mean about the oboe. Though I do like the Sonatina oboe very much. ... Thank you! Best wishes, Jeanette -- * Website: http://juliencoder.de - for summer is a state of sound * Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMS4rfGrTwz8W7jhC1Jnv7g * Audiobombs: https://www.audiobombs.com/users/jeanette_c * GitHub: https://github.com/jeanette-c You should take me as I am 'Cause I can promise you Baby, what you see is what ytou get <3 (Britney Spears)

On 2/9/21 1:03 PM, Will Godfrey wrote: My, what lovely, thoroughly well-written compositions, Jeannette! A bit of a Bach feel at times that I liked. The Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra sounds are perfect. Thank you for making and sharing these! -- David W. Jones gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com authenticity, honesty, community http://dancingtreefrog.com "My password is the last 8 digits of π."

Hello Lorenzo! Feb 14 2021, Lorenzo Sutton has written: ... Thank you very much! This is very kind! Yes! Well certainly references to the later B in the scherzo, if not half of the scherzo being very influenced by the 9th. The lament is very much inspired by the ealier B. Sort of accidentally I think the beginning of the rondo capriccioso is a hommage to the fourth movement of the nineth, even though I didn't particularly plan it like that. It just seemed a good way to pick up the "choral" motif from the scherzo. :) ... Many thanks again for this praising and detailed reply. It made my Sunday! Best wishes, Jeanette -- * Website: http://juliencoder.de - for summer is a state of sound * Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMS4rfGrTwz8W7jhC1Jnv7g * Audiobombs: https://www.audiobombs.com/users/jeanette_c * GitHub: https://github.com/jeanette-c I used to think I had the answers to everything But now I know ... :) <3 (Britney Spears)

Hi Sam! Feb 13 2021, Sam Kuper has written: ... Then some good advise: in terms of software and workflow don't look too closely at what I'm doing. It's rather unorthodox in terms of tools and thus - to some extent - in terms of workflow. You will find a lot of good work, setups, tools and workflow here though. If it isn't spelled out directly, you can always ask and people will be happy to talk. Best wishes, Jeanette ... -- * Website: http://juliencoder.de - for summer is a state of sound * Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMS4rfGrTwz8W7jhC1Jnv7g * Audiobombs: https://www.audiobombs.com/users/jeanette_c * GitHub: https://github.com/jeanette-c Say hello to the girl that I am! <3 (Britney Spears)

unergonomic. Partly that was due to the license/upgrade cycle, but often the problem was the UI or the developers' assumptions about users' workflows. As the author of a non-proprietary DAW, I'd just like to note that the issues caused by "developer's assumptions about users' workflows" isn't a function of software being proprietary (or not). It's been nearly a decade or more since I fully gave up on the idea that Ardour could (one day) be a DAW for everyone. There is no DAW for everyone. Individual's actual needs and workflow, as well as their imagined needs and workflows, vary dramatically, and it's not possible to create music production software, proprietary or otherwise, that can answer all those use cases.

Thanks for the compliments. However, in this particular case, I'd beg to differ. Reaper is available at low cost, and is at least as malleable for regular users as any FLOSS project, if not more so. Other proprietary DAWs are also available at low cost these days, and even if they do not offer "learn C++, figure out the build system, understand multithreaded realtime programming, and you can make it do ANYTHING!", they typically offer a huge amount of configurability. Adding control surface support to many (most?) proprietary DAWs is *much* easier for an average user than it is in the case of Ardour. Basically, what I'm saying is: love FLOSS software because it works for you, and (if applicable) because you love software freedom. If it is truly superior to proprietary software, then by all means say so (loudly!), but let's never forget that most music production software is written by people just as enthusiastic as anyone in this community about creating truly useful and excellent tools. They just chose a different licensing model .... On Sat, Feb 13, 2021 at 7:19 PM Sam Kuper &lt;sampablokuper(a)posteo.net&gt; wrote:

Am 14.02.21 um 09:01 schrieb Sam Kuper: I fully agree with this sentiment and the things you said afterwards. Licensing choice isn't just a different flavour or colour of software. Conversely, choosing a closed license doesn't mean that you don't care about your product, but it does mean that you restrict the way it can be used, which, as you point out, makes it less useful (all other factors being the same). Chris

