LinuxMusicians

What should I use?

Currently I use Frescobaldi and Lilypond, and recently, I learnt about JACK, and somehow, manage to make Rosegarden work. (with Cadence + QSynth)

OS's? On original Ubuntu, the sound was bad, but on Arch, the sound is decent. On Ubuntu Studio, with lowlatency kernel, the sound is OK also.

Now, I want to integrate drums, not just metronome. I know about Hydrogen drumkit, but don't know how to sync to MIDI...

Heard about LMMS, but don't know how to use it, though.

Of course, worst of all, I don't know how to make it in Windows... Tried FL studio, but it is so hardware demanding... I am glad I stick to Linux.

Otherwise, I would be nice if I can do audio programming, maybe in JavaScript or something. (Or Python? Java? Lua?)

Welcome!

For drums, you have different options. You can (i) program them in Hydrogen or a different drum machine (like DrumGizmo or AVL), (ii) use a soundfont (in .sf2 or .sfz format) or (iii) use samples directly in a DAW (and in this case, you would assemble the bit by aligning the separate drum parts in the timeline).

It all depends on how you feel most comfortable.

In order to use Hydrogen, you can follow the (i) or (iii) procedure described above.

(i) Use JACK. You program your beat in JACK and then you route the audio (not the MIDI) signal to an audio track you created in your DAW and record it.
For this purpose I don't recommend you Rosegarden or LMMS but rather Ardour, MusE or Qtractor, which have excellent JACK support. Here is a video on how to do it on Ardour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtRyWJqueNU
(iii) Create the beats in Hydrogen and export them to .WAVs, then import them in your DAW and edit them in the timeline. This can also be done in Rosegarden and LMMS.

The choice of DAW is very important. You don't have to use a single DAW, you could use for example Ardour + MuseScore to have full audio capabilities mixed with full MIDI notation support. My suggestion is to try them our a bit and see which one you prefer.

polv wrote: ↑Mon May 17, 2021 6:08 am What should I use?

That strongly depends what you want:

- Do you need to record real instruments or vocals
- How you work with your midi: working with notation, working with mouse entering noted to piano roll, recording midi from keyboard?
- Do you want all possibilities, and do some work (learning) for setting up things, or do you want to minimize time spent on adjusting and learning softwares, focusing on music?

polv wrote: ↑Mon May 17, 2021 6:08 am Heard about LMMS, but don't know how to use it, though.

LMMS is easiest thing in that sense that no need for any setup. Start it, it will work out from the box, and contain most things. Does not have audio recording, and features for audio editing are really minimal.

If you try LMMS makes sure you have the latest version. (1.2.2) Most distro's seem stuck at a much older version.

https://lmms.io/download#linux

Download set rights to executable, and off you go. LMMS might not be the best, but its probably the easiest one to start with.

https://lmmsartists.bandcamp.com/album/ ... lmms-vol-6

Still can't get LMMS to work.
Soundfont is set. There are so many sound output and MIDI output devices. Don't know what to set.

After all, how do I test if it is working or not?

Rather, is there a Docker / VirtualBox image to test?

polv wrote: ↑Tue May 18, 2021 2:35 am Still can't get LMMS to work.

Code: Select all

➜  ~ lmms --version
*** WEAK-JACK: initializing
*** WEAK-JACK: OK. (0)
LMMS 1.2.2
(Linux x86_64, Qt 5.15.2, GCC 10.2.0)

Soundfont is set. There are so many sound output and MIDI output devices. Don't know what to set.

After all, how do I test if it is working or not?

Rather, is there a Docker / VirtualBox image to test?

You should simply plug the LMMS audio ports

lmms > master out L1
lmms> master out R1

respectively to the left and right audio channels of your sound card, usually called

System > playback_1
System > playback_2

For your purpose, you do not need to plug the MIDI ports.

By the way, I do not recommend you to use LMMS with JACK, if anything because from what I've seen it does not expose the audio ports of sample tracks, so it can't really be used for recording. Try the SDL back-end.

Still confusing. I can't make it work in VirtualBox as well.

Which should I choose for Audio Interface?

Which should I choose for MIDI interface?

Do I need to download soundfonts?