Muse 2.1 out today!

[wolftune]

Looks like a MAJOR improvement! Muse seems really promising these days.
http://muse-sequencer.org/index.php/News

[GraysonPeddie]

Package 'em up, Falk.

Native VST! Nice.

[wolftune]

Package 'em up, Falk.

Native VST! Nice.

Yeah, I was wondering why Muse wasn't included in KXStudio by default…
Ok, actually, I'm not really a user (yet). After all this time, I'm still trying to figure out what options to go with.

[tatch]

falk, I completely agree with you. From what people are saying, MuSE has a lot going for it, but when I open it up I just can't stand the UI and end up closing it shortly.

[tux99]

Muse could look better, but it doesn't look that bad, I find it looks good enough to be perfectly usable (although I'm still sticking with Rosegarden as I'm so used to it).

[English Guy]

Muse is the app that convinced me to start making music on Linux (Being used to cubasis in those days) & I still love it. I find it productive and intuitive. The team are friendly & I have got help & bug fixes through the using mailing list. A great app.

[tripomatic]

Muse is nice, but not my thing. These people need to take the GUI aspect of their apps more seriously.
It doesn't have to be beautiful, it just MUST NOT BE UGLY.
For me, it kills the will to make music in a specific program...

I Agree, for me it looks like an sequencer in the mid 90'ties.
If it had a modern interface it would be more attractive to use it.

Capabilities is one thing, but a nice view is also important if you have to watch it for hours.

[wolftune]

Playing with it now, it seems acceptable enough GUI that if it is otherwise the best option for certain things, I can live with the GUI. Especially because I don't think any other Linux DAWs actually look that good either, so it's kinda ugly vs kinda ugly in my opinion.

[wolftune]

http://muse-sequencer.org/index.php/News

[wurlycat]

Playing with it now, it seems acceptable enough GUI that if it is otherwise the best option for certain things, I can live with the GUI.

The GUI resembles that of the applications I used in the mid 90's under windows.
That would make me feel at home

I have not used Muse yet but I've seen on the Reference Guide (http://muse-sequencer.org/index.php/Win ... ence_Guide) that there is also a sysex editor that would be very useful for me since I use external synth.
I was wondering if this feature works using jack.
At present I can only send program files using the command line but I need to switch off jack before.
I was also wondering if there are instrument definition files (IDF) for old synths such as those that I use.

These days I'm trying to fix the definition files for Rosegarden and I've seen that it always takes a little time to adjust the files and check if they work correctly. For Roland Sc-880 it seems that it's Ok now, but with Korg M1EX ,that is a little older, I need to make some adjustments because I have to investigate how it works with combi and I need to create a different set of definitions, one for each program sysex I can load on MIREX (the device can held in memory only 100 programs and 100 combi)

[tux99]

I was wondering if this feature works using jack.

One of the big flaws of Jack MIDI is that it doesn't support sysex, that's why ALSA MIDI is the best (and only) choice when you use sysex.

[tux99]

JACK can somewhat do sysex, but the nature of it implies that we read/write it on a non-realtime context.

It was actually you who told me that JACK can't do sysex, I have never tried it myself but trusted your statement.

I prefer to have my *softsynths* work with JACK MIDI and thus 0 latency&jitter instead of losing that because of sysex

Maybe you didn't notice it, but wurlycat uses hardware synths so your comment about softsynths is completely out of context.

I think we agreed already in the past that ALSA MIDI is best for hardware synths while JACK MIDI is best for softsynths, no need to start another pointless argument about this.

[tux99]

Considering that you jumped quickly to say JACK MIDI is flawed, I get the feeling this is not entirely true...

It's flawed in the context of hardware synths and sysex, which is what wurlycat was asking about. You need to read the whole thread, not take my post in isolation.

[wurlycat]

I think we agreed already in the past that ALSA MIDI is best for hardware synths while JACK MIDI is best for softsynths, no need to start another pointless argument about this.

Considering that you jumped quickly to say JACK MIDI is flawed, I get the feeling this is not entirely true...

It was not my intention to raise a hornet's nest.
I am following this forum for a short time and I have not yet read all the threads on these topics.
Your comments are still useful to me and I think will help me to find solutions that are right for the purposes I have in mind.
There are two types of activities that I would perform with a sequencer:

- compose music in a simple manner using a Master Keyboard, recording a track at a time, adding a new
track while listening to previously registered tracks, copy. paste, adding effect etc.
- modify existing midi files to create a realistic accompaniment for singers.

I happened to listen to midi backing tracks in standard GM or something and I noticed how changing some parameter, such as the type of piano or guitar, the placement of instruments and effects, the overall listening experience is more realistic and nice, more personal. Sometimes in addition to the singer's voice is simply the sound of a guitar, a bass and a little more to create a nice atmosphere.

Once I have found the right combination for the banks and the effects I would be able to save the
configuration to use it again. Sometimes this requires the dump of the contents of (part) the machine
memory to have exactly the same patch with the same parameters.This can happen for example using the M1 which has a limited memory. I could save the sysex file with the same name of the song and load it manually before playing the song. Putting the commands in a script should make the task faster.
If it was available a file editor for Sysex to arrange the banks and setup by selecting only those that
you use most often, will make this task much less frequent.

But I would not go off topics and on this subject I would like to open another more specific discussion
to see if there is something open source. There are commercial products with very attractive graphical
interfaces and preview of waveforms and envelopes but they are definitely out of budget and far from the philosophy with which I approached the use of open source to discover the pleasure of music-making.
It would already be a big step forward to have the possibility of selecting a set of patches to be included in a single file sysex.

However, when I have finished the development of my workstation (if I want to use Muse I need to create Instrument Definition files for my synths) , I will do some tests to see what is the most practical solution with the tools (SW & HW) that I use.