On Sun, Feb 14, 2021 at 9:20 AM Christopher Arndt &lt;chris(a)chrisarndt.de&gt; wrote: The problem is: all other factors are NEVER the same. There's no FLOSS application that will give you the possibilities of FL Studio, or Live, or Bitwig. So, if you want those options, but prioritize the FLOSS nature of your tools, you're going to have to do without something you would otherwise prefer. This may be an entirely acceptable tradeoff for many people, but for others the tradeoff goes the other way. Similarly, for someone who is deeply committed to the long term nature of their tools (and thus the work they create with them), proprietary software probably represents a major compromise which could be unacceptable. For others, they will make do with the "final" versions of a work in some form, and deal with the likely forced obsolescence of the tools. Now, if we had more or less identical tools in both the FLOSS and proprietary realms, then sure, all factors would be the same, and I'd agree with you and Sam. But we don't, and we're not likely to get that at any time in the foreseeable future. Which means that users are actually faced with complex tradeoff calculations, rather than just "FLOSS gives me more freedom". As Louigi has noted in his long and excellent essay on software freedom, sometimes freedom can mean the freedom to do what you actually want to do, quickly and easily. And sometimes, of course, it means something else.

This is just touching on a few of your points from this and from previous messages... On Sun, 14 Feb 2021, Sam Kuper wrote: [...] For many reasons, I'm still mostly using hardware even now (and yes, I know that's a choice). I remember back in Ardour's 1.x-2.x days, the Ardour web site used to say something like that Ardour was still developing, and was currently not much better than a stack of ADAT recorders. Well, I still record and produce about the same way I did in 1989 (but with more stuff now), so I thought, wow, that's all I need Ardour to do, be like a stack of ADAT recorders! I've been happy with it ever since, even now that it's become a whole lot better than a stack of ADAT recorders. As far as productivity goes though, I've found that's actually related more to how much stuff (hardware and software) there is to setup in your studio at the beginning of a session, rather than whether it's proprietary or not. (Projects like NSM help here, though I still haven't started using its session management as much as I should.) _Most_ software and physical equipment will start up with _most_ of its settings either where you last left them, or at reasonable defaults. The devil is in the "most" part... _Some_ software needs you to spend time setting things up at the start of your session. _Some_ equipment can't be powered on subsequent to or simultaneous with certain other equipment. _Some_ equipment has settings that don't get remembered at power-up, and sometimes this is even true in equipment that actually does persistently keep most of the other settings on the same device -- but not all the settings, leaving a few settings that still need to be set every time that device is powered on. The more stuff (hardware and software) you use in your studio, the more of this "some" stuff you'll have in your startup routine, stuff that doesn't _quite_ have everything ready to go when you start it, or needs to have something else turned on first before you can power it up. All of this conspires to make the dream of hitting a big master power switch and double-clicking an icon to get started an impossible fantasy, replaced instead with an initialization procedure that resembles preparing for a rocket launch to the moon, complete with crew health check and a final countdown as we check through all equipment and make sure all systems are go for liftoff. And dude, you just wanted to jam, ok? By the time you get done, you're more in the frame of mind to go off in a corner and write something clever in Perl. The artistic moment is lost (along with about 45 minutes of your life). I find this is true not just with proprietary software, but any studio that just has a lot of stuff in it -- any kind of stuff. I sometimes have fond memories of an ESQ-1, a Mirage, an RX7 drum machine, and a 4-track tape recorder, maybe a delay pedal on an effects loop. So primitive, so easy to get stuff done on...and no rediculous setup ritual that takes over half an hour and leaves you feeling like a rocket scientist. My studio is all about boutique unobtainium. :) Have you tried hdspmixer? It's a partial clone of TotalMix, but I don't think it works with all RME products. It works very well with my Multiface II though. Going back to something you said in an earlier message about having to surrender Wavelab and other software from Windows: I find that Wine actually does surprisingly well with that sort of thing, especially lately. The days when Wine could barely run WIN16 Solitaire are long gone. These days, there is a whole cult of people who run very demanding first person shooter games with it, hardware-accelerated 3D and all. It will see your local ALSA MIDI devices and display them in the Windows app as though it were running native on your desktop. My gripe with Wine for music is that there is still no MIDI support for WIN16 (Windows 3.1) programs. I have a lot of very old equipment, and some of it actually is supported by ancient WIN16 programs. I'm sure the developers are concentrating on what most users want, and that's probably not MIDI support for Windows 3.1 stuff. Anyway, I generally agree: If I were to base my studio around proprietary software on a proprietary OS, that would be just one more thing that I'd be depending on keeping functional over time, in addition to all the vintage equipment. At least the gear has soul, but I'm pretty sure that Windows has never had one.

