Been trying out Ableton live lite.

Discuss how to promote using FLOSS to make music.

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aprzekaz
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Been trying out Ableton live lite.

Post by aprzekaz »

Well I got Ableton live lite with my Interface and I've been trying it with my windows partition. It works and doesnt crash on me. It's a very well put together program and is easy to use and has things that I can't do with my KXStudio. On the other hand It's very unwelcoming because it costs like $400 just to upgrade to the standard version and they perposefully limit the lite version features. Not to mention the hassell of "Verifying your licence" just to be able to use the demo. And it's not perfect either. There are some latency issues and bad sounding synths and stuff. I just don't like the attitude of "we have thought of everything you need to be creative and we make the best stuff. But we do not trust you in the least and we want a lot of your money to use this exclusive stuff." And I love the FOSS attitude of "Everyone is welcome and we are here to help. We havn't thought of everything so join in and work with us and help out." So I guess as a musician I want to have the best tools but I also want to be a part of a good community. Which leads me to..... How can I help make linux music production better? I really do like it and its already pretty good. But lets make it better.

Just ranting :wink:
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Re: Been trying out Ableton live lite.

Post by danboid »

The best way to help would be to start learning C, C++, Qt, python etc (if you'e not already a programmer) and work on adding the features you're missing to existing apps or plugins. However, if you're not willing to put so much effort in you can still help by testing and writing bug reports for your fave apps and/or writing documentation. Devs hate doing that stuff if they ever find the time to do them at all so they're always very grateful when people do volunteer their time and effort.
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aprzekaz
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Re: Been trying out Ableton live lite.

Post by aprzekaz »

Programming does strike me as very interesting. But also very daunting :? . Although It does seem to be the direction my interest wants to go in. What are some good ways to start learning :?: I must say I have no real background in programming. But recently I have been reading about C and Python and computers in general. What about supercollider? Hek I still need to learn to use terminal commands for that matter.
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Re: Been trying out Ableton live lite.

Post by wolftune »

Help with advocacy and documentation! The more people you can recruit, the more there will be to work on things and improve the software. Documentation will help too. And beta testing. And translation! There's lots of ways to support the community other than programming!

If you like working on organizational / intellectual stuff you could get involved with my project to revolutionize community engagement and better funding for Free/Libre/Open everything. I share your frustrations, and I think the real answer is to figure out how to get people to stop paying for proprietary software and instead pay Free Software so more people can do this full time. There's no reason we couldn't have 100% of the coding that went into Ableton be FLOSS, except that being proprietary is what helped them get paid. I'm aiming to change that. You can see our proposals at Snowdrift.coop

Cheers,
Aaron
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aprzekaz
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Re: Been trying out Ableton live lite.

Post by aprzekaz »

I checked out snowdrift. Interesting idea. I think that if Linux Audio gains some more traction it will be hard to ignore. Being a musician, I am still looking for the best tools for creating music be they open source or not. That said, I'm not sure if the propriety software giants offer much of an advantage at this point. People just don't know it yet. I still have a windows partition and try using Ableton here and there if I get frustrated with The KXstudio tools. But every time KX studio wins out. There are just so many options with it. I guess there's still plenty to be done but I think I'm starting to get the Idea of what its all about and I like it. For example, right now my two favorite tools are LMMS and Ardour and I think to myself... Wouldn't it be great if they could be combined? And then I realize they can! That's what JACK is all about. It'd be nice if LMMs and Ardour worked as well together ad Hydrogen and QTractor but thats further down the road I guess. But I see some amazing potential with the idea of all these tools working together. There are so many possibilities. As it gets better and more stable I'm not sure if the Monolithic DAW will be practical any more.
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Re: Been trying out Ableton live lite.

Post by wolftune »

Right, and yet you do realize, don't you, that falkTX is basically struggling and poor and not even minimizing his losses to make KXStudio. For all the promise, there are lots of bugs and issues, and if he could work comfortably full time and have a modest steady income, it would make a huge difference. Right now, he's getting some part-time job so he doesn't totally go broke, and that's gonna take away from his time on KXStudio. And that's pretty typical for lots of these projects you appreciate.
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