Hi all,
yesterday I did a presentation called "Become a rockstar using FOSS" in the Open Media devroom at FOSDEM 2023. It was meant as a very basic introduction and overview on the Linux music ecosystem, starting from JACK/Pipewire to how you can start plugging your instrument in, tinker with the sounds you get, work within the context of a DAW and then to how you can take care of virtual instruments of different kinds (drums, keys, etc.). It was very rushed as I didn't have much time, and I also failed to progress quickly enough, so the last slides are barely touched, but it seemed to be well received for what it was. Don't expect anything deep or meaningful (pretty sure there isn't a single thing you don't know already, or that there may be things you'll disagree with), but again, it was just an overview and an attempt to scratch the surface, to make people interested in this often underlooked and yet amazing ecosystem.
I also gave a shoutout to LinuxMusicians towards the end, which has been fundamental in my progress as a hobbyist musician using FOSS, as the feedback and exchanges I had with you all here have been invaluable so far and still are. I even got to briefly meet @raboof, which was an unexpected, shocking and amazing surprise to me!
You can find a link to the talk below. I completed my video review yesterday and the video should be there too: at the time of writing it isn't (I contacted the FOSDEM video team about it to get this sorted out), but it probably soon will, so if you don't see it right away please try again later. The slides are already available for download instead, in case you're interested in checking out what topics the talk touched.
https://fosdem.org/2023/schedule/event/om_music/
I'd love to hear what you think of it! I had a nice chat with a couple of people after the talk, which I was really pleased about. Someone I know also said he liked the talk so much he started playing with the software I mentioned with his son, which I was really happy to hear, since my main objective was indeed getting people interested enough that they'd start digging deeper themselves. Hopefully it won't stop to just one person... I'm still hopeful we'll be able to get a devroom just for music software at FOSDEM sooner or later, but I'm still grateful I had the opportunity to share this in one of the existing devrooms.
Thanks!
Lorenzo