On 2/14/21 9:51 PM, Louigi Verona wrote: Indeed, however ensuring that development can continue can be crucial. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCORE_(software)#Abandonment is a prime example. When Prof. Smith passed away, so died any means to continue the software that is still in widespread use. recently leaned that from https://youtu.be/XGo4PJd1lng?t=976 -- robin

On Sun, Feb 14, 2021 at 11:49:07PM +0100, Louigi Verona wrote: That's an asymptotic difference. If proprietary software gets truly abandoned without its source code being released under a libre license, then that's an implacable barrier to continued development. It's *impossible* to do it legally, no matter how much will and skill is available. If Free Software gets abandoned, then interested developers/packagers can and sometimes do decide to maintain or extend it. Is this guaranteed? No, of course not. But is it possible? Yes. And does it happen? Yes, frequently. As I say, an asymptotic difference. -- A: When it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: When is top-posting a bad thing? () ASCII ribbon campaign. Please avoid HTML emails & proprietary /\ file formats. (Why? See e.g. https://v.gd/jrmGbS ). Thank you.

Don't forget FLOSS and proprietary are not mutually exclusive. I use the wonderful Harrison Mixbus 32C which is the best analog-modelled digital mixing interface built on the solid Ardour base. They share at least one developer and Harrison flows some financial support back to Ardour afaik. Beautiful synergy! Re the upgrade incompatibility issue, proprietary software doesn't have that to itself. Mixbus 5 had some features which were changed enough to cause problems if you loaded the sessions in Mixbus 6 and the corresponding Ardour versions were the same (thinking of the inline sidechain for one). But it's possible and even encouraged to keep as many versions as you like installed at once. Cheers, Roger

On 15/2/21 12:28 pm, Sam Kuper wrote: I recommend to at least try the (slightly limited) free demo. The mixer section is unparalleled in DAW land. Harrison often run sales and the basic version of Mixbus can sometimes be had for maybe $49 or even less (subscribe to their email when you get the demo to be notified of special sales). Mixbus 32C is an advanced version which is rather more pricey but nevertheless I don't regret buying it.

