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What Is The State Of MIDI Support Under Linux? 163

Posted by Cliff from the musicians-want-free-too dept.
CodeShark asks: "I am 99% ready to completely wipe all Windows software from my machines, but the last 1% I need to do so is an effective MIDI system that includes: a multitrack midi sequencer, a sound librarian, and notation software (outputting the midi tracks to sheet music). I've tried searching via the Web with little luck, and am wondering what is out there/in development. I'd even be willing to pick up and/or start an Open Source project in this area myself, but I don't have a lot of knowledge of where to start. Suggestions anyone?" I'm hoping that with all the newfound popularity, someone has already started exploring with Linux in music production.
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What Is The State Of MIDI Support Under Linux? More

What Is The State Of MIDI Support Under Linux?

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  • sonic foundry (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Sonic Foundry, the makers of SoundForge,Vegas, etc... have a good forum on their web page. There are a couple of threads regarding Linux. Maybe if enough Slashdot readers would go post messages and beat up on the companies who write the software, it would do some good. http://www.sonicfoundry.com

  • Re:Linux and midi (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I gave up windows 3 years ago, and just bought a used mac to do my midi work on. Allthough not the most economical choice, I find it easier to keep my music system and my reg system seperated.

    Hmm... why not get an Atari Mega ST clone? ;-) They still rock for midi and digital audio if you are gonna buy a seperate machine for that purpose..

    A LOT of midi musicians and electronic artists in general would probably LOVE to see audio apps come to a stable OS like Linux.

    I talk with a lot of musicians who work with computers and they always say "A computer is a great tool, but its just so unstable(unreliable, etc etc). Allthough, Linux isn't user friendly enough to reach the masses of electronic musicians, but with the steady progress on desktop envs etc this shouldnt be an issue 3 years down the road (and hopefully in that 3 years, we develope some halfway decent midi drivers!).

    There is a simple problem with Linux and good midi drivers. You either need a high end midi card which will do midi timing independently of the host machine (and OS) or Linux will have to get a much lower latency for realtime purposes. Its realtime resolution may be good enough in theory, bt a delay of 1/492 of a second is something you WILL hear in a recodring of a midi track, and that problem gets even bigger when you want to record a 2nd track while playing back the 1st track for example

    Those problems are not unique for linux, and linux shouldn't do worse then windows in this respect, rather it should do a bit better, however, high end midi cards are perfectly well supported with windows, and not at all with linux.
    However, it won't do as well as either a dedicated mega ST or mac, or for example a unix workstation with a unix that was optimized for realtime purposes.
    So... unless someone starts writing drivers for more serious midi cards a midi sequencer on linux is rather useless for professional work.

  • jMax is MAX for linux (and GPL too!) (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    For any people that know MAX on the MAc: Ircam is working on a fully GPL'ed version of it running on SGI and Linux now. Ports to BeOS and Windows are under way. You can find it here: http://www.ircam.fr/jmax. This project is still under heavy devellopment. Most news can be found in their newsgroups. They've been promissing a CVS-tree and an updated webpage for ages. Maybe they need a little encouragement? All people that don't know MAX: It's any entirely Object based Midi/DSP enviroment where you can create complex logical setups. This is realtime Walhalah, trust me. jMax will take this to the next level. It's client/server based and will work across any IP-network that can bare the workload. If you allways wanted to do something Cubase or Logic wouldn't do for you? Build it yourself with jMax!!! Paul Krischer paulkr@xs4all.nl
  • There are drivers for the MOTU Midi Timepiece series in the ALSA main driver distribution. I don't know about the quality of the drivers yet, but if I can get Linux to install on an old laptop I have lying around (The laptop is VERY flaky and old, unfortunately...), I'm going to ask my Music 120 (Intro to Digital Music) professor for permission to try the laptop with the MOTU unit and synths in our studio.
  • OK, this will probably get moderated down as flamebait, but I don't care...if you want to be that infantile about it, fine. :^P

    While I don't use the OS, I've been told that BeOS has decent support for MIDI stuff. Also, companies such as MOTU are really keen on BeOS because of its stability and multi-threaded nature (although I'd be willing to bet that being a commercial OS has a lot to do with it :^)

    Anyway, go trolling around and see if this would be a possible solution for ya.
  • This sounds like a neet project... Very tempting to work on. one thing which is good is that there is allready a cupple of realtime extentions to linux and it appears that there will now be standerdisation in there APIs.
  • Muse is a proper sequencer.
  • Actually, there is a solution. Benno Senoner has written a low-latency patch for the Linux kernel. While this applies to audio, it shouldn't be much trouble to take advantage of it in MIDI drivers. It's a modification of the process scheduler IIRC. See http://www.gardena.net/benno/linux/audio/ for the full story.
  • That's what Windows and MacOS are for.

    MacOS maybe. Hearing that distinctive tinkling noise from Windows after hours of keying notes can be more than a bit upsetting, especially if it's a late night bit of genius and you can't quite remember what you did...

    Besides, paying more for an OS that crashes than for your synth has an odd "suckered" kind of feeling to it.

    In recycling second-hand machines, I find that many of them are unreliable, and when I can investigate, I find out that they always have been - but because they ran Windows, which they accepted as being crashey, the users never twigged. This is (one reason) why Windows isn't ready for the desktop.
  • Jan:
    I feel I'd better correct myself: there were some 50 posts on the RoseGarden list this year.
    Indeed. But you were just as right before, really. Rosegarden 2.x is pretty much obsolete: there are still a few things it does better than its rivals, but not many, and the GUI, well, it was very pretty six years ago...

    The very ambitious Rosegarden-3 development progressed fastest when I was in a really dull job a year or more ago, but it's been painfully slow going since. The main problem is just building up enough of a base to make it worth anyone else's while trying to do anything with it. Still, I'm persevering; the eventual aim is a bit different from that of Denemo or Brahms (though GSeq is probably closer) so it seems worth sticking with it for the moment.

    Anyway, see Rosegarden's homepage [bath.ac.uk] for some development notes and the mailing-list archive; and the 3.0 code and docs, such as they are, are on GNOME's CVS server.

    Chris

  • Anyone know what it would take to get a linux box respond to Midi events?

    This setup would allow linux boxes to be used in theatrical type productions. Most digital light boards can send out a midi signal - you could use your linux box to spit out sound, video...whatever you wanted...

  • Re:BeOS (Score:1)

    by k8to ( 9046 )
    This is incorrect. You do not need to be running windows in order to use the Free version of BeOS.

    You can install and launch the free version of BeOS from inside windows, OR you can install and launch the free version of BeOS without using any other OS. Ie. you can install it in its own partition and boot it directly from LILO or whatever.

    Read before you speak.

  • I have begun a MIDI Sequencing project of my own, in which I have so far completed the playback engine and am focussing on the UI. I had considered making it public, but would like to have something to show, and a clear roadmap and goal before I go.

    There are several sequencer projects already: Rosegarden is a good sequencer, and there is also GSeq. There is a shareware Linux sequencer called Jazz, that I didn't particularly care for.

    My main problem with the state of MIDI on Linux right now is the assumption that all programs seem to make about GM hardware. I prefer using professional hardware, such as my JV-2080, where GM is not something that I am interested in. Hence, a major goal of my project is System Exclusive support from the beginning. This is something lacking in all other MIDI projects I've seen so far.

    My program does a great job of playing SysEx laden MIDI files on my 2080 under Linux right now.

    I'd also like to incorporate MusixTex support eventually. MusixTeX is a fantastic notation engine available for Linux, along the lines of LaTeX.

    Anyway, if you're interested (and anyone else!!) in helping me on my project, let me know! I already have a domain name registered and all that...
  • I don't know if it has been kept very up to date, and I had some problems when I tried it about a year ago, but it clearly worked for some people when I looked at it. Some aspects of it are somewhat reminiscent of Cakewalk, I think.

    Looking at the website, it looks like the developers have kept working, so I'd give it a shot.

    Rosegarden [bath.ac.uk]
    -Matt
  • In order for Linux to be useful as an audioplatform, latencies must be brought down to a minimum. As of this writing HD access will postpone just about everything, including MIDI.

