Old skool keyboard player; trying to overcome Linux recording skepticism

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ChuckLutz
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Old skool keyboard player; trying to overcome Linux recording skepticism

Post by ChuckLutz »

Hi folks,

Since about 2011 I have on-again-off-again been trying to make some use of Linux for music recording. The past few months are my latest "reboot" with (hopefully) improved hardware. This seems to be the forum for self-introductions, so I figured I'd give some background. I am really bad at keeping things short :D

I am in my late 40s and have been playing keyboards/piano (mainly) since my mid-teens (I've dabbled with guitar here and there, but I don't know what I'm doing on it). Over the past 30+ years, with a lot of luck, I've amassed a respectable pile of "old skool" keyboard instruments and "outboard" gear, some almost as old as I am (digital/analog synths, a Hammond organ or two, a few oddities), a few effects processors, etc. In the early 2000s I acquired an early '90s Tascam 24-channel mixer and 8-track 1/2" reel-to-reel recorder (and a few bits of hardware that goes with these - patchbays etc.) I had an old 6-track cassette recorder when I was in my early 20s and in the mid-90s a pal and I borrowed an 8-track Tascam cassette recorder to make an hour-long demo album. I was in a few lightweight amateur bands in college. In some of those we wrote some decent stuff, but none were "pros" by any stretch. I have a writing partner that I met in college and continued to work with (that's the guy I did the demo with in the mid-90s).

Trouble was, I was just too darn lazy in my youth - I just enjoyed jamming/improv at the keyboard too much, such that (apart from a few recording projects on those old cassette recorders), I mostly have tons of "raw material" in the form of jam tapes etc. that have a lot of stuff I still want to develop. Apart from a few instances, I wasn't very disciplined about actually developing my material musically. Back when I was in my 20s I didn't have the gear to really learn recording (apart from my little 6-track), but to be honest I was pretty lazy about that too back then!

Along came career, wife and kids, and long story short I didn't touch music for over a decade (I had a previous job that was very travel heavy that ate up my late 20s/early 30s; did the grad school thing after that, etc.). Plus, we had a couple of housing issues such that it was not feasible for me to have my stuff setup. So much for the sob story! But some years back I rekindled my interest and, aware that interesting things were happening with Linux, started dabbling with Linux for recording. I set all my stuff back up and started noodling. I have also acquired a few new boards in the interim because, well, I'm a keyboard player and that's how it goes! :-)

My previous Linux recording setup went something like this: I have this old 16-channel Mackie rack mixer that I got in the mid-90s that was the mixer I was mainly using at the time for my keyboard setup. I had a sad old Pentium 4 with like 1G ram in it from 2002 or whatever that only had its built-in soundcard. Somehow I managed to take the output of my rack mixer and feed it into that soundcard. I tried making some recordings with Audacity, but couldn't do anything other than use it as a 2-track stereo jam recorder, because every time I tried to layer tracks, the noise just got piled up worse with each new track. That wasn't cutting it! I also have an old Roland (Edirol? Sounds like a medicine) 1-in/1-out MIDI interface that I recall worked with that setup. I played a bit with some soft synths and recall thinking that while the breadth of options seemed impressive, the sound coming through that little built-in soundcard was not all that great. My old hardware synths sounded so much better, IMO. At the time I don't think Ardour had MIDI, so my audio and MIDI experiments were not integrated.

Fast forward to 2017 or so - my kids got a bit older, started taking piano lessons etc., and started writing some neat stuff of their own. Wanting to provide them (and me!) an outlet for recording music, I spent a few hundred bucks on a used PC (I think it has like 8G ram etc.). I made sure it had a PCI slot, because (based on the recommendations on like Page 1 of every Linux recording resource), I picked up a used M-Audio Delta 1010 (not the LT version). I specifically wanted the ability to record 8 tracks at a time, since I want to transfer some of those old 8-track cassette recordings into the modern DAW world. However, life being busy like it is, I only got to trying to get this new setup (using UbuntuStudio 19.10, I think it is) in the past few months.

I should mention that for various reasons, I never got around to using the big Tascam mixing board or that 8-track reel-to-reel. Many folks here will laugh at me for it, but recently I have been trying to make use of some of that old stuff. If only for fun, I eventually want to take the 8-track for a spin (assuming it still works!).

A couple years back I needed to do some cleanout in our basement, and took down my setup. Long story short , over the past year or so I started using the Tascam mixing board, replacing the Mackie. It has a couple of issues (some broken channel strips due to some meathead storage moves by yours-truly) but so far it seems to work. I LIKE KNOBS and that hands-on feel. I just finally hooked my old Alesis Quadraverb effects unit into it the other day. You see, being a family man with a long commute to work (normally - coronavirus home exile aside), I don't have a lot of time for my hobby. So it comes in bits. Continuity of learning can be tricky. When I was much younger, my setup was crazy simple - two keyboards, a 1U rack 4-channel stereo mixer, the FX unit, and my old 6-track recorder. So I never learned too much about "old school" recording either at the time! It has been interesting trying to learn both old and new technology at once.

