Intro - Robert Krawitz

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rlk
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Joined: Sun Mar 07, 2021 10:18 pm

Intro - Robert Krawitz

Post by rlk »

Hi everyone,

I'm a late 50's Linux performance engineer; I work for a company you've heard of, but that's neither here nor there.

Anyway, I'm getting back into playing viola after about 20 years off. I played (strictly amateur) in the 1990's, but a combination of a job change requiring a longer commute and the orchestra I played in folding led to my not playing beyond the odd Happy Birthday and a family performance of Eleanor Rigby. Over the past several months, a rock band (The Warning) has somehow managed to inspire me to start playing again, and I'd like to learn to pay by ear. For those who have been Warned, the first songs I want to learn are Escape the Mind (which has actual albeit likely synthesized string parts) and Fade Away, which was more the initial inspiration, and for which I'd play the vocal part.

It occurs to me that a very useful device would be a foot pedal (or multiple foot pedals, really) to start, pause, and jump backward in a song, so I don't have to put down my bow to fiddle with keyboard or mouse. I guess I need not say that it has to work under Linux :-). If there are particular music packages that work best for this (I normally use Kaffeine), that would be of interest too. Hopefully it would be a generic USB HID that's not dependent on an especially new kernel.

I'm certainly able to hack code, but I have enough on my plate with Gutenprint (I'm project lead for that) and KPhotoAlbum (for which I'm a developer).
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