Dear Louigi (and other readers), I encourage you to skip to the bottom of this email before you read the rest. My core point is there. The rest is just exposition. Thank you for understanding. On Mon, Feb 15, 2021 at 11:36:28AM +0100, Louigi Verona wrote: Unfortunately, this *is* a matter of luck. Below, I explain why I did not search the web for the specific things you have searched for. But first, I'll address each of those three software products you mention. Bitwig: I did not mention Bitwig. I have never used Bitwig. Unfortunately for me, it was not an option when I was initially auditioning DAWs, because it did not exist then. Nor was I fortunate enough to hear of it until after I had already encountered most or all of the problems that I previously described in this thread. Nor was I fortunate enough to learn, until you mentioned this today in your message to which I am replying, that it might be what in *my experience* is quite a rare thing: a large proprietary package without most or all of those problems. FL Studio: I did not mention FL Studio. Unfortunately for me, when I auditioned FruityLoops (which was before it was renamed to FL Studio), it did not seem to be an adequate substitute for "full-fledged" DAWs like Cakewalk, Cubase, Logic, or Pro Tools. Perhaps that has changed since then, I don't know. If so, then I am unfortunate not to have known that. Also, at the time I dropped FruityLoops from my DAW audition shortlist, I was unfortunate not to foresee the problems I would in the future experience with proprietary audio software, so the licensing and compatibility policies for the software I was auditioning were not a factor to which I paid much attention during the auditioning process. As I said in an earlier email, I now very much regret that ignorance; it was most unfortunate. I was perhaps also unfortunate insofar as at that time, there was much less information available about licensing and compatibility in general, which made these areas much easier to overlook. Ableton Live: I did mention Live. But what I did not mention was that it was never part of my workflow. I don't think I ever even installed a trial version. Instead, I auditioned it at a shop for musical equipment. At that time, like FruityLoops, it did not seem to me to be an adequate substitute for "full-fledged" DAWs like Cakewalk, Cubase, Logic, or Pro Tools. Like FruityLoops, perhaps that has changed since then, I don't know. Like FruityLoops, if so, then I am unfortunate not to have known that. Like FruityLoops, at the time I dropped Live from my DAW audition shortlist, I was unfortunate not to foresee the problems I would in the future experience with proprietary audio software, so the licensing and compatibility policies for the software I was auditioning were not a factor to which I paid much attention during the auditioning process. As I said in an earlier email, I now very much regret that ignorance; it was most unfortunate. I was perhaps also unfortunate insofar as at that time, there was much less information available about licensing and compatibility in general, which made these areas much easier to overlook. For me, the difference between Live and FruityLoops was that although I put them both on a notional shortlist to re-audition if/when I wanted a PC-based sequencer for live performance, Live struck me as being by far the most potentially-useful of the two. I was almost certain Live would become part of my regular toolset at some point. So far, though, I have not had cause to audition PC-based sequencers for live performance. So, so far, Live has not become part of my toolset. And in the interim, I was unfortunate enough to experience, with other pieces of proprietary software, the problems described previously in this thread. Because of those experiences, Live now feels like a risk to me even though its current licensing and compatibility policies look decent. What if Ableton changes is licensing policy in the future? If it were Free Software, that would not matter: as with OpenSolaris, one or more community forks would probably emerge, that I would be able to continue using. But it is not Free Software: it is proprietary software, and relying upon it is therefore a gamble that I will not, at this point in my life, take happily, because: (a) I never liked knowingly taking an unnecessary gamble; (b) I had terrible luck gambling on proprietary software in the past (so if I did by a Live license, I would half expect Ableton to suddenly discontinue Live a few months later or something!); and (c) in any case, I would rather live in a libre world and direct my limited remaining energies towards that. Again, a matter of luck. Over the last decade or two, I have spent literally months researching and reading about many aspects of software licensing, and also about software-based music production. Unfortunately for me, I did not previously encounter those particular pieces of information that you provided in your email to which I am replying. (And why would I? Initially, my focus was on firefighting the problems I was experiencing at the time. Later, having learned that there was a whole libre world in which several entire subsets of those problems were reliably absent, my focus shifted to that. I did not, and still do not, see much advantage in searching for proprietary software that can do for me what libre software can do for me. Which is why, as I said in my email of 2021-02-14-18:10+0000, "the only pieces of proprietary music software that I still find tempting are Ableton Live and RME TotalMix". Those are the only two pieces of proprietary audio software I know of that can do things of interest to *me* for which I *currently* know of no libre alternative that *I* would find adequate in a use-case where I felt that I needed that functionality.) *Some* plugins are fine on that front. I have not said otherwise. But not all of them are. The key point is: *your* good fortune with Orange Vocoder, and perhaps with all of the proprietary plugins you have ever used, is no help to *me* if one or more of the proprietary plugins that any of *my* old projects relied on does not work in a modern DAW (or does not work on x86, or possesses some other severe incompatibility), when I revisit that project. (Put differently: to think that your good fortune is necessarily experienced by me, is an example of "psychological projection": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection . I am sure you are well-intentioned; but I still have plugins that don't work!) Having addressed that, here is a request that we end this subthread. It started with me *thanking* Jeanette for her amazing symphony, and for sharing details of her libre software setup that were interesting to me. Jeanette's wonderful composition and skilled use of her uncommon software were my entire *intended* focus when I started posting in this thread. I was grateful for the opportunity to learn from Jeanette's success specifically. Any other remarks from me at that early point in the thread were intended only as peripheral context for the reader; explainations of *why* I was grateful. I did not intend those peripheral remarks to raise discussion themselves, and especially not discussion beyond Jeanette's setup and how it had enabled the production of a beautiful home symphony. I particularly did not anticipate the subsequent criticism that I would receive later on - effectively being asked to justify my own lived experiences - for explaining what I had originally intended overwhelmingly as a statement of gratitude. If I miscommunicated my intentions, I apologise. Perhaps I should have explicitly delineated the peripheral remarks as not intended for further discussion, but it did not seem necessary at the time. Evidently, several people on this list have had better fortune with proprietary software than I did, and were puzzled by my misfortune. Well, OK, we've addressed that. If I offended any of you by the way in which I now seek to avoid future misfortune, again I apologise: offence was never my intention. True, I now much prefer libre software, but I have presented reasons for that preference that I consider adequate. Reasonable people can disagree about adequacy (and some of you have disagreed with me), but doing so is not always productive. In any case, I hope that - especially on this mailing list where we all have an interest in at least some libre software - a person's preference for libre software will not continue to be held against them. So as I say, please, let's put that sidetrack aside now. Allow me to return to the original topic: ############################################################ Here's to Jeanette, whose diverse and impressive compositions and recordings have brightened many of our days. What a treat to have a kind of Bachoven in our midst! And here's to the many software developers and hardware engineers (and other musicians, in the case of Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra) whose noble work built all the tools and instruments that made her music possible. Thank you! I am *super* excited to learn of Nama, and I am really looking forward to learning more about it. Thank you, for this, too, Jeanette! And I am *super* grateful to be subscribed to this mailing list, where many of you continue to post great music and to showcase useful libre software that I didn't know existed. Thank you to everybody who does that! ############################################################ In gratitude, Sam -- A: When it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: When is top-posting a bad thing? () ASCII ribbon campaign. Please avoid HTML emails & proprietary /\ file formats. (Why? See e.g. https://v.gd/jrmGbS ). Thank you.