Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Playing with Bristol
After playing around with Bristol for a little while, I can say that this is some serious fun. I used to have a book of vintage keyboards and wished that I could play with them. Now, here they all are under Linux. The ARP synths are especially fun. JACK support is missing right now, but is being worked on. In the picture above, I was playing 3 synths at once. See posts below for info on downloading Bristol.
Here's a list of equivalent synth emulations from Bristol:
Arp Axxe
Arp Odyssey
Arp 2600
Moog Mini
Moog Voyager (Bristol "Explorer")
Sequential Circuits Prophet-5
Sequential Circuits Prophet-10
Sequential Circuits Prophet-52 (the '5' with chorus)
Roland Juno-6
Yamaha DX-7 (Well, perhaps an FM-7)
Hammond (single manual) module
Hammond B3 (dual manual - see below)
Vox Continental
Fender Rhodes
Fender Rhodes Bass Piano
Oberheim OB-X
Oberheim OB-Xa
Korg MonoPoly
Korg Poly6
Mixer (-libtest only)
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
New Version of Rosegarden 1.4.0
"Rosegarden is a professional audio and MIDI sequencer, score editor, and general-purpose music composition and editing environment." from the Rosegarden Homepage.
This is a well developed Linux project that is making great strides toward excellence in music applications on Linux. Be sure to check this one out.
Picture from Rosegarden Homepage. Download the program there!
Take a tour of Rosegarden.
Virtual Synth: Bristol 0.9.5-60
A new version of Bristol, a synth emulation package that models Moogs, Arps, Hammonds, Rhoads, Oberheim and many more synthsizers is now available.
Screenshot from here.
Get Bristol at it's Homepage.
Click the 0.9.3 dropdown and the new 0.9.5-60 will appear under it or download here (direct link).
Thursday, September 14, 2006
New Free Tunes made with Linux
From this post on Linux Audio User comes some tunes:
Created in reverse cronological order over a period of about half a year using mainly: linux, muse, soundfonts, ladspa plugins, more ladspa plugins, some gigs pod's, guitars, microphones, deformed ears and total lack of sense. For the genreholics out there I would put them in the following categories, top to bottom: spam-metal/ambient/blues/mono-metal/jazz/bluesfusion
For more info about the songs and also older material see the site:
http://spamatica.se/musicsite/
Friday, September 08, 2006
Links: More Linux music links than you can imagine
"Sound and MIDI Software For Linux" is one of the oldest, most respective Linux music sites on the net. Here, categorically arranged, are every type of music and audio application for Linux, from Audio Plugins to Hardware to Mixers to Software Synthesis and more, this is a huge cache of Linux audios apps.
The New Additions page is a good place to start, to see the latest apps. One problem is that many of the entries may link to projects that have been abandoned, or are outdated, so it pays to look for stuff that is updated, however, there are also many good "finished" apps that are perfectly useful, though not updated frequently.
The site appears to be updated about every two months, so it follows that a new update might appear sometime in the next month or so.
Take a look and start exploring the diverse selection of Linux music applications.
Sound and MIDI Software for Linux
Thursday, September 07, 2006
Release: Musix 059
This Musix 0.59 CD is now available for download. View the release announcement.
Some highlights:
- Graphical Installation
- New Hardware Detection
- Over 650 packages updated, new apps like Amarok
Monday, September 04, 2006
Interview: Marcos Germán Guglielmetti
Musix is a free Linux distribution geared towards making music. It is an installable, live-boot CD with a lot of applications. The creator of Musix, Marcos Guglielmetti, was kind enough to do an interview with Linux Rock Star. Musix is available at it's homepage.
What inspired you to make a Linux music distribution?
I don't know exactly: it was a sleeplessness night, I needed something difficult that could occupy my head, my thoughts... so I asked myself, "would it be difficult to make a GNU/Linux distribution?"
Also: I wanted to make an easier music distribution, easier than aGNUla/DeMuDi (for instance), because I want to see free software on any machine, so it must be easier to use: more user friendly. Musix only takes 3 or 4 minutes to startup, and there it is: fully operable.
In the process, I decided that the ideology behind GNU/Linux was exactly what I always looked for: the Ututo GNU/Linux (Daniel Olivera) & FSF people helped me so much in that direction!!
I saw Richard Stallman in a public talk on 2004, in my city, La Plata, Argentina, and I felt that the hippies were back here again, only now talking about software... so, it's not an illogical idea to join
music + free software... it's like hippie software, I think.
Could you explain a little more behind why you value free software?
I do because a subjectivity matter: when you have something developed in a community way, when people share their thoughts and advances with others, you achieve subjectivity... I mean, this huge society is used to (mal)treating you as an object: almost a human? When the subject is treated as an object, it's only a number on an enterprise statistic meaning money, just that, and it's unhealthy.
But with 100% free software it's different: you can achieve subjectivity in any part of the operating system, and you are treated as a subject by the users and developers community, you are treated as what you are, and that's healthy.
Also, you have freedom to share the software: that's a very important thing, your freedom, it's part of the subject's rights, it's a part of you and you dont have to resign that to use your hardware, or make music.
Object = slave
Subject = person with feelings and dignity
What are your favorite applications you use in Musix?
Kmail, Firefox, Rosegarden, Ardour, Hydrogen, ZynAddSubFX and Qsynth: I need a normal Desktop System and audio & MIDI sequencers, softsynths, a drum machine... just to make pop-rock music.
What plans do you have for the future of Musix?
A Live-DVD version could be a final solution to the space problems: we need to include many more music apps, for instance Muse, many other languages... and even games!, I would like to add things like torcs (a 3D racing cars simulator game using OpenGL).
Also, we need to improve hardware detection, etc., it's an enormous job that can be fulfilled only in this way: using software from Knoppix, Kanotix, Debian, etc., etc., and making our changes if needed.
Today I finished Musix 0.59, so you will see it soon on www.gnu.org, I upgraded more than 650 software packages, solved some bugs, added NTFS read/write support, a 100% graphic boot up process, the Amarok multimedia player (terrific!), and something more. Now Musix can upgrade -theoretically- an older installed version, this subject should work better. using the new Knoppix's package upgrader, and also it can -theoretically- convert a Knoppix, Debian or Ubuntu distro into a Musix distro. But I recommend making a classical new installation.
How do you compare Linux music applications to full commercially available applications?
It's a matter of freedom, if you don't care about your freedom, just don't care about this subject.
But, talking about the technical affair, Ardour is almost as good as ProTools, Gilberto Gil recorded using Ardour, so it must be a good app! There are some recording studios out there using it, for instance Mirror Image Studios (www.multitrack.us), and there is also great hardware supporting GNU/Linux, for instance RME Hamerfall soundcards (http://www.rme-audio.com/): you can record using 52 channels with this soundcard.
Rosegarden is a good music editor and MIDI/audio sequencer: there are many good people working on it. I love the practical use of Hydrogen drum machine, and the dreamy sound of ZynAddSubFX, but there are many more apps to try: Beast, LMMS, Wired, Seq24, Noteedit, etc. Jamin is an excelent mastering tool, you can do anything with it, and it was built with the help of highly qualified people, it uses the LADSPA plugins, something comparable to VST plugins.
Qsynth needs better free software soundfonts, you can help us, join at: http://opensrc.org/
Was it hard to put together a full blown distribution?
Mmmm.... not if you talk about mental capabilities, but it's hard because of time: you need a lot of time to make any distro, because the software and the hardware are always moving, growing, and you need to make a lot of changes to the software, talk to users and collaborators (there are many from Argentine, Spain, and some people from Brazil, Portugal, and other countries), discuss, analyze, learn, etc., etc., etc.
How is the weather in Argentine?
Argentine is a big country, so you have many kind of weathers... here in my town, now it's raining, we are waiting for the spring to come at September 21... the winter is a little sad to me... so I am trying to make some reggae music ;-), and I love to walk on the La Plata's "backwood" on sunny days listening songs from my mp3 player.
Muchas Gracias!
Saturday, September 02, 2006
Application: Canorus Music Score Editor
Announced on the Linux Audio Users mailing list:
"Canorus is the next generation music score editor (multiple viewports of the same score, scripting support, score source view, fast and intuitive UI, free software and cross-platform)."
I put out a first release based on the current SVN. You can fetch it from http://prdownload.berlios.de/canorus/canorus-0.0.2.tar.bz2.
Homepage: http://canorus.berlios.de
Wiki:
http://canorus.berlios.de/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
A very nice open source alternative to the commercial applications out there.
