Valhalla Tracker v0.2.3

Programming applications for making music on Linux.

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schtixfnord
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Valhalla Tracker v0.2.3

Post by schtixfnord »

Hello, all
I'd like to announce first public release of a new live sequencer for Gnome. It is a tracker (I know, I know). I needed something to put between a MIDI controller and Carla. Think of it as a minimalistic MIDI repeater with some added value. The user interface is written in Python, the library that talks to JACK is written in C. Being a one-person project, the code-base can get a bit convoluted (as I were able to just come up with stuff as I went along). Nevertheless, I think it might be of useful to some of you, if only to experiment with "unheard of" time signatures.

Enjoy!

https://github.com/rdybka/vht
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nils
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Re: Valhalla Tracker v0.2.3

Post by nils »

Thanks for the release!

quick test : I can confirm it installs to ~/.local and can be started.
JACK midi ports work and I get output.

I've seen the keyboard shortcut list, but without knowing what to expect from the program I fear there is a lot one needs to figure out by trial and error.

How about a quickstart tutorial video?
schtixfnord
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Re: Valhalla Tracker v0.2.3

Post by schtixfnord »

Thank you for trying it out. Yes, it definitely needs a tutorial. Hope Trent won't mind:

https://youtu.be/gKDUJvE3JoU

Keep in mind this is alpha software, I keep finding 2-3 bugs in it each day.
Once again thank you for your interest.
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Re: Valhalla Tracker v0.2.3

Post by Basslint »

I had already discovered it a while ago, it's very nice! Does it support changing time signatures during the song?

I made a package for it on openSUSE but one problem I had is that it uses a very recent version of Python 3 (the := operator). I think one idea to make a package work across most distros without creating headaches to packagers is to target the lowest version available at the very least on the mainstream non-rolling distros (Ubuntu LTS, Debian, openSUSE Leap, Fedora). You can find this info on repology.org usually. For now I just patched the := away as it's very easy to refactor but I wanted to give my two cents as a packager :D
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LAM
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Re: Valhalla Tracker v0.2.3

Post by LAM »

Tried on Debian SID.
After installing the dependencies and "./setup.py install --user", launching vht i get this:

Code: Select all

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/xxx/.local/bin/vht", line 33, in <module>
    sys.exit(load_entry_point('vht==0.2.3', 'console_scripts', 'vht')())
  File "/home/xxx/.local/bin/vht", line 25, in importlib_load_entry_point
    return next(matches).load()
  File "/usr/lib/python3.8/importlib/metadata.py", line 77, in load
    module = import_module(match.group('module'))
  File "/usr/lib/python3.8/importlib/__init__.py", line 127, in import_module
    return _bootstrap._gcd_import(name[level:], package, level)
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 1014, in _gcd_import
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 991, in _find_and_load
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 975, in _find_and_load_unlocked
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 671, in _load_unlocked
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap_external>", line 783, in exec_module
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 219, in _call_with_frames_removed
  File "/home/xxx/.local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/vht/main.py", line 26, in <module>
    from vht.mainwin import MainWin
  File "/home/xxx/.local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/vht/mainwin.py", line 18, in <module>
    from vht.console import Console
  File "/home/xxx/.local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/vht/console.py", line 28, in <module>
    gi.require_version("Vte", "2.91")
  File "/home/xxx/.local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/gi/__init__.py", line 126, in require_version
    raise ValueError('Namespace %s not available' % namespace)
ValueError: Namespace Vte not available

in mix, nobody can hear your screen

schtixfnord
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Re: Valhalla Tracker v0.2.3

Post by schtixfnord »

You might get away with a warning. If you comment out line 28 in vht/console.py, it won't check for version. Your vte is older than it expects, but I probably just pasted that check from stack overflow. Do the setup again.

Next!

Yes, you can change bpm in the middle of the song. It's a showcase of weird design choices. If you manage to highlight and click on that little yellow arc on top of the timeline, just under the buttons, bpm will light up in status bar. That's your bpm for node zero (which you cant move, because it's The Zero Node). If you hold ctrl and hover your mouse somewhere under it, you'll see a yellow dot. Click and a new node will show up. You can set your new bpm. Double click and it will be interpolated from the last node. Don't freak out when things start stretching.

And thank you so much for packaging this. It's the main thing I hope will "sort itself out by the community". Will now try to actually make music in it for a few days. That should straighten it out a bit.

All we need now is an Amiga version, which with sequencer engine in C can't be so far away. Then port it to Megadrive! No, I'm just winding myself up again...
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LAM
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Re: Valhalla Tracker v0.2.3

Post by LAM »

schtixfnord wrote: Mon Nov 02, 2020 12:48 am You might get away with a warning. If you comment out line 28 in vht/console.py, it won't check for version. Your vte is older than it expects, but I probably just pasted that check from stack overflow. Do the setup again.
Thank you, now it's starting. I had to install libvte-2.91-dev also.

I was looking exactly for something like this. Very cool project. :D

in mix, nobody can hear your screen

schtixfnord
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Re: Valhalla Tracker v0.2.3

Post by schtixfnord »

Thank you. Means I was not the only one :)

Started adding some documentation to the wiki to explain the less obvious stuff.
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