Linux for musicians

**subarus** · 04-29-2003, 03:26 AM

First of all, some intro about myself.. Over the years, I installed various linux distros but always ended up removing it entirely from my HD. Knoppix changes my entire perception on Linux... Currently I have 3 pc at home, all running Knoppix. At work I use knoppix to run xterm on pc, that way I can run xterm terminal from anywhere in the company to login to servers to run cad apps, previously limited to dedicated unix workstations and pc running commercial xterm emulation.

Knoppix has done great service for Linux.. thanks. But I have a small complain. My pc at home dual boots with win95 because I need to compose music. I have not found any usable linux apps to compose, sequence and play midi yet... I have tried a few but they sux. The day I find the software to compose music on linux is the day I remove win95 partition entire from my hardisk... I am eagerly awaiting that day.

My kid's pc also dual boots with win98 for obvious reasons, games and edu softwares...nothing much we can do here.

My spouse's pc dual boots with win2k for because the need to run visual c++ and sql development environment. nothing much we can do here yet

**Stephen** · 04-29-2003, 06:07 AM

Have you tried Audacity.

**rickenbacherus** · 04-29-2003, 04:26 PM

Since I couldn't compose Three Blind Mice on a kazoo I can't vouch for the quality of any of these programs but there are several that are MIDI related here:
http://software.freshmeat.net/search..._cat&x=14&y=10

As Stephen mentioned Audacity is reported to be a very nice piece of work.

Glad you're liking Knoppix.

**aay** · 04-29-2003, 09:41 PM

I'm not sure what exactly you're looking for. If you are looking looking for a compositional tool that will let you write your own scores then Audacity is not what you want. The best tool for this is Rosegarden4. There is an earlier version of Rosegarden on the Knoppix CD but it doesn't come close to what the current version can do (plus it's really ugly!).

You can find the current Rosegarden here: http://www.all-day-breakfast.com/rosegarden/index.html

BTW, aren't you lucky - it was just updated today and looks like some nice improvements have been added. You will need ALSA and JACK in order to run it. I hope the current version somehow makes it onto the CD.

**subarus** · 04-30-2003, 07:01 AM

Audicity is audio editor/mixer, not exactly what I had in mind. I tried the previous version of Rosegarden and yr right, it sux. Thanks for the new info though.. cant wait to try it.

See the thing is Mr Knopper himself is an established pianist and has composed a few songs. If there is an apps which is useful for composing, I am sure it will be in Knoppix.. as far as I know he only mentioned about musicTex for typesetting purposes and scribbling notes on paper while meditating on piano...

Originally Posted by aay

..If you are looking looking for a compositional tool that will let you write your own scores then Audacity is not what you want. The best tool for this is Rosegarden4.

**thegroover** · 07-31-2003, 01:07 PM

well I guess it will be a little while until we see Propellerheads Reason hit a bootable linux CD. I don't see why Impulse Tracker and Fast Tracker can't make it in Wine or ported across... they aren't to bad.

Yours in groove... thegroover.

**eadz** · 07-31-2003, 01:19 PM

I used to have an Amiga, and play around with that tracker program, but "soundtracker" is pretty cool, just apt-get install soundtracker.

**thegroover** · 07-31-2003, 02:43 PM

Neat! mate, I am an Impulse Tracker veteran who had moved to Reason nearly 2 years ago. I started in Alpha Notator on the Atari ST with hardware but found that too limiting.

I will check out that linux tracking program for interest sake but, fortunately I have Linux on another machine. Linux refuses to recognise my Audigy 2 card.

Is there anything that is quite like Reason for Linux? What about professional wave editing like Wavelab?

Cheers

**i990315** · 08-01-2003, 06:37 PM

Hello!
Probably what you are looking for is Ardour which should get to a stable release (1.0) quite soon.
Hopefully you'll be able to find it on next versions of dyne:bolic, a kind of Knoppix specialized in multimedia software.

Regards,

Manuel

**aay** · 08-01-2003, 08:16 PM

That's pretty cool that Ardour will be released on Dynabolic. I was wondering if it would ever get onto Knoppix, but there are those space concerns you know. Ardour is a really powerful tool.