[LAU] nama

[Joel Roth]

On Mon, Oct 25, 2010 at 06:08:58PM +0400, alex stone wrote:
> Joel, off and running smoothly, with the git build of Nama (no, i'm
> not getting cocky, i got lucky)

It's only difficult when it's broken. :-)

I wrote my own limited tool to preprocess the source,
patching in automatically generated parts of the grammar,
inserting files, etc. Otherwise Nama's build process can
hardly compare to the complexity of compiled code.

> A quick note for you, the SPACE bar doesn't work when the GUI is open.
> I can run the transport in GUI mode with weird stuff like CTRL+ALT,
> and CTRL+SHIFT though, although this clashes with my much loved and
> cared for Fluxbox keybinding set.

I thought maybe Ctrl-Space, but I don't remember exactly.
There was some reason that (I thought) I couldn't use space
by itself under Tk.

> The text mode is good, and well laid out in terms of usability. (i.e.
> i'm in qwerty heaven here) Lots of user mistakes, but the momentum is
> forward at least. I'm still getting my head around recording multiple
> wavs in a track (positioning the rec start time, etc) but that will
> come.
> 
> I assume that any editing of a wav should occur in an external wav
> editor like Rezound, but i ask if there's any non destructive
> functions in Nama to add fade ins and outs, etc...

nama> h fade
 
> This also begs the next question, is there a means to create
> automation for tracks as yet?

Beyond simple fades, you can manually create envelopes,
using Ecasound's controllers.
 
In future we expect to be able to capture MIDI control
inputs and play them back with track.

Some way tools for defining envelopes will be helpful, too

> I'm off to explore some more, but this is very interesting to use, and
> quite fast with a little practise.
> 
> Who needs X. Or a mouse....:)

They have their place, but can be fiddly, and it's easy
to accidentally click stuff that you don't understand.

It's amazing to me that no one has tried to write text-based
DAW (unless there is one for Emacs that we don't know about
:-)

> Alex.
> 
> p.s. You're right. Ecasound is very stable. No problems here at all
> once it was installed properly.

It's one of Nama's killer features. A very powerful stable
engine, and one we don't have to maintain. (Thanks Kai!)

-- 
Joel Roth