    We need to put the serious audio/midi drivers into RTLinux and run Linux/X as a sideshow on top of that.

    mvh // Jens M Andreasen
  • The SB PCI128 doesn't have wavetable in hardware; it's done in software under Windows. Essentially, it locks the samples into memory in a certain area of main memory so that they can be used by the software emulation and piped into the secondary audio output channel.

    I know of no hardware wavetable for the SB PCI128.

    Incidentally, I've found the SB PCI128 (ens1370 chip version, that is) to be a bit unstable under Mandrake 7.0. (Mandrake 7.0 uses ALSA, btw) Does anyone else have this problem? I get this weird clicking noise whenever there's stuff accessing either the video card or the hard drive at the same time as audio is playing..

    (I've attempted to follow this up on the userlist, but I don't know how many ALSA users actually read the user's mailing list..)

    James
  • What is a "serious midi card"?

    I assume the MIDI out on my soundblaster isn't, but what about a real MPU-401 from Roland? Or (the one that I have coming in the mail...) a Music Quest MPU-401 compatible? I was under the impression that most midi cards were pretty generic, except that the ones on popular cards like the soundblaster series were a bit crippled...
  • I haven't used that particular card, but I'm pretty sure it does have hardware wavetable functions. I know my AWE32 (the original creative wavetable card, not counting the waveblaster) does.

    The AWE64 began the software mixing thing - it still has support for 32 tracks of hardware mixed, but under windows, you can add another 32 voices of software mixing if you want (and have the CPU).

    My card came with 512K of ram, with two 30 simm slots for upgrades up to 28M (if you put 32 megs in, it ignored the top 4 megs, since it also had 4 megs of ROM, IIRC).

    I know other versions didn't have all these features - the AWE32 value had no ram slots, and the sb32 had no ram initially on board, but had the slots for upgrades. I'm not too sure about the newer PCI versions, but I expect they have similar capabilities, with the 3d sound added in.
  • Of course, you're right... I must say, creative's web site is misleading in a typical corporate way - "professional 128 voice synthesizer" to my ears doesn't mean "software synth".

    Personally, I've rather given up on Creative every doing things honestly and nicely - there are features on my card (the original AWE32) that have yet to be supported even in the windows drivers, and this thing's NOT new... Customizable reverb and chorus settings for example...
  • Try http://linuxsound.bright.net. I'm waiting myself too, maybe one day I can remove the evil from my beast.
  • I have had an original Music Quest "PC MIDI Card" MPU-401 compatible
    since they first came out, and have used it with Linux for a number
    of years now. What I've found is that for practical purposes, there
    is virtually zero difference between one of them and the MPU-401
    "compatible" clones found in virtually every sound card these days.

    The technical difference is that the Music Quest and the real Roland
    support an "intelligent mode", which performs buffering of outbound
    MIDI messages on the card. This was designed to allow the ancient
    PC-XT (which is what I first had mine plugged into) to handle MIDI
    even though it wasn't fast enough to do it very well purely in
    software.

    Modern PC's, of course, are 100 to 150 times as fast, so they don't
    need intelligent mode. Instead, they can use the MPU-401 in raw
    mode, which does no buffering on the card; rather the card acts
    identically to a serial port, albeit with MIDI's odd transfer rate.
    This raw mode is what the Sound Blasters and the like support. It
    is also the only mode supported under Linux and Windows; only very
    esoteric old DOS software uses intelligent mode.

    Hope this clears it up, and that you don't feel cheated for buying
    the Music Quest when it offers nothing more than a generic
    Sound Blaster for practical purposes.

    Div.
    But my grandest creation, as history will tell,
  • I know "me too" replies are frowned upon, but
    this posting is too easy to miss.

    Thus let me just say that Dave Phillip's
    "Linux Sound and Music" pages linked above
    are the worldwide clearing house for
    information on the subject of MIDI on Linux.
    If you can't find what you need there or
    linked from there, you'll most likely have
    to write it yourself!
    But my grandest creation, as history will tell,
  • I believe that the Sound Blaster PCI 128 uses the same chipset as the Sound Blaster Live, which is supported under ALSA (the newer, better, alternative set of sound and MIDI drivers for Linux). You can find several links to the ALSA site elsewhere in this forum.
    But my grandest creation, as history will tell,
  • I'm not sure if there are any out-of-the-box
    MIDI Stage Control apps for Linux, but it would
    be fairly trivial to write one.

    For a properly configured system, reading MIDI
    messages is simply a matter of opening /dev/midi
    (or /dev/midi## if you have multiple cards)
    calling read().

    Seriously, it's that easy. If you understand
    the MIDI protocol (see www.midifarm.com or
    numerous other places), writing this kind of
    MIDI software for Linux is dead trivial.
    But my grandest creation, as history will tell,
  • http://www.rme-audio.com/english/linux/alsa/alsa.h tm

    Some of the professional audio cards by RME are supported by alsa. Alsa site is:

    http://www.alsa-project.org

    I have not tried the RME cards yet, but supposedly they are the first professional audio cards to be supported in linux!
  • Oops, that's here [berkeley.edu] for the online book on Structured Audio.
  • In case you are not awared of it, moderation are done by readers, not slashdot staff. You wining did put it previous post back to "imfornative" though.

    CY


    /_____\
    vvvvvvv../|__/|
    ...I../O,O....|
    ...I./. .......|
    ..J|/^.^.^ \..|.._//|
    ...|^.^.^.^.|W|./oo.|
  • I have the same hardware, and the same problem. If some one could could modify Timidity (a software savetable for linux/win32) to capture /dev/midi or whatever, I'd be all set.
  • VMware does _not_ support midi. It says so in the documentation. It'll support wave just fine, but You have to install an audio driver w/ the midi support disabled.
  • Are you kidding? Sibelius' output is fair, maybe even good, but no more than that. If you think that Finale has fine output, you maybe haven't seen much fine engraved music (I like Baerenreiter) lately, you don't have a keen eye for typography, or you don't really care, IMHO.

    I know of at least two cases where people asked us questions about installing GNU/Linux, only so that they could use LilyPond instead of Finale. If you fall for pretty faces, maybe Windows is for you.

    Jan.

    --
    Jan Nieuwenhuizen | GNU LilyPond - The music typesetter
    www.xs4all.nl/~jantien [xs4all.nl] | www.lilypond.org [lilypond.org]

  • If you're a composer, I guess you need a GUI (well, maybe Mozart didn't). But it is well known that for simple music entry you don't particularly want a GUI, you don't want a mouse anyway.

    Here's your first scale in LilyPond (scale.fly):

    c d e f g a b c

    For more information, see LilyPond user's manual (170k). [cs.uu.nl]

    If that's all really too difficult, there's still hope. As a separate project, work is underway to build a GUI (GTK+) frontend to LilyPond. Check out Denemo: denemo.sourceforge.net [sourceforge.net]. Still in its early stages, but already usable.

    There was a discussion on the SCORE mailing list the other day about how rhythm, pitch and ornaments can be typed-in (of course) most efficiently. People tend to prefer seperating them: all pitches first then the rhythm, then marks.

    Of course, when you're not using your favourite text editor(TM) for entry, but some integrated notation software, you may find yourself to be back in the eternal computing fields from hell. From the SCORE mailing list:

    &gt BTW has anyone ever answered Yes to "Save this staff of input to a file?"

    All the time. If there's a crash while entering, say, the 19th staff of a 20 stave score, all those temp files can recreate your losses much faster then completely retyping. This still happens to me maybe a half dozen times per year.

    Jan

    --
    Jan Nieuwenhuizen | GNU LilyPond - The music typesetter
    www.xs4all.nl/~jantien [xs4all.nl] | www.lilypond.org [lilypond.org]

  • For people that find the dependency on TeX too cumbersome (using Windows?), it is good to know that LilyPond has also direct PostScript output:

    17:27:24 appel ~/usr/src/lilypond$ lilypond -f ps scales.fly

    GNU LilyPond 1.3.31.jcn5
    [./scm/lily.scm]
    Parsing...[./ly/init.fly[./ly/declarations.ly[./sc m/generic-property.scm][./ly/nederlands. ly][./ly/chord-modifiers.ly[./scm/chord-names.scm] ][./ly/script.ly[./scm/script.scm]][./ly /generic-paper.ly[./scm/paper.scm]][./ly/paper20.l y[./ly/params.ly[./ly/a4.ly][./ly/paper. ly][./ly/engraver.ly[./ly/auto-beam-settings.ly][. /ly/auto-beam-settings.ly]]]][./ly/midi. ly[./scm/midi.scm][./ly/performer.ly]][./ly/textsc ripts.ly][./ly/spanners.ly][./ly/propert y.ly]][scales.fly]]
    Interpreting music...[3]
    elapsed time: 0.12 seconds
    Preprocessing elements... [./afm/feta20.afm]
    Calculating column positions...[0]
    paper output to scales.ps...[./ps/lilyponddefs.ps][./ps/lily.ps]

    Jan

    --
    Jan Nieuwenhuizen | GNU LilyPond - The music typesetter
    www.xs4all.nl/~jantien [xs4all.nl] | www.lilypond.org [lilypond.org]

  • Besides bias, there's the matter of personal taste, of course. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. From what others tell me (about Finale), I get the impression that my judgement isn't too far off. But you tell me, how biased is my judgement in this matter; do you seriously find Finale to be any competition, apropos typesetting quality? Now if you had nominated Amadeus, SCORE, or even Sibelius... But Finale?

    What specific typesetting qualities of Finale do you like best? We can change LilyPond, Free Software, remember? (Please refer to hardcopy, we've had complaints from people that saw the PNGs).

    Btw, an important reason to use or develop LilyPond is the fact that it's Free Software. The (arguably) poor output quality of <your proprietary package here> isn't as important to me, although it doesn't hurt to be better :-)

    Jan

    --
    Jan Nieuwenhuizen | GNU LilyPond - The music typesetter
    www.xs4all.nl/~jantien [xs4all.nl] | www.lilypond.org [lilypond.org]

  • That's nonsense, of course. In the normal case, a quarter note sounds for the full duration of, uhm, well, a quarter note (not counting accents such as staccato, saltato). That's four times longer than a sixteenth sounds (gee, I'm good at arithmetic)! This naturally goes for strings, but also for piano and I'm pretty sure it holds for percussion instruments such as timpani too: a sixteenth note will get 'damped' to sound just the duration of a sixteenth, and not sound during the rests (rest = no sound; not necessarily long enough to take a rest).

    Jan

    --
    Jan Nieuwenhuizen | GNU LilyPond - The music typesetter
    www.xs4all.nl/~jantien [xs4all.nl] | www.lilypond.org [lilypond.org]

  • Use Takashi Iwai's AWE32 sfxload found here [tripod.de].
  • The point of trackers is that one can compose high quality music without owning expensive studio equipment, aside from possibly owning a modest keyboard. While MIDIs certainly will sound better with better equipment, trackers are created with the modest budget in mind. While the tracking scene is predominantly trance and newage, some artists have shown that trackers are suited for other types of music, as well. If anyone who is interested or misinformed about what tracking can or cannot do, a good place to start would be Trax in Space [traxinspace.com], a large archive of "tracked" music.
  • You're confusing Creative and Ensoniq. The SB128 was nothing but a relabeled Ensoniq. It had no Emu chip, no RAM slots, etc.
  • I have had the same problem (no high quaility
    midi software for linux) and was thinking about trying VMware and just running windows software on my linux box. Has anyone here tried VM for audio/midi recording yet? (windows on linux)

  • From http://free.be.com

    "Q: Will I have to repartition my hard drive to install BeOS 5 Free Version?
    A: No. If you're currently using Windows (currently Windows 98 or Windows 95), you'll be able to download BeOS 5 via a Web browser and store it as a file within the Windows file system. "

    Notice the "if you're currently using"

    "Downloading BeOS 5 Free Version will be no

    "Q: Does this mean BeOS 5 Free Version runs "under" Windows?
    A: No. Although you can launch BeOS via a file within Windows, BeOS does not run as a Windows application. Double-clicking the file will exit Windows and boot BeOS from a large file in the FAT file system which contains within it a BFS volume. "

    Which follows that you can run it on a real BFS volume

    "Q: Will I be able to install BeOS 5 Free Version within operating systems other than Windows?
    A: Not at this time. "

    Note the within.

    If I remember correctly, and I may not, you can download the file and burn it to a CD, creating a bootable installation CD.

    Of course, it'd be stupid to remove the ability of Be to boot to it's own system.

    All signs point to Yes, but there is no official word.

    later

  • Have a look the Freshmeat search resultsfor midi [freshmeat.net]. Maybe you find something that fits your needs.

    Greets.

  • Well to see any of the Big name apps ported.

    Think about it 90% of the Mainstream Audio Apps have:
    * Dongles ("Can I see the GPL source for that?")
    * Special Floppy Installs ("That too")
    * Hidden System Software ("try that in on my Server will you")
    * Closed Source Models (Aspestosia Rex)

    And the real Fear of (Yam's, Alesis and Roland) is in 90 to 120 days.....
    6 Stereo Out 128MB Samplers for $899 Open Source and MPI-ied!
    Dont think we will see Re-Birth Re-alsoon.
  • Keep in mind that a quarter note is exactly the same as a sixteenth note followed by 3 sixteenth rests on many instrument. This doesn't work for brass or wind instruments, but it does for percussion and strings.
  • As much as I would love to use linux notation software, there is none even a little bit close to software like Finale or Sibelius or other windows notation packages. Althought they have steep learning curves, these programs allow you to do anything when it comes to notation... I can't imagine any of them will be matched with a linux equivelant unless someone is willing to put for some serious time ; personally, that's time I need to spend working on music....
  • I guess someone should toss in the link to the low latency tests being done in Linux:

    http://www.gardena.net/benno/linux/audio/

    I sent this to Michael Haydn a while back, thinking that Emagic, who has always bragged about their cross-platform(which should now be poly-platform) music solutions, would be a company that is in the best position to offer something for Linux. Why? They not only write amazing music software, but also hardware that runs in the computers.
    He never responded, so I assume he thinks I am crazy.
    There exists in our minds the most insanely great music production system. An installation that could span multiple studios, cross hundreds of miles over dedicated networks, maintain enormous compressed libraries of sound effects in RAM,notation databases(Genbank of music) all run on a distributed network....thats linux for bach's sake!!!
    I wish I was a programmer instead of just a consumer, because I would head in this direction...that and a nic/audio card so I can sonify packet storms - or the sound of yahoo being brought to its knees.

    Long Live soniK!!!!!
  • Yeah I have, and if there is one synth I could forget about, its that one. When it came out, it was the poor man's Oberheim. It ain't no ob8. Just try and play rush on your juno and hear how much of a loser you are.

    Just kidding. Anyone who plays a real analog synthesizer, ever, is a winner. You'll know forever what the true aesthetic should be. All params, all ten fingers, use your nose and your (#$%*) if you have to...can't do that on a dx7, or a trinity...especially if your screen is sticky from(message subject)...beer.
  • Where the Hell does Delta flight 1011 go?
    I just checked. You made it up. Invalid flight number.
    Delta flight 1011 is now departing for Proxima Centauri. Passengers will only be allowed two carry on items as this flight is entirely booked. Any passengers known to be allergic to Sanprofin, or have medical conditions that complicate suspended animation, please notify the flight doctor after boarding...
  • *****Another BUT: you just have to love those sounds! There's a world of personality in them bzzzzzzztwokkkkiiiuuuu FM pads! FM + DCF/VCF + feedback-delay + reverb = bliss*****

    Hello! I got the Holmes laying on an sy77 as I type!!

    Once linux is embedded in all sorts of appliances, it will only be a matter of time before yamaha uses a teeny kernel to run its latest synthetic flight of fancy. And then everyone else will jump on...maybe. There is no excuse for midi...new protocol desperately needed. So this thread should become, f*%k midi, Holmes and I need something Beefier!

  • One little thing concerning the bad midi-timing in windows. BeOS has an improvment to this because of a kernel feature. Besides the regular distribution of the cpu to different threads (which isnt always fine enough) it has a command called snooze (i think) which lets the kernel distribute the cpu to other threads until a specified number of microseconds has ellapsed. That way the midi-playing thread should get much more reliable timing.

    However Im not at all an expert at this stuff, but this is the way i understood it works. You can check it out in the Be Book if you want more info..
  • but MusixTEX and lilypond don't count for me 'cause it doesn't have a GUI :) PS I am one of those people who use lyx rather than LaTEX b/c I don't want to learn yet another language (as if it wasn't enough to know C/C++, Java, 4 different kinds assembly, Prolog, LISP, ML, Haskell, 2 different shells, make scripts, 2 different text-file regex matching languages including one (Perl) that's Turing-complete, plus languages for config files (yup! they are formal languages, too!) like /etc/passwd, init, Xinit, Xresources).... damn Unix needs to come a loooong way until it's easy-to-use....
  • Take a day off and look at code from different places for a few minutes.

    You'll find:

    Language base
    Object definitions
    Object relationships
    Function definitions
    Variable definitions
    Logic base
    Conditional relationships

    That's all there is to it.

    Every language from English to LISP has the same parts. There's no practical difference. What's the problem? C'mon I learned the English language out of a TRS-80 programming book when I was 8 years old. It's not that hard. And you get much more control over the system to make what you want not what some GUI builder who's never played an instrument in his life envisions.

    (yup! they are formal languages, too!)
    SO THAT THEY'RE CONSISTENT AND MAKE SENSE. If you took a look you could figure out the format just by reading the file. All it takews is a little childish curiosity.

    damn Unix needs to come a loooong way until it's easy-to-use....

    Oh give me a fucking break. Unix was created by Ken Thompson who didn't think Multics, which corps thought was enough for their tasks, was enough for his needs. Do you know what he wanted. A text processing system to play games on without having to write billions of interfaces over and over again. Linux distros are made primarily by USERS not companies. It's when worldwide distribution becomes a headache that these USERS form companies.

    Lastly it is impossible to have customized control over software without a language and having a collection of icons is no different than seeing a collection of language keywords.
  • Wow... I'll be damned. I swear I've seen this post before... methinks cut and paste comment.

    Good one but still...
  • I always had problems in Linux to use both my SB16 and my Roland SCC-1 (mpu401) at the same time, in the old 2.0.x series it was as simple as compiling both sound drivers into the kernel; with the new 2.2.x series is a costant pain, i have to unload the SB16 module to use the MPU401 one, and vice versa. I have my SB16's midi "uart" properly configured "out of the way" (address 300), so the MPU401 driver could use the Roland's standard address (IRQ 9, addr 330). Of course in both DOS and Windows this has never been an issue, both cards work perfectly at the same time. I have also tried the ALSA drivers; but the MIDI portion is lacking (to say the least); they always assume that "uart" MIDI is built in on a sound card, but never alone. What if i had one of the Roland interface boards to connect my midi equipment? There is no "lone" MPU401 equivalent in ALSA, only serial? support.

    There is another problem with OSS MIDI drivers; i have found no way to accurately reproduce complex MIDI files, i have tried playmidi, srgplay and others but they always eat some notes somewhere. Sadly the only way i have found to reproduce the midi files properly within Linux, is by using dosemu and one of the good DOS midi players, like megamid or mplay (of course i had to give direct IRQ 9 and addr 330 access to DOSEMU).

    There do seems to be progress on the sequencer side of MIDI software, i would like to completely replace Cakewalk/Win9x but the issue with drivers had never let me switch completely.

    I haven't tried Jazz custom midi driver, and the old "Intelligent Roland" kernel module does not even compile on my system :(

    --

  • There are low-latency patches for Linux.

    Check out the link on the site for Quasimodo for a link. (Quasimodo is a rather nifty modular-synth style system based on a realtime implementation of CSound (although its migrating to SAOL, part of the MPEg-4 spec).

    Site is www.quasimodo.org [quasimodo.org]

  • I'd heard that this was eventually going to be available for Linux. Even if it isnt I want one, but can anyone confirm anything about the Linux port?

    For those who dont know what it is its a four-DSP hardware card (with appropriate IO's) with software that allows it to do direct-to-disk recording, mixing, soft-synthesis (including modular synths), sampler, effects et.c.

  • I have used Brahams and It's great.

    Another problem with midi under Linux is that not all sound cards are supported. I have a Sound Blaster PCI 128 and it has no midi support in Linux. (at least with Mandrake 6.1). This is something that Linux will need in the future because a lot of cards today are PCI.

  • Are there any open source sound editing programs out there that are (almost) as good as SoundForge?

    Also, are there any professional soundcards (i.e. something better than SB Live, etc.) that are supported under Linux?

    Once/if Linux has these two things hopefully I can convince my brother, who will be a sound engineer, to switch to Linux. He's currently running Windows95 with SoundForge and a LynxONE sound card (doesn't have drivers for Linux).

  • Right, we made it up. I don't see the reason why we should use a real flight number since we don't really expect people to listen to the song, go on the web, and check the number.

    We (my brother and I) have a friend who's a flight attendant, so we just asked her if we could record her saying that stuff... So we did that, added some effects to make it sound like it was recorded at an airport, and voila!

    Thanks for checking out the song anyway. I hope you liked it (other than the first part I guess). :-)
  • Yeah, but I need an alarm clock, too. Maybe I should just slap my linux box by my bed.

    That's what I do. I schedule my box (under Windows) to play a really annoying sound clip I created when I wake up and blast it through my 2x60W amp. Wakes me up every time.

    My computer is the only thing that can wake me up though. I've tried putting alarm clocks at 100% volume on some static radio signal, but I got used to that. Haven't gotten used to my computer alarm clock yet!

  • I'd love to get UltraMaster Juno-6 up and running when I have time. It looks hecka tight.

    Does anyone know how easy it is to port this to Windows?

  • I have the Sound Blaster Live but can't use it to the fullest under Linux. The card comes with a lot of goodies which really make it rock and they only come for Windows :(
    Prakash

  • Lilypond (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    There are at least two projects for professional typesetting of scores: lilypond and MusixTeX (the latter has been partly merged with the former). Concerning sequencers, I am quite happy with rosegarden, but I am no professional.

  • MIDI/Linux: no one mentioned abc? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I notice a lot of words from the Lilypond authors and users, but don't forget abc (one intro link [ucolick.org]). If anyone mentioned this, I missed it.

    MIDI's a good ol' aging-yet-standard hardware control protocol but abc is a language; ok a primitive language. But it's at a higher level of abstraction than MIDI, and it's both human and machine readable. abc projects seem to be fairly live. there's a large body of musical pieces encoded in abc and online. it can easily be emailed... anyway, worth a look and there are filters to PS score and to MIDI.

    abc2ps and abcm2ps are imho way easier to use than anything MusicTeX-based (I have tried both). And they produce darned nice looking score -- I and a colleague did the 2nd movement of Beethoven's 7th Symphony, for grins, in full score from the Dover edition.

    abc2midi is reliable. midi2abc is, well, it needs a little human help sometimes. but midi to score is a nontrivial problem, as others have pointed out. abc and its tools are very Linux-y really, in what I think of as the good sense: modular, minimalist, very functional.

    I used the OSS driver package reluctantly (eee-yew, yuck, it isn't free); I needed just honest MPU 401 support for external modules -- and I was as disappointed as everyone else who ever used a good sequencer on an old, feeble Mac. Those pathetic 68K based products did realtime MIDI miles better than anything I tried under Linux.

    IMHO we have a wealth of tools for MIDI-as-data -- i.e. tclmidi, abc2midi, playmidi and a lot more, and a goodly selection of tools for exotic sound cards; but we're still fumbling around for basic bread-n-butter MIDI sound module control and RT sequencing/playback. I could do this with a Mac II si 10 years ago so it's kind of embarrassing... I wish I were a driver maven instead of a lowly app/database hacker. I'm placing my bet on ALSA, but feels like they are at least another year away from being as "real" as, say Linux scanner support or the digital camera stuff.

  • Linux and midi (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Linux has terrible midi hardware support. Its all mediocre at best. It does a fine job of playing .mid files with the crappy internal FM Synth/Wavetable samples but for external sequencing its nothing but trouble.

    If you do manage to come across a card with stable drivers, check out Brahms (Formally KooBase), check www.freshmeat.net for the url of the site. Its a clone of CuBase for KDE.

    I gave up windows 3 years ago, and just bought a used mac to do my midi work on. Allthough not the most economical choice, I find it easier to keep my music system and my reg system seperated.

    A LOT of midi musicians and electronic artists in general would probably LOVE to see audio apps come to a stable OS like Linux.

    I talk with a lot of musicians who work with computers and they always say "A computer is a great tool, but its just so unstable(unreliable, etc etc). Allthough, Linux isn't user friendly enough to reach the masses of electronic musicians, but with the steady progress on desktop envs etc this shouldnt be an issue 3 years down the road (and hopefully in that 3 years, we develope some halfway decent midi drivers!).
  • I wrote an article for Electronic Musician [emusician.com] magazine that was published in the 06/99 issue, titled "The Penguin's Song," about the state of music hardware and software support for Linux as of Spring of last year.

    Unfortunately, the 06/99 issue seems to be the only one that's not archived on their very kludgy website. I've pestered the parent company, Intertec [intertec.com], a couple of times about this, and they keep alleging they're going to fix it.

    The article's not completely about MIDI support on Linux, since it also touches on hardware and audio support, but sort of topical to this question. Unfortunately, if you'd like to see the final version of this article, you'll either have to buy the back issue or pester EM's parent company to get the 06/99 issue into the archives.


    --
  • Although the original author never requested this, I feel I should speak up on one of my projects: A midi to guitar tab converter that works, but I haven't released yet. Also, the midi reading part is pretty general-purpose, so I'd probably do pretty good to release it as a separate lib.

    All (L)GPL'd, of course.
  • As the subject says... ALSA 0.55 does very nice sounding MIDI playback with PlayMidi and SoundFonts. Or if you're willing to trade freedom for functionality Creative has binary-only drivers coming out that support all Windows features, including EAX-style effects via accelerate OpenAL.
  • "That's nonsense" Don't be so harsh! I think the poster was trying to characterize the fact that, for example, a staccato pizicanto quarter note for a string, might need to be translated from it's standard representation to something shorter, in order to make your midi sound right. Of course, if your synth is any good, you could pick a staccato pizicanto fiddle and send it a quarter note. regards, fishbowl, who just wants a rackmount synth
  • You can install and launch the free version of BeOS from inside windows, OR you can install and launch the free version of BeOS without using any other OS. Ie. you can install it in its own partition and boot it directly from LILO or whatever.

    Where do you get this information?

    Read before you speak.

    Well, I just re-read the whole FAQ and I still don't see anywhere that it says that I can install it without Windows. It does say that it is not actually running under Windows, but gives no indication that it can be started without Windows.

    There is no FAQ that says "Q. Do I need Windows?" The closest is the one I quoted.

    The BeNews article claimed that you could install w/out Windows, but claimed to glean this info from the FAQ. Even then, they're not outright stating that it possible but making their own deduction:

    From this, you can deduce [emphasis theirs] that it's possible to boot Free BeOS 5 from bootloaders besides the Windows beos.com loader, which most likely means either a boot floppy or the standard BeOS boot loader.

    If you have some other documentation, please quote or link to it. For now, I think the jury is still out...

  • ...it does sound like you will need to be running windows in order to use the free version.

    According to the Free Be FAQ [be.com], yes you will need Windows:

    Q: Will I be able to install BeOS 5 Free Version within operating systems other than Windows?

    A:Not at this time.

    For more info, check out this story from BeNews [benews.com].

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I've tried a few different audio programs under VMware, and had them either (a) crash on load, or (b) be amazingly slow because VMware is an incredible resource hog.

    I've had very good luck running Buzz [buzztrack.com] under WINE, though (use the native comctl32.dll, if you can), with almost-native performance (within 5% CPU usage), so it might be worth giving some other audio apps a try. I haven't done so myself, though. Well, except for Rebirth, which promptly crashed....

    <plug>
    There's an effort to make a very Buzz-like OSS audio app called OCTAL [gnu.org] which needs all the help it (we) can get. So if you're interested, check it out and let us know if you can help out. Thanks!
    </plug>
  • MPEG 4 Structured Audio is a good base language for building music apps -- our web page [berkeley.edu] has an online tutorial about the standard, and a MP4-SA to C translator that produces runtimes that can work in real-time. It's a "meta-answer" to the Ask Slashdot question; it's probably not going to help today, but I think its the right techology for Linux to build on.
  • Jan Nieuwenhuizen's already made many intelligent comments on MIDI and its relation to notation software, so I won't retread what he's already mentioned...

    But yeah - Lilypond is an excellent package -- I say this just as a user, not an author.

    If it weren't an excellent package I wouldn't have started writing Denemo to be a GUI frontend to it. http://denemo.sourceforge.net/, as Jan's been mentioning. Any of you interested in music notation are encouraged to download it, to play with it, and contribute!

    As for the comments on Rosegarden and kooBase/Brahms - I don't mean to start a flame war with Chris Cannam (Rosegarden) or Jan Wuerthner (Brahms), but at this point Denemo's at least as complete an environment for doing music notation, though it's not a sequencer. (Nor is it intended ever to be one, though anybody's more than welcome to adapt it for use as the score editor for a larger sequencing package. It's an offer that I've already made to the GSeq folks, in fact, though I can't guarantee them much help if they decide to.)
  • That's not quite correct; MusixTeX and Lilypond both depend on TeX, but neither depends on the other. (Old versions of Lilypond used MusixTeX). Note for anyone who's bothered by such things: MusixTeX is non-DFSG [debian.org]-free.
  • Just one note on that 60 meg download...it will uncompress into 500 megs of "file space" for BeOS and its apps.

    But yeah, I would definitely recommend BeOS, too, if you're into audio-intense computing. A lot of major players in the high-end of the audio production industry are porting their apps to BeOS. Have a look at Be's page to see who they are (b/c I have enough research to do already and I still need to go get my hair cut).

  • Ok, sorry. I was a bit harsh. But I really feel this was not a really helpful comment; I'm tempted to say it was a rather ignorant comment. Also, I tried to explain why RobGrant was in error. One of the biggest problems with MIDI->notation already starts with the pitch (enharmonic exchanges) and duration.

    In a few, exceptional cases, it might be that you can't tell the difference between a quarter an a sixteenth note with rests. But in *most* cases there is a difference. (As a viola player, I can assure you that there is a difference between a whole note pizzicato, and a quarter note.) So why draw focus to the exeptional case where the generally expected possibility MIDI->notation would maybe not be problematic?

    Also, you shot yourself in the foot, or at least prove that you've missed the point, when you say:

    ...might need to be translated from it's standard representation to something shorter, in order to make your midi sound right.
    We were discussing the problems of MIDI->notation: `MIDI doesn't contain the information you need', and here you even introduce a new fictional one! For the case when you wouldn't have pizzicato strings (when would that be?), you suggest to introduce yet another inaccuracy to MIDI.

    Moderators, what am I missing here?

    Jan

    --
    Jan Nieuwenhuizen | GNU LilyPond - The music typesetter
    www.xs4all.nl/~jantien [xs4all.nl] | www.lilypond.org [lilypond.org]

  • Although commiting the sinn of replying to my own post, and at the risk of being judged posting redundant, I feel I'd better correct myself: there were some 50 posts on the RoseGarden ( www.bath.ac.uk/~masjpf/rose.html [bath.ac.uk]) list this year.

    Jan

    --
    Jan Nieuwenhuizen | GNU LilyPond - The music typesetter
    www.xs4all.nl/~jantien [xs4all.nl] | www.lilypond.org [lilypond.org]

  • BeOS (Score:2)

    by Yebyen ( 59663 )
    If you're looking for an OS to do audio editing on, you should have a serious look at BeOS. BeOS is extremely dedicated to audio editing and multimedia in general. Running a search for MIDI at bebits.com [bebits.com] reveals about 3 pages of results.

    Later this month, BeOS Revision 5 will be released, free for non-commercial use. Details are sketchy, but it does sound like you will need to be running windows in order to use the free version. (Kinda like a UMSDOS Installation of linux.) Wait until later this month to make your decision, download Free Be, and try it out. (Will only be about a 60 meg download.) If you like it, you might consider buying the OS.

    --
    linuxisgood:~$ man woman

  • I haven't done much searching recently, but I have jazz++ from Jazzware [jazzware.com], and it works fairly well for hand sequencing. I couldn't get it to record, but I probably have an old version. Looking at the page now, it looks like they're going opensource.

  • Pawn shops.
    Also, look in the used equipment section of a Mars Music if you have one near you. Check classified ads also, and look around on the web (such as Harmony Central [harmonycentral.com] for used equipment. Unlike computer equipment, electronic music equipment that's even 10 years old can still be very useful, and even highly sought after. For example - if you can find somebody who's getting rid of a Yamaha DX7 for cheap, that's a hell of a find. Not a good synthesizer (FM sound), but a fantastic MIDI controller for other synths and soundcards and the thing just never breaks.

    Look at prices on minidisc player/recorder decks, they are pretty cheap now. They're good for mastering on a budget, better than tape but not as good as DAT. Just be aware that Minidisc audio is compressed.

    It all depends on what you want to do. It's harder to make a good *recording* studio on a budget than it is to make a decent MIDI-only setup on a budget. All you really need is maybe an SBLive value, and a keyboard with MIDI ports (preferably with velocity sensitivity.)
    There are lots of good soundfonts available for free on The SBLive Site. [sblive.com]
    Trouble is, you'll need windows to use them... and some sequencing software.
  • If you do audio and MIDI on a budget, it's hard to beat the SBLive Value for 59 bucks!
    Unfortunately, if you really want to get into it, this ain't a very cheap hobby :(
    Fortunately, getting paid for a couple of my projects went a long way towards paying for the more expensive gear. So for me it's more of an investment, even though I haven't actually turned a profit on it yet :|
  • Under linux, right now the SBLive just plays sound, and the drivers are still pretty buggy.
    On my windows box, I use two soundcards, a TB Pinnacle and a Live with digital I/O. I load approx. 50MB worth of soundfonts for some of my pieces (32MB of which can be used at any one time by the Live), as well as using the onboard effects, which I can route my external synths into via my mixer.
    A MIDI sequencer under Linux just won't cut it for me.

  • Unfortunately, if you really want to get into it, this ain't a very cheap hobby :(

    God, tell me about it. I've got a crappy P133 at the moment, Cubase VST 3.5 (not that my PC is anywhere near fast enough to use many audio channels, ugh), Rebirth v1.5 and a SB Live running W95. I did have access to my mate's stuff - a Roland TB303, Roland JP8000 and a Korg digital mixer, and now that I don't I've practically given up - there's no way I can afford the complete PC upgrade, a nice Event Gina, a Novation Supernova or any of the other nice toys I really need to get back into music :( My only choice at the moment would be a tracker - not really professional quality.

  • Roland Juno-6 softsynth (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 11, 2000 @07:09AM (#1210680)
    Word.

    You mentioned softsynths. For some reason, I hadn't heard about this [ultramaster.com] until just a while ago and I was pleasantly surprised... It's a Roland Juno 6 -softsynth, "Ultramaster Juno-6". It's the best softsynth I've seen for Linux. You can buzz and howl all you want with it, and it works today. Great stuff!

  • Have a backup machine just in case (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 11, 2000 @06:17AM (#1210681)
    "I am 99% ready to completely wipe all Windows software from my machines, but the last 1% I need ..."

    Umm, if you've got more than one computer, leave Windows into one of them if only for the sake of running Cubase or Logic Audio or whatever in it. Linux audio software isn't yet up to those of Windows, but they're slowly getting there.

    Most of the audio software I've tried are in their very early stages of development. There are a couple of relatively decent MIDI packages around (such as Brahms, aka. "ex-koobase"), but for those of us dealing with samples, the situation does not seem so bright. Crashes and unexpected weirdness is not uncommon. But that's acceptable for software still in development!

    However, there are a couple of real jewels (for the bedroom music enthusiast) emerging, mainly terminatorX [cjb.net] and soundtracker [soundtracker.org]. IMO they both need no-compromise stereo sample support (mono as of 3.55 and 0.3.10 respectively), and Soundtracker should get rid of that horrible "pitchbender" gizmo. and improve the sound quality instead... I like terminatorX because the user interface is very intuitive. You can just blast away and make music without having to conduct The Ceremony of Ye Olde Premeditated Scripting Of Obscure Syntax. I'm not a person who can spend one week thinking about some strange way to make the program put my inspiration into audio form. So the interface has to be wham, bam, thank you ma'am.

    What Linux needs is a Gimp for audio. That would really be a killer app. Still, things are looking bright. Bump around the Sound and MIDI Software for Linux [linuxsound.at] site and you'll not only see glimpses of the future but might come across some pleasant surprises to adopt as well!

  • What I have used... (Score:3)

    by eGabriel ( 5707 ) on Saturday March 11, 2000 @09:52AM (#1210682)
    There are actually quite a few things to evaluate,
    but many of them are more for sound experimentation and not straightforward music sequencing and recording, which is what you likely mean.

    Note that my ideal sequencer is version 1 of Vision from OpCode, which I still have on a Mac Classic. Clone that, and the world will thank you.

    Jazz++ is the best of the worst. It does audio tracks, and under linux offers most of the basic midi capability you need to write music. Lacking is decent support for MMC or MTC, and there is no concept of "subsequences", ala Vision, which to be fair, is not found on a lot of Windows sequencers either. No step recording either; though you can draw notes on the piano roll window. Jazz++ is what I currently use for all of my music.

    Brahms looks like it might be good sometime, but not yet. GSeq lags even further behind.

    Melys is one to watch also.

    Muse promises some great features, but I haven't gotten it to run on my system yet.

    Typesetting your music, you might look at Rosegarden and Lilypond; I haven't dealt with either.

    As far as multitrack, SLab is pretty darn neat.
    If you are up for the command line, ecasound would do.

    Latency is certainly an issue. Even recording .wav from my line in gives me pops and drops. Shielding on most home sound cards is awful. Linux doesn't have support for many of the multi
    input sound cards on the market for pro dtd recording, so beware.
  • Linux.com [linux.com] happens to be running this article [linux.com] on music creation software under Linux. It mentions projects such as gAlan [ihug.co.nz], a project to create an application for electronic music generation, FreeBirth [bitmechanic.com], an attempt at a ReBirth clone, SoundTracker [soundtracker.org], Brahms [lienhard.desy.de], a MIDI sequencer, and aRts [arts-project.org], a analog synthesizer application.
    ----

  • Music notation software: GNU Lilypond (Score:3)

    by divec ( 48748 ) on Saturday March 11, 2000 @05:56AM (#1210684) Homepage
    the last 1% I need to do is an effective MIDI system that includes [...] notation software (outputting the midi tracks to sheet music)
    It's not possible to automate midi-to-sheetmusic perfectly. This is because midi files usually don't contain the information you need - e.g. they contain how long a note *sounds for*, not how long it should be written, so a staccato crotchet (quarter note) might appear to be a semiquaver (sixteenth note).
    On the other hand, GNU Lilypond [lilypond.org] has a midi2ly utility which tries to do this. (Normally to use Lilypond you type the music in a LaTeX-like format). If you're happy with what automated midi typesetting can manage, then give this a try.
    To see some Lilypond output, look at the Mutopia project [uwaterloo.ca] (a sort of musical Gutenberg project).

  • Don't sacrifice functionality for the OS. (Score:3)

    by CausticPuppy ( 82139 ) on Saturday March 11, 2000 @06:56AM (#1210685)
    I'll be realistic here. I'd love to do all my MIDI under Linux but it has a long way to go in order to fully support the necessary hardware. Maybe things will be different in a couple years. Remember when everybody used Macintosh for music because the support wasn't there on Windows? My how things never change.
    BeOS shows promise-- we'll just have to wait and see on that one also.
    As for now, if I were to use MIDI software under Linux, it would need to do the following (based on what my current CW Pro Audio setup does):

    1) Multitrack audio with non-destructive effects assignable to each track
    2) MIDI effects (arpeggiator, chord analyzer)
    3) Patch lists, with soundfont support, and patch names for most synthesizers
    4) SYSX bank capability-maybe Brahms does this. I have custom banks to load into my external synths (wavestation SR, Proteus MPS)
    5) Joystick MIDI support for both of my soundcards. Maybe Linux support is already there for dedicated MIDI interfaces, like MOTU?
    6) Soundfont support. I have a few hundred MB of soundfonts that I like to use. Getting general MIDI support with the Emu10K1 under Linux would be a start, although I don't use GM.
    7) Audio scrubbing + editing + interfacing with a 3rd-party audio tool, like SoundForge
    8) Emu10K1 effects support. Beyond just reverb, the effects engine is actually pretty powerful.
    9) Software synthesizers like Reality which can also be used in the recording software.

    I could probably list a few more, but you get the idea. For me at least, I'm at quite a bit less than "99%" ready to make the switch. Based on my requirements above, most of which only Windows currently fulfills, I'm perhaps 30% ready.
    I wouldn't mind keeping windows a little bit longer, and still use it for games + music software. Then I can just start up an Exceed session whever I need me Linux fix :)

  • Re:My sentiments exactly (Score:3)

    by paulbd ( 118132 ) on Saturday March 11, 2000 @10:12AM (#1210686) Homepage
    Sorry, but like most of the other posts here, this one is very misleading. First of all, the SBLive is a relatively new card, and like most new cards under Linux, support comes fairly slowly until or unless the manufacturer decides to help us out. In the case of Creative, we've only had their help for a couple of months. There are cards like those that use the Trident chipset that have excellent MIDI support, especially under ALSA. Anyone who is serious about audio and MIDI under Linux should not be using the OSS drivers, commercial or free, but should have switched to ALSA already. Second, your windows system is described as if its "clever" or "advanced". I have 4 soundcards in my dual PII-450 Linux system at home; 2 of them are professional digital interfaces supporting 26 and 18 channels in and the same number out. I can use all my cards simultaneously. I have the box connected to a 16-way MIDI router, numerous external synths etc. I can get Now, all that being said, I am about the closest thing is to a professional Linux audio/MIDI developer - although I don't work for money anymore, I am free to work on Linux audio/MIDI software pretty much all the time, and I do. That does mean that I probably have more of a handle on this stuff than most Linux users. And yes, its true that we lack good sound editors and we also lack good MIDI/audio sequencers. But the idea that the *drivers* are buggy - well, just use ALSA, and then tell me they're buggy. They are a lot more robust than their windows counterparts. I know because I wrote some of them :) There is still a lot of work to be done increasing the number of good apps for audio/MIDI software under Linux. But that work is not going on in the labs at Steinberg, Emagic, Opcode, MOTU, Digidesign or Cakewalk. Its happening with individual developers working hard on trying to fill in the gaps.

  • Eep. Unclear on the concept? (Score:4)

    by Chris Johnson ( 580 ) on Saturday March 11, 2000 @11:46AM (#1210687) Homepage Journal
    It seems like most of the responses to this article are talking about soundcards or audio samples or notation. What? It hardly seems surprising that MIDI support is not well established if the sense of what's needed is that confused. Uh, MIDI is not a MOD, nor is it a Sound Blaster... (except in a degenerate sense)

    Airwindows (my domain name) started as the name for my studio, and that is still very important to me. The studio is largely MIDI based, with synthesizers ranging from Kawai to Proteus to an Alesis drum module to an old Yamaha FM module for basses and weird FM noises ;) It all runs off an old Mac performa 410 (a very weak pizza-box Mac from the 68030 days).

    There's a variety of interesting and peculiar programs to do odd MIDI things: a delay unit for MIDI messages, a chaotic-algorithm toy for generating multichannel weird 'space music', a wild but buggy 'do everything' tool called Megalomania that will cheerfully take particular keyboard ranges and echo them upwards in major thirds recursively through different instruments if asked (if it doesn't just freeze up first! ;) ). There's also a program I myself wrote (in REALbasic) that produces sysex messages to program the very weird and twisted Yamaha FB-01, for which there is no programmer except one for DOS and a couple of flaky, sub-Linux-polish, and very expensive 'professional tools'. But above all else, there is Musicshop. This is, I think, a little brother of the 'Vision' v.1 that somebody else mentioned. I'll take a minute to explain what this does- then I'll explain what it doesn't do, and what I'd give my eyeteeth for in a MIDI sequencer.

    First and foremost, Musicshop is solid. I'm not talking 'interface feel' at all, I mean musically. It is capable of playing dense MIDI sequences on an 8 mhz 68000-based Mac Plus. It does _not_ hesitate, or drop notes- the rhythm does not lurch no matter what, even while you interact with it. It does this by taking over the Mac entirely, and placing note timing above all other things, including screen refresh. You'll often see it redrawing the screen poorly or not at all while it's busy playing the notes. On a faster machine it still lags in screen redraw or interface responsiveness due to this intentional decision to put Notes Uber Alles. I won't willingly settle for anything less from a sequencer if it's going to be driving synthesizers that I have to play music on, and play along with. It's damned unprofessional for a sequencer to make the music sound slightly drunken or fumbling, and this has always been a problem with underpowered Windows PCs running MIDI sequencing. Not Musicshop! MIDI _is_ hard realtime stuff and this must be understood first (unless the idea is to compose sequences and then get a mac plus for playing them solidly because it can do hard realtime by starving the OS of cycles completely?)

    Tracks can be shown in musical notation, but I and I suspect many other synthesizer-tamers go for the music roll display, in which you're looking at basically colored lozenges showing the pitch, channel, on and off of each note. There is a trick Musicshop does to handle very short notes or notes that would extend less than three pixels on the screen at the current zoom level- it draws the note as an X, not a lozenge. This takes on great importance when using the Alesis's trigger inputs as a drum kit- the notes this produces are just about infinitely short at most zoom rates, and without code to draw them properly they will vanish and be impossible to manipulate.

    Notes can be manipulated by the mouse in three distinct ways- pitch change, attack and note length. Clicking on a note sounds it and sets up one of these changes- on the middle of the note you get to slide it up and down in pitch (each new frequency sounds the note again), at the front of the note you get to change the start time, at the back of the note you can stretch it out for longer or shrink it down to make it more staccato, without affecting pitch or when the note was struck.

    It's important to point out that this is not necessarily quantized, as MOD sequences are. Musicshop counts 480 units in a quarter note, or 1920 for a whole note. The note triggers can vary by as little as one unit, 'quantizing' the basically infinite-resolution timing of a live performance down to these 'units'. At 120bpm this is just barely perceptible- for instance, a seriously grooving performance on drum triggers will be faintly unfocused when reduced to 'units'. Sometimes I've run the sequencer at double or quadruple time to get more unit density- this works pretty well, actually.

    This also means that you can program in sequences, such as a drum sequence, as quantized (to start out with a machinelike rigidity), copy or repeat them (another feature that's quite handy) and then go in and select all notes sounded by a particular drum (click on the border of the note field and you can select a horizontal line through the entire performance) and carefully move all the notes forward or backward in time in unit resolution- not note resolution. The reason to do this is to get _real_ 'live feel' rather than some dumb random inaccuracy feature. To make a hihat groove harder, sequence it with dynamic information (if size of dot is volume, you might have it like this: O...o..oO...o..oO...o..oO...o..o) and then take the soft hits and move them back in time just a touch, so they hesitate. Do the same with soft bassdrum hits, and take the snare backbeat and move it back until it feels like someone's arm swinging down to hit a drum- snare backbeat _needs_ to be shifted back in time from the quantized position in order to sound more relaxed and grooving, otherwise it doesn't even feel like a drum, it feels like a MOD. Once this is all done, nothing _feels_ 'hesitated'- instead, the bassdrum and hat feel like they are coming in with extra force and authority on top of the beat. (You also need to do this with bass and any other instruments being sequenced.) The reason not to push things _forward_ is because in Musicshop you get to compose music using multiple parts and it will happily let you sequence these live or sequenced parts as if it _was_ a MOD: you write a chorus, and then just stick it in each time you need one, saving time. If you need it all in one performance, export to standard MIDI and re-import. When you are using multiple parts it's a problem to move an attack _earlier_ than time zero of the sequence, so as a result you have to take all non-'pushed' notes and pull them back instead, to get a human feel. This also means the aggressively hit notes are mechanically perfect, making the overall groove more easy to sense.

