Peering out from the covid cellar...

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andersen
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Peering out from the covid cellar...

Post by andersen »

Greetings Linux fans. Just installed Ubuntu Studio as the native OS on a laptop. I'm not sure it's the solution I'm really looking for, but it's got three DAWs to check out, so we'll see. I scratched the Kali and Win10 partitions on a dual boot to simplify and focus. Mas musica.

I love Cakewalk and wish it worked on Linux. Owned Sonar and Cubase, but both changed while I wasn't looking, though I'm fine with CW now being free. It's really an extraordinary DAW in terms of functionality. I got it with a DI to record instruments. But as I learned about DAWs, it ripped my old school ideas about making/recording music to pieces.

I also discovered Lilypond several years ago, and began writing these weird text files to generate midi files and a sheet music score. Wow. I did about 10 songs I had written, but it was arduous writing those files and... it was midi... ka tink ka tink ka tinky dink. I finally wandered away. Eventually, I connected the dots. Now I use Frescobaldi, and can take an idea from a hum to a score and a midi pretty fast.

I started doing this to copyright several songs and publish them, and now the ka-tink is only temporary, because armed with vsts and soft synths, I can import the midi files... give them a synth voice, and turn it into a multi instrument project in CW in a day or two and then maybe even record on top of that. Like I said... old school. But learning. I looked at Ardour, but have some set up yet to do.

I'm joining you to listen to the conversation... whether linux, or music tech in general, or music. I have a couple of musical projects that I'm trying to complete in Cakewalk, but this reborn linux box has my attention. I keep discovering new aspects of digital music creation and I just gotta go check it out.

OK back to the cellar. Gee, that sun is awfully bright.
Regards,
Less talk, more music - andersen
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TAERSH
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Re: Peering out from the covid cellar...

Post by TAERSH »

In the old days I was a Cubase user as well. First on the Atari Mega ST later in Windows 98/98SE and XP. Switched to GNU/Linux completeley in 2009/10. Now I'm using Qtractor Sequencer which was easy to learn for me after being used to Cubase.

You should have a look at Qractor! It's really great!
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Re: Peering out from the covid cellar...

Post by JimiPb »

Welcome to the forum!

For midi-work there are much better DAWs than Ardour. I really like it for mixing recordings, it starts to fall apart as soon as i want to trigger a snare. It is possible, but not at all convenient.
Id suggest taking a look at Bitwig or Qtractor.
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andersen
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Qtractor

Post by andersen »

Hi to you both,
Thanks for the responses and suggestions. I just finished installing Qtractor but will have to wait til tomorrow to get going with it. Looks promising.
.
My legacy laptop is Win10 and that's where the musical todo list is. (and where I've been since early this morning).

I'm sort of in between two worlds, as I get the techie todo list in Ubuntu done in order to bring this one fully up. (musically)
BTW, I learned to program in Basic on some kind of Atari.

Thanks again.
Less talk, more music - andersen
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Re: Peering out from the covid cellar...

Post by Basslint »

JimiPb wrote: Sun Nov 15, 2020 1:07 pm Welcome to the forum!

For midi-work there are much better DAWs than Ardour. I really like it for mixing recordings, it starts to fall apart as soon as i want to trigger a snare. It is possible, but not at all convenient.
Id suggest taking a look at Bitwig or Qtractor.
Welcome @andersen ! I second this and also recommend MusE, which has a handy notation editor.
The community of believers was of one heart and mind, and no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they had everything in common. [Acts 4:32]

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andersen
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Re: Peering out from the covid cellar...

Post by andersen »

Basslint wrote: Mon Nov 16, 2020 6:16 am
JimiPb wrote: Sun Nov 15, 2020 1:07 pm Welcome to the forum!

For midi-work there are much better DAWs than Ardour. I really like it for mixing recordings, it starts to fall apart as soon as i want to trigger a snare. It is possible, but not at all convenient.
Id suggest taking a look at Bitwig or Qtractor.
Welcome @andersen ! I second this and also recommend MusE, which has a handy notation editor.
Is that what you're using?
That was on my list a while ago before I committed to Ubuntu Studio. I'll take a look. Thanks.
Less talk, more music - andersen
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Re: Peering out from the covid cellar...

Post by folderol »

I've been using Rosegarden since... well forever :lol:
It's one of the oldest (rather like me) and has it's quirks. It is under slow but steady development and I find it just very 'comfortable' to use.
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andersen
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Re: Peering out from the covid cellar...

Post by andersen »

folderol wrote: Mon Nov 16, 2020 7:01 pm I've been using Rosegarden since... well forever :lol:
It's one of the oldest (rather like me) and has it's quirks. It is under slow but steady development and I find it just very 'comfortable' to use.
How does it do with VSTs or synths? Also what is it's footprint?.. in terms of storage etc...
I looked at RoseGarden when I started up with Lilypond, but my linux usage then was in a VM with low resources. That was also at the beginning of my DAW curve with cubase (now ditched) when I didn't really know what I was doing. Pulling tracks in and editting, or recording.

I'm feeling inspired by the contacts here. Kicking a couple of stalled pieces to get them going again.
I worked all night in CbB on an essay I wrote a couple of weeks ago. I'll post it one of these days. It's sort of a departure from what I've been doing, but it was fun. I like CbB for several reasons, but one is, a lot of it is/was? written in Scheme and I'm an old Schemer.
Let's not talk age. It's ... unproductive eh?
BTW ever done any sound track work?
Cheers!
Less talk, more music - andersen
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Re: Peering out from the covid cellar...

Post by Basslint »

andersen wrote: Tue Nov 17, 2020 8:11 pm How does it do with VSTs or synths? Also what is it's footprint?.. in terms of storage etc...
I looked at RoseGarden when I started up with Lilypond, but my linux usage then was in a VM with low resources. That was also at the beginning of my DAW curve with cubase (now ditched) when I didn't really know what I was doing. Pulling tracks in and editting, or recording.
Forgive me for answering instead of the good @folderol but I did some research on this (you already answered to that thread so you know about it).

Rosegarden is pretty lightweight but it's not a modern DAW right out of the box. You could use it with Ardour, so you have both top-class notation (in Rosegarden) and Mixing and Mastering (Ardour) capabilities. You have to enable JACK Transport if you use automation and set Rosegarden as the transport master.
I'm feeling inspired by the contacts here. Kicking a couple of stalled pieces to get them going again.
I worked all night in CbB on an essay I wrote a couple of weeks ago. I'll post it one of these days. It's sort of a departure from what I've been doing, but it was fun. I like CbB for several reasons, but one is, a lot of it is/was? written in Scheme and I'm an old Schemer.
Let's not talk age. It's ... unproductive eh?
BTW ever done any sound track work?
Cheers!
Hey, although I am not any good at it and probably not worthy of that name, I am a (rusty, non-practicing, Ruby sellout) Schemer too, glad to have someone who I can look up to! :D Zrythm is a DAW with Scheme (GNU Guile) support by the way!
The community of believers was of one heart and mind, and no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they had everything in common. [Acts 4:32]

Please donate time (even bug reports) or money to libre software 🎁

Jam on openSUSE + GeekosDAW!
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Re: Peering out from the covid cellar...

Post by folderol »

@Basslint I think you answered that as well or better than me :lol:
The Yoshimi guy {apparently now an 'elderly'}
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Re: Peering out from the covid cellar...

Post by jonetsu »

I'd echo the same about Ardour/Mixbus: not very good for MIDI creations. I use Bitwig to create and Mixbus for mix and mastering. Bitwig is not good at mixing, so each other complements very well.
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Re: Peering out from the covid cellar...

Post by glowrak guy »

andersen wrote: Sun Nov 15, 2020 2:38 am I love Cakewalk and wish it worked on Linux.
Hi, I've installed and briefly tested versions of Cakewalk By Bandlab
in Ubuntu Studio, with wine-staging and wineasio installed.

Cake-K6+R6.jpg
Cake-K6+R6.jpg (143.94 KiB) Viewed 2443 times
The wine install wasn't fluid, it's a big process, but after a couple of apparent stalls,
the job was finished, and I could load windows plugins and play.
But that was 6 months ago, and wine-staging keeps improving.
Paree from kvraudio.com has more recently reported it working
well for him. So hope rides the learning curves.

I use mainly linux Reaper, and windows Reaper in wine-staging,
with some Harrison Mixbus, Bitwig 8Track, and Qtractor.

Try not to get in a hurry, linux is like an ever-changing
university curriculum, and nothing is new for long!

Cheers
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andersen
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Re: Peering out from the covid cellar...

Post by andersen »

Cool. One of the problems that I understood, with CbB on Linux was the extra layer required to get it to run, slowing things down. But you've got my attention. I'll keep my eye on it. Thanks for the info.
Less talk, more music - andersen
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Re: Peering out from the covid cellar...

Post by glowrak guy »

One of the problems wine doesn't have, is needing to be the entire windows OS.
It's just has to present a gui with enough tools under the hood, to get the
knobs moving, and the sounds flowing. The size difference between
a win 7 or 10 install, and the wine and .wine default-folders
is staggering, considering the results linux musicians can expect.
The linVst plugin wrapper lets linux-native daws take good advantage
of the situation.

Spying on customers takes up a lot of disk-space, and eats cpu cycles
for breakfast, lunch, dinner, desert, and even midnight snacks :roll:
I hope I'll never need windows 10 :shock:
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Re: Peering out from the covid cellar...

Post by andersen »

glowrak guy wrote: Sat Nov 21, 2020 10:38 pm Spying on customers takes up a lot of disk-space, and eats cpu cycles
for breakfast, lunch, dinner, desert, and even midnight snacks :roll:
I hope I'll never need windows 10 :shock:

@glowrak guy *heavy sigh*
I get that. It's why I chucked the dual boot on this system. It's pure U.S. Although I like Manjaro as well. As I write this I'm on hour 15 of a process well suited to purgatory. Ugh.
Less talk, more music - andersen
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