I am imagining that all of this sounds a bit insane. Quite understandable. If I didn't get huge enjoyment and inspiration from my old keyboard pile, I could see simplifying my life with a laptop, a bunch of plugins, and an M-audio MIDI controller. But that's not my bag baby (well, if I ever gig again, it might be - I love a big palette for recording, but NO WAY am I hauling all that stuff again :-) ! )

My current game plan, as nuts as it might be, is to:
1) Get the M-Audio Delta 1010 / Linux PC working as a basic recording capability. THIS IS PROVING TO BE SURPRISINGLY DIFFICULT. I have a couple of posts in other forums here. To be honest, I am not quite sure this old used Delta 1010 even _works_ - it's not like I used to use it on a Windows XP machine and decided to migrate to Linux.
2. Via my patchbays, interface my Tascam mixer to the Delta 1010 and my old 8-track reel-to-reel. I have some synchronization hardware that I could use "in theory" to someday sync the reel-to-reel with, say, Ardour. Again, this is an ambitious far-flung idea. In the immediacy I'd be tickled pink just to lay down some tracks in Linux.
3. Slowly learn how to marry the old hardware world with all the new modern synth/fx/processing plugins available "in the box".

As to my tech acumen: I'm originally trained as an EE (though the degree to which my knowledge has rusted is being embarrassingly exposed as I struggle to understand the different mixer/line levels etc.) but (like so many EEs) ended up actually doing software for a living (mainly Python these days; used to be hackish C++). I use Linux daily at my job, so I am not a stranger. I know how to run GCC to compile software. I have to relearn makefiles every time though :-)

However, my experience with Linux audio and recording so far honestly leaves me skeptical, but willing to put in more effort before I "retreat" to Windows or a used Mac or whatever. As I mentioned before, I don't have a lot of time, so I am afraid I'll end up blowing it all trying to get my Linux recording to work vs. actually working on my music - we'll see! I can appreciate that it has so much "power" but so far just doing "Recording 101" level stuff is proving elusive. I am hoping that folks in this community can help guide me.

I am also a documenter by nature and will be happy to put in some effort to give back to the community here with whatever I learn.

Hopefully this long-winded intro wasn't too horrible!
Chuck
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milo
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Re: Old skool keyboard player; trying to overcome Linux recording skepticism

Post by milo »

I think you'll fit in just fine on this forum. Many of us have similar/relatable life stories.

I had a similar dilemma about 4 years ago, and ended up buying a USB audio interface (Focusrite Scarlett 2i2). That was the big breakthrough that got me access to everything I wanted to do in Linux audio. YMMV.
fulltwentycharacters
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Re: Old skool keyboard player; trying to overcome Linux recording skepticism

Post by fulltwentycharacters »

Hi, I just joined here tonight and your post was one of the ones I read, just skipping around at random..
I'm sorry but you will need to provide more information, such a brief post raises more questions than it answers...LOL
Just kidding...
I think the advice to get a USB interface is good advice because no matter what you feed into it on one end it will mate up with Audacity (I can speak from experience) on the other end...so that way you will be able to tell if that old dinosaur piece of equipment does actually work....
Going back to Windows, would be like going back to a woman who has already thrown you out in the middle of a rainy night three times, but you know her and you like her mac and cheese, so you go back to the familiar comfort zone...
The Linux stuff is just getting better, with automatically updating software, etc. You just need a USB interface with "legacy dinosaur" on the input section and USB out going into your 8 gigabyte RAM box (gee, I only have 4 myself)....
You could also transfer those 8 track cassettes one track at a time into flac files and then manually line them up in the DAW -it's not that hard if you synch them all up using a snare hit in a certain spot which bled through to each analog track loud enough to use them -that's ok for shorter pieces, but, given the fact that the reel to reel might not run at a perfectly consistent speed upon each playback, it could get ragged after about an hour -like if your cat's tail brushes against the reel during one of the playbacks, (because you're ignoring it and it wants your attention then that particular one of the eight might fall out of time...
Best would be to use the "tape out" line outputs from the 8 track and then mix them to stereo on the USB mixer, then record one stereo track on track 1 of Audacity....because you can't record more than one track simultaneously- you could even get a USB mixer with effects sends/returns so you could put different effects on each track -like a nice slapback echo and reverb on the vocals, but not on the bass drum, type of thing...
good luck, glad to be a member of the forum!
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Re: Old skool keyboard player; trying to overcome Linux recording skepticism

Post by Basslint »

Welcome! You will see pretty soon that we have no problem recording stuff on GNU/Linux :D
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