    Now, I've barely scratched the surface there- haven't touched on using the repeat paste to compose polyrhythms, or the spiffy little tuple algorithm they have, or various interface tweaks, or even the strip chart which I wanted to mention (alter durations or velocities etc. _graphically_). I'd love to go into more detail for anyone trying to make a serious Linux MIDI program, if anybody is, which I wonder. I wrote a REALbasic program to give sysex events but I am _so_ not qualified to write a sequencer in C, much less realtime kernel patches to make it actually useful. But I can explain what's needed for design and will spend any amount of effort to help such a project because I write free software too (GPLed, to be exact, and hindered by my inability to write actual C code).

    One major feature that I really, really wish Musicshop had was more interesting ways of affecting selections of notes. For all I know recent versions of Vision have this, but Gibson bought out Opcode and basically dismantled it for no good reason, so Vision is pretty dead now through corporate idiocy, many programmers laid off. At any rate, I'd like to be able to sequence a bunch of notes, such as a snare drum fill- imagine a steady bass drum happening, then a 'chemical brothers' sort of fast snaredrum roll leading into the bass drum again. I'd like to be able to select all the snare hits and fade them in (something I can already do in Musicshop with the strip chart, easily), and then select them again and timeshift them only on one end of the selection, the alterations blending smoothly into the original timings like a gradient. By this I mean that I should be able to take a machinelike snare roll and with a few easy adjustments be able to make it go zzzZZZZWIP! into the bass drum, starting late but the notes happening faster so that it's like they accelerate into the bass drum. This is a _very_ common effect from live drummers with a sense of drama- it's the difference between a Steve Gadd and a Chad Wackerman, the sense of elastic time that dramatizes the steadiness of the underlying beat. Alternately I'd like to take a sequenced, robotic fill and stretch it _out_ so that it started out sounding totally offtempo, and then as you picked out a regularity it would converge on the existing beat. It takes a Bill Bruford to pull off something that weird on real drums, but it's an amazing effect. Currently the only way I can do it in Musicshop is by digging out the ol' calculator and writing it all out on paper in units- which is such a pain that some of these things I've never even attempted. I'd like to see a Linux MIDI sequencer that does _more_ than cakewalk-and-a-soundcard, that dares a little more- even one which relies only on some weird programming language, if necessary. The important thing is that it would need to actually understand what music is, and concepts like this elastic time concept that's so important to sequencing appealing, interesting, exciting music. The other important thing is that it would have to be realtime if it had any pretenses of being a professional tool.

  • What I've found (Score:4)

    by adubey ( 82183 ) on Saturday March 11, 2000 @05:37AM (#1210688)
    From the GNOME and KDE homepages, I managed to find sequencer apps... actually from what I saw they were hoping to be whole "music suites." (I think the KDE one was hoping to be a re-write of Cubasis). Of course, like productivity software, the Windows/Mac versions have in some times a decades long development head start, and this shows (although it seems some OSS projects seems to catch up very quickly).

    Sound librarians are far behind... there is a port of CSOUND to Linux (the top patch synthesizer), but this only synthesizes patches, I don't think it has a wave editor, nor do I think it can download patches from a keyboard.

    Music notation software is even further behind. The Rosegarden project (now part of Gnome) had a notation part, but the whole thing is being rewritten from sratch for GNOME (hmpf - it needed to be rewritten, I understand, but what ever happened to platform idependence?)

    Hope this helps, it was a while ago that I looked, so sorry for the lack of URLs... but maybe there's enough here that you can do a search.

  • GNUstep/MusicKit, ALSA (Score:5)

    by Art Tatum ( 6890 ) on Saturday March 11, 2000 @08:00AM (#1210689)
    OK, I'm a musician who is also deeply into Free Software and Linux. I greatly suggest that you take a look at ALSA, the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (see http://www.alsa-project.org for details). ALSA is on its way to replacing OSS/Free in the Linux kernel, and they are working on top-flight patch management and MIDI sequencing support.

    Secondly, if you are familiar with NeXTSTEP and their fabulous MusicKit/SoundKit combo, I am (as soon as this term is over!) planning on porting it to GNUstep/Linux. So, all the powerful NeXT music and sound apps (like SynthBuilder) should be easily portable to Linux. See http://ccrma-www.stanford.edu/CCRMA/Software/Music Kit/MusicKit.html#bg for background on all this.

    I'm still wading through low-level MusicKit code (in addition to trying to keep my grades up!) and would appreciate some help, so write me at my email address!

  • midi have you looked at... (Score:5)

    by josepha48 ( 13953 ) on Saturday March 11, 2000 @07:52AM (#1210690) Journal
    Have a look at this web site. http://www.xdt.com/ar/linux-snd/digit al.shtml [xdt.com]

    For notation I use Rosegarden, then to listen there is timidity, kmidi, kmid, and I am sure are more. There is plugger as a plugin for midi and several other resources. So far I have not seen anything as grand as cakewalk, but I have not used cakewalk either so I do not know.

    There is also jazz which recently became open source. Try http://www.jazzware.com/cgi-bin/Zope.cgi/jazzware/ [jazzware.com] for jazz and see if it suites your needs. Between Rosegarden and Jazz I think you will find a good package.

    send flames > /dev/null

  • Sound & MIDI Software For Linux (Score:5)

    by woogie ( 18354 ) on Saturday March 11, 2000 @05:38AM (#1210691) Homepage
    Check out the Sound & MIDI Software For Linux page at http://www.bright.net/~dlphilp/linuxsoun d/ [bright.net] Woogie

  • GNU LilyPond, notation and sound (Score:5)

    by jcn ( 55250 ) on Saturday March 11, 2000 @06:17AM (#1210692) Homepage Journal
    When people say `music', they usually mean `sound' as in mp3 or MIDI. However, because you look for notation software as well, you should check out LilyPond, the GNU music typesetter: www.cs.uu.nl/people/hanwen/lilypond [cs.uu.nl] (or www.lilypond.org [lilypond.org]).

    LilyPond also features MIDI output and comes with a separate program (midi2ly) for converting MIDI to LilyPond's input language. However, trying to convert MIDI to sheet music is a rather useless undertaking, IME. Rich MIDI lacks lots of notation features, such as accents, ties (as opposed to a note of double length), chords vs. voices, clefs, grouping into staffs (two voices on one staff, or each on its own), voices that switch staffs, beaming, arpeggios (vs quickly played notes) grace notes and ornaments in general, flageolets, fingering, enharmonics. So, if you want a real nice score, you'll have to edit the resulting score by hand, anyway. It is this editing that takes most of the time, not the entry of plain notes (that is, if you can touch type).

    As a separate project, work is underway to build a GUI (GTK+) frontend to LilyPond. Check out Denemo: denemo.sourceforge.net [sourceforge.net]. Still in its early stages, but already usable.

    RoseGarden is basically an orphaned project. To quote Elliot Lee: "It isn't going anywhere any time soon." The last post on the Rosegarden mailing list is dated december, 6 1999. There are 2 branches. The first one is the X11 program, and hasn't changed much since the time Han-Wen named LilyPond as a pun on Rosegarden three years ago. They are also doing a complete ground-up rewrite of the package (slated to be 3.0), using Client/Server architecture, CORBA, GUILE, C++ and GTK. This all means that noone is working on the usable 2.x sources, and 3.x doesn't even compile. 2.x doesn't have any LilyPond support, but it is planned for 3.x

    Jan.

    --
    Jan Nieuwenhuizen | GNU LilyPond - The music typesetter
    www.xs4all.nl/~jantien [xs4all.nl] | www.lilypond.org [lilypond.org]

  • Brahms (Score:5)

    by Pope Pius IX ( 152161 ) on Saturday March 11, 2000 @05:42AM (#1210693)
    Have a look at Brahms [lienhard.desy.de]. This project was previously known as Koobase, but changed name so as to sound a bit less derivative.

    As the old name suggests, it is a MIDI sequencer in the style of Cubase.

    It is looking very promising, but at the time I last used it (a few months ago - so I may be out of date) it wasn't ready to replace Cubase.

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