LinuxMusicians

Hi,
I have experience making music with a hardware workstation.

Now I want to set up an Ubuntu Studio workstation for myself.

STAGE 1
My idea is to dedicate a laptop for this (I mostly like DELL laptops but could use another if really needed).
Plus I need to find a sound card that will work in this setup and that I can buy locally or import easily.
And a mic, but that should be pretty easy.

STAGE 2
Once I got this set up ready, I want to run a workstation with the following:
sampler
sequencer
at least one synth
multi-track recording capability
mixing

So pretty standard I guess.
If you can help me do this or part of it, I will pay a reasonable fee.
DM me if so.

Just note, at least older days, when you have very few posts, you won't be able to send private messages. Feel free to
a) