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Music Media Software Programming Linux IT Technology

Rosegarden Developers Interviewed by O'Reilly 189

Posted by michael from the i-am-your-angel-of-music dept.
rayk_sland writes "Users of the Rosegarden Sequencer project will be gratified to see it featured in O'Reilly's Linux DevCenter web magazine. I am a devoted fan of this program, which allows the user to sequence music using classical music notation, and has many other sequencer features I haven't even properly fathomed (read the article.) The Rosegarden project has recently released a 'pre-1' beta. Almost time for those party streamers..."
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Rosegarden Developers Interviewed by O'Reilly More

Rosegarden Developers Interviewed by O'Reilly

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  • Rosegarden looks absolutely fantastic. Unfortunately, its dependancy on KDElibs and QT make it impractical for me to build it in a reasonable amount of time (I'm on gentoo, so binaries for everything isn't really an option) and its layout makes it impossible for me to use it in ratpoison (my WM of choice) anyway.

    Looks nice, but definitely could use some work in the dependancy and UI area.

    • Re:Rosegarden looks fantastic (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Could you be in anymore of a niche? Do you really think that they're going to make changes for a single Gentoo user who uses Ratpoison as a WM and is not willing to wait the time to compile the supporting libs? Good luck with that. If you're in a ridiculously small niche it should be well understood that you're going to have to deal with some small inconveniences to do what everyone else is doing (i.e. having to build the supporting libs).
    • It is the only reason I have QT/KDE libs on my PC. But there is something else very interesting in all this. Because the original Rosegarden developer started his programming in GTK-- and moved over to QT :)

      I do hope someday there will be a GTK2 interface for this great program, it will minimize the compile time a lot.
    • But once you get it all built, just think how much faster it will run on your system than on other people's ;-)
      • Thats not the point. The point is QT is a huge monolithic toolkit (it even contains GUI unrelated stuff like file operations). It would be better if it would be cleanly split in modules, so only those libs *needed* have to be installed. (I dont have to tell you about the advantages of modularisation, have I?)
        But I guess someone wants to sell the package as a whole ...

        • But I guess someone wants to sell the package as a whole ...

          OK, then! Tell you what I'm gonna do. I'll split up kdelibs and email you the 'modules' for only ninety-nine ninety nine apiece! Take your pick! Think of the convenience!

          • I'll split up kdelibs and email you the 'modules' for only ninety-nine ninety nine apiece!
            I wasnt talking about kde. I was talking about QT. It claims to be platform independant. But it isnt for GPL software (see windows license). Its current design is making it hard to use QT *only* for GUI stuff and using libs that are crossplatform under GPL without generating much duplicate code on the system.
            Think of the convenience!
            Trust your package manager, Luke.

    • Re:Rosegarden looks fantastic (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      And for those that think Gentoo/Ratpoison isn't so mainstream...

      Rosegarden doesn't work on Fedora Core3 either.

  • oreilly (Score:1, Redundant)

    by tomjen ( 839882 )
    Thats is what i love about oreilly, they have so much good info.

    • You must mean Bill O'Reilly (Score:5, Funny)

      by gad_zuki! ( 70830 ) on Sunday December 19, 2004 @07:31PM (#11133277)
      BO: Tell me comrades, what makes you want to give away these products and go open source? Communism? Beatles music? Liberal guilt!?!?!

      Guillaume Laurent: Well, first off..

      BO: Wait, are you french?

      Guillaume Laurent: Yes I am from France and I don't see why that should be held against me, in fact the relationaship between the US and France has always been one of [interuption]

      BO: Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!

  • ...but the story submitter said so.

    From the page...
    Rosegarden is a professional audio and MIDI sequencer, score editor, and general-purpose music composition and editing environment.

    What I just want to get are specs... How many tracks at once does it promise ?
    Logic Pro does more than enough and Cubase was much slower.

  • Prototyping Music. (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Harmony Navigator [cognitone.com]

  • stability (Score:3, Informative)

    by polyp2000 ( 444682 ) on Sunday December 19, 2004 @03:10PM (#11131526) Homepage Journal
    I've tried Rosegarden a couple of times - looks to be a very promising package - i've even contributed some stuff to the project. Last time i tried it though (probably 6-12 months ago) it had a tendancy to die unexpectedly rendering it fairly useless for anything serious. Its good to see its now approaching a final release. I will be trying this out to see how its been coming along - and maybe ... just maybe I can actually write some tunes under linux...

    • Re:stability (Score:3, Informative)

      by unit01 ( 583255 )
      I have it running on an amd 64 gentoo system and the stability is great. combined with the JACK audio connection kit its blindly powerful. Dan
    • I couldn't find it on the site..but, can Rosegarden import from powertabs editor? I'm learning guitar, and my teacher uses PT quite a lot. I can get PT up with wine, but, it crashes when I try to open a file.

      This would be nice if it would import/export PT files....

  • Wow! I haven't looked at the rosegarden project in a long time, but from looking at those screenshots, they have come a LONGGGG way. I remember when it used to just be a very simple notation program.

    Open Source is getting there. Wherever there may be.
    • Yeah -- the "new Rosegarden", which is commonly known as Rosegarden 4, is miles ahead of the "old Rosegarden", Rosegarden 2. It's basically a complete rewrite, with all of the nifty features carried over (and then some), but brought into the modern age. I like! Looks like it ought to give Noteedit a run for its money.
      • Looks like it ought to give Noteedit a run for its money.

        You may not be aware, but Noteedit is no longer under development. Which is a real pity, because it was starting to become a really useful tool that had no pretensions to be anything but a notation editor.

        I don't mind Rosegarden, but all I need is a notation editor, and a full blown midi environment (which is very pretty, by the way) is overkill. In actual fact, it confuses me a lot, which says more about me than the program!

        Kudos to the devs th

        • Indeed. Noteedit is all I was really after, too, and Rosegarden turned out to be way too big and complex for what I needed. If only a few of the more serious bugs in Noteedit were fixed, I'd be quite happy with it. Maybe it's time to see if I can decipher the code. I know me some C++, but nothing about KDE internals.

  • Excellent news... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Kozz ( 7764 )
    ...for all those who've been told they were never promised Rosegarden.

  • Lilypond (Score:5, Informative)

    by gtrubetskoy ( 734033 ) * on Sunday December 19, 2004 @03:38PM (#11131718)

    Looks like Rosegarden can export to Lilypond, which is by far the best music notation program AFAIAC. For years in our choir there were sheets made using Finale, and when I remade one using Lilypond people were asking me where is the book that this came from, it just looks so professional. They have a great paper [lilypond.org] on this .
    • AFAIK, Lilypond is the only way to generate a printed score from Rosegarden. I'm surprised that they never even mention Lilypond in the article or the interview -- seems a little ungracious. I'm not interested in midi or electronic music per se, so to me, Rosegarden is just a not-very-functional GUI front-end for Lilypond.

      Lilypond is great, although it's still in a state of rapid change. I hope one day they make the project stable enough that, e.g., people can depend on the Lilypond language not to keep on

      • AFAIK, Lilypond is the only way to generate a printed score from Rosegarden

        No, you can print directly from Rosegarden as well. The results won't compete with Lilypond, but they're readable.

    • Re:Lilypond (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "The most obvious difference is that MusE doesn't have a score editor"

      There's a editor for muse here [sourceforge.net]

      If you are using lilypond on windows (or not), I would highly recommend LilyTool for JEdit [sourceforge.net]
  • Brainless Manager: Where's my deliverables! We're past our due date!

    Rosegarden Developer: It'll be done when it's done. I never promised you a--DOH! Uh, I'll get those deliverables to you by noon, sir. <grumbles>stupid project names</grumbles>

  • RTA? (Score:1, Redundant)

    by RealBeanDip ( 26604 )
    ...and has many other sequencer features I haven't even properly fathomed (read the article.)...

    RTA... you're kidding, right?

  • NoteEdit (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    NoteEdit [tu-chemnitz.de] is also decent for sheet music to Lilypond if that's what you're looking for.

    Unfortunately the project is half-dead due to percieved disinterest. Doesn't make it less functional though.

  • OSX (Score:1)

    by omeomi ( 675045 )
    Seems like a wise decision would be to follow Audacity's example and to release an OSX port...Windows would be nice as well, but I guess OSX is more likely. In all honesty, many musicians aren't going to want to take the time to futz with compiling relatively unproven software on Linux.

    • I don't think Linux has a realistic shot at beating down Apple (Logic), Steinberg (Nuendo, Cubase), Cakewalk (Sonar), Digidesign (Protools) and MOTU (Digital Performer) without any kind of differentiation. Basically, OSX and WinXP work for these kind of apps now, there's little gain to be had in moving to a new OS. Rosegarden is doing very well in that it has moved from totally impractical (a couple of years ago) to borderline usable (now) as regards actually doing anything musical. However look at what

      • I wonder if http://www.agnula.org/ [agnula.org] might be what you're looking for. This is actually two distros (one Debian based, the other Red Hat) specifically designed with music workstations in mind. The subsystem is configured from the ground up (low-latency kernels, jackd works out of the box, apparently, and so on).

        The project was originally funded by the European Commission, and is still going since official funding ceased. It's got some work to do still, but I'm thinking about pulling it down and having a pla

      • I don't think Linux has a realistic shot at beating down Apple (Logic), Steinberg (Nuendo, Cubase), Cakewalk (Sonar), Digidesign (Protools) and MOTU (Digital Performer) without any kind of differentiation.

        I dunno...right now, all of the good sequencers are pretty expensive, so there's definitely a market on the Mac/PC for a somewhat decent, free sequencer. For instance, I own Logic 5.1 for Windows, which I use for recording and stuff, but I have an OSX laptop that I use for performances, etc. However, I

        • My real issue with both this and AGNULA is they're still too big, while failing to provide the weight of musical features to go with the installed size. I'm really just looking for a box that has as little as possible running on it.

          If you have a look at things like hardware samplers, they're basically just PCs with a very minimal amount of operating system and enough software to drive a little bit of proprietary sampler hardware. There's very little to go wrong, and if it does go wrong then re-installin

  • ARGH!!!! (Score:2, Troll)

    by Spy der Mann ( 805235 )
    Mod me troll if you want (uh but flamebait preferred :) ), but i'm getting tired of Linux-only releases in a cross-platform world.

    And considering that the majority of music users use, well, WINDOWS... (my dad always bought windows music products. I think Rosengarden is missing a huge potential market: Windows users.

    I tried freeware Windows MIDI sequencers a couple of years ago, all sucked. So I'd gladly appreciate if the Rosengarden devs made their software cross-platform, now that it's STILL IN EARLY dev

    • Re:ARGH!!!! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by don.g ( 6394 ) <don&dis,org,nz> on Sunday December 19, 2004 @05:44PM (#11132554) Homepage
      Some open source developers disagree [www.fefe.de] with you.

      Open source developers usually write software because they want to use it. If they don't want to use it with Windows, then why should they port it just to satisfy some whinging Windows users? Especially the "I couldn't code my way out of a soggy paper bag, but Doing This Would Make Open Source Succeed*!" sort.

      * Succeed being defined as "do what I want it to do"
      • And that's one of the main the reason open source doesn't catch on as well as it should - (hey, it's free - now why do so many people insist on paying for stuff? I wonder why everybody isn't getting a refund on MS products and sending donations to OSS projects... ).

        It's because most developers do it for themselves - as an interesting project, not considering what the user needs (not to mention 0 market research usually). That's cool (I'm a dev myself and do stuff for the fun of it), but whining about why
        • Consider Firefox or OpenOffice NOT having Windows ports..
          Firefox and OOo were cross-platform even from their pre-open-source roots, so they where not really ported.
          FF and OO are means to keep/get critical infrastructure (the www and Office-documents) to a open standard.
          Rosegarden is not comparable to this.
        • What do you suggest then? Hobbyists should hand over their code to a Big Company who will make sure that the market is more completely satisfied and that all users have what they want?

          Rosegarden is GPL. If a Big Company wants to do the aforementioned, what's stopping them?

      • I just read that page. It starts OK but then it becomes a little radical... saying that porting something to Solaris will only help Sun seems a bit extreme to me.

        I can easily imagine people in a situation where they need a certain open source library to work on Solaris and they have no other choice. They can't install Linux on the machine because it's not theirs to control, maybe there are some other apps running there that are solaris-only. Or they developed their own app on Linux but it turns out this pa

    • Well, it uses QT and such, so with the exception of the audio code it shouldn't be to hard to port if it's written well.

      But the audio code is the sticker. There is no free cross-platform sound code (other than relativly simple stuff like SDL (simple by comparison to some of the more interesting things you can do native)). So if you were to port the audio engine, then it should be easy. Either that or write an ALSA emulation layer for Windows or OS X.

      Graphics are portable thanks to toolkits and OpenGL/SDL.

      • But the audio code is the sticker. There is no free cross-platform sound code (other than relativly simple stuff like SDL (simple by comparison to some of the more interesting things you can do native)). So if you were to port the audio engine, then it should be easy. Either that or write an ALSA emulation layer for Windows or OS X.

        Actually, PortAudio solves the cross-platform audio problem quite well (cf. audacity), although I don't know if Rosegarden uses it. But, the QT toolkit may be the real stumbli
        • We've discussed portaudio recently. Although we haven't seriously looked at it yet, it seems to be a very good candidate.

          However, MacOS/X has Garage Band and Logic, Windows has Cubase, Cakewalk... I'm not sure how much of a "market share" Rosegarden could have on those platforms, where free software is less of an issue.

    • Re:ARGH!!!! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by chromatic ( 9471 ) on Sunday December 19, 2004 @06:26PM (#11132843) Homepage

      It's not that simple.

      I maintain a couple of and contribute to a few free software projects. I can build and test on a couple of architectures and a couple of operating systems on my own. I don't have Windows installed, and if it weren't for one machine a roommate uses only to run an accounting program, there wouldn't be an installation of Windows in my home. (That machine has no network connection.)

      If I want to know that that software runs on Windows, I have to rely on other programmers who not only can and do run Windows but can and do build software there. I can understand why there seem to be so few of them -- the last time I tried, it was an awful experience -- but telling developers that they should write software that works on Windows is fairly useless.

      If you want good free software that runs on Windows, go to this supposedly huge, untapped market, find people capable of developing, testing, and submitting bugs, and point them at those projects that wouldn't mind running on Windows if they had a little help.

    • Do it! (Score:2)

      by bluGill ( 862 )

      Its open source. By definition that means the source code is there and waiting for you to do the work. The Rosegarden developers don't care about MS Windows, because that have linux. If you care, either do it yourself, or hire someone to do it for you. For $250,000 I'll port it for you. (It should be easy for you to find someone willing to do it for less, I hate Windows development so I'm charging a lot extra for the pain of doing something I don't like to do)

    • There are plenty of Windows-only applications out there that do what you want. This is an effort to bring missing functionality to Linux. It's not about market share for Rosegarden per se, although the availability of a free MIDI environment under Linux is likely to bring more people to both Linux and Rosegarden. There are even bootable CDs that come with Rosegarden pre-installed. It's freely available, and you can have now if you're willing to exercise a few neurons.

      Your argument is akin to complaining ab
    • If people insist on spending money for Windows, they can also spend money on programs for Windows - especially when relevant APIs are very different (MIDI and audio stuff). I've noticed a number of open source projects that provide the source for free (as in beer and freedom) but sell the (supported) Windows build. Sounds reasonable to me.
      1. Many of us don't use Windows--how then are we supposed to develop therefor?
      2. We like freedom; why would we want to support a platform which is not free?
      3. You have Windows--surely you could figure out how to port Rosegarden.
    • I think there is a simple answer to this particular case.

      Rosegarden works a lot with sound and MIDI. It's built on top of the Linux audio architecture (ALSA). ALSA is free software, so Rosegarden can use it and still be free software.

      On Windows, Rosegarden would have to use whatever API Windows has for audio, and that's not free software. Maybe there is a license conflict that prohibits the Rosegarden developers from having code that calls that windows API, or maybe they just don't want to call a non-free
      • That seems a little surreal. There'a a couple of APIs on Windows for low-latency audio, WDM/KS (which is the Microsoft driver API) or ASIO (... a Steinberg creation). ASIO would maybe prove a problem, but if there was an issue with FOSS software calling Microsoft APIs then there would be absolutely nothing on the Windows platform at all, which is obviously not the case.
    • Qt on Windows is proprietary
  • Even one that uses Cygwin? I'd hate to have to try to run this thing in VMware (Unless somebody can point out a faster way to run Linux in Windows)
    • This might help you...

      Cooperative Linux [colinux.org] is the first working free and open source method for optimally running Linux on Microsoft Windows natively. More generally, Cooperative Linux (short-named coLinux) is a port of the Linux kernel that allows it to run cooperatively alongside another operating system on a single machine. For instance, it allows one to freely run Linux on Windows 2000/XP, without using a commercial PC virtualization software such as VMware, in a way which is much more optimal than using

    • If you have a spare computer with decent specs, just network it, install linux, install all your wanted linux apps, and use them with Cygwin/X. That would be the fastest way, I think. If you need your windows files... try samba sharing.
  • like O'Reilly's last interview! [drudgereport.com]

  • midi dependancy is a huge problem (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 19, 2004 @05:52PM (#11132610)
    Midi dependancy is a huge problem for accurate music notation. There is a big difference between performance and notation.Great music notation is only a guidline for the performer. However a really great composer can through notation, get across very complex ideas and ideals. Just look at the original scores of Stavinsky.

    The trouble I have with Linux music notation is that to use it one practically needs to be a skilled programmer not a composer. Lilypond is on the right track, being a very powerfull parser of an input script, it has the potential to become the very best notation engine around. Rosegarden is a valient attempt to do everything for everybody. So it has the unenviable task of trying to code for midi and notation.

    Human performance, by nature is not perfect, the task of cleaning up notation created with midi can be very daunting indeed. The skills of a composer are needed, unfortunately these are skills that require study well beyond what the average musician of today has.

    To get to the point, having midi input totally separate from the notation gui, and reducing the program overhead to facilitate notation is a goal that cannot be ignored. Perhaps a non midi dependant gui is the only real answer. Programs like Score, (San Andreas), Musedit, Speedscore, Finale and a few others already do this. However few if any have the scoring elegance of Lilypond. It would be great if a Linux gui like KDE or Gnome included an effective music notation gui.

  • I always think "Shut up! Shut up! Cut his Mike."
  • Rosegarden looks neat and all, but does anyone know of an app that does Nashville-style chord notation? I can't seem to do it in HTML, and MathML syntax totally escapes me, though that might be able to render it well enough.

    What is it? I guess it's called other things, but basically it's chord progressions jotted down as numbers. Instead of

    C...F...G^7...C
    Am..Dm..G^7...C

    you would write

    1...4...5^7...1
    6-..2-..5^7...1

    Also, instead of putting chords directly above the words, like most guitar charts d

    • Sibelius 3 does it - Sibelius is fast beginning to replace Finale as the preferred notation programme. I use it, as a composer, and it works better than anything else I've ever used. Notation also looks a bit nicer than Finale, and most other things - apart from LilyPond of course :-P i just need to work out a way to get Sibelius to export to LilyPond. If you're under linux, I think you might be in strife though, although there is a OSX port I think. For memory, Sibelius 2 worked fine under WINE when i trie
      • a trumpets G above the staff is slightly sharp, for instance.

        Any trumpet player who is confident of playing this note in a public setting should be quite capable of allowing for these mistunings without even thinking about it.

        If they can't, I don't think changing the key's going to help.

        Good point though.

        • You're quite right - of course most people will not notice that a trumpet's g4 is a cent or two sharp when played by a professional trumpet player. My point was, there are subtle differences in woodwind instruments - bringing the g4 into correct pitch by slightly loosening the lips makes a slightly different tone, for example. There is also a significant difference in tone between a c4 and a d4, because they are in different harmonics - even the best trumpet players cannot hide that. A clarinet's middle ran
          • Yeah, don't worry about me---it was way too late for me to be reading /.!

            Fussiness is good, and I think today's era of scores being proofread by midi instead of real musicians somewhat parallels the way that people think they can write because the grammar checker in Word passes whatever it is they wrote.

            You got me thinking about the differences in tone in brass instruments (which is all I really know.) Even two instruments of the same make and model---even the same batch number---can be out of tune on any
      • But yes, it does do Nashville-style chord notation - why you'd use that instead of standard jazz notation is beyond me, it pisses me off - to me the key the music is in is important

        I agree, but feel that the benefits are worth it. If your band has enough brains to decypher number-based "hieroglyphics" (now there's an old term for you), it's a joy to not have to hold their hands while they figure out how to play a tune in a different key, or modulate a half-step in the middle of one.

        Once I figured out Na

  • >...we neither have the time to fully document the code...

    This is so totally untrue that it is sad the people still say this. Documentation is essential for both bug fixing and new features even if it is a one-person project that is going to last more than a few months. The time saved is enormous when you have to revisit code you wrote some time back. Not only in understanding the code but also to help not writing additional code that breaks previous code. And if there is more than one person on a p
    • It does take a bit of discipline

      To say the least. There's gotta be a reason why, in my 10 years of working as a software engineer, I've never seen this done on any project in any company.

      The reason is that beyond discipline, maintaining code documentation is also a huge time eater (it does save time too but it's no free lunch). That is, even a simple refactoring will take like 3 times as long because you'll have to update the doc accordingly. And when you're working in fragmented time like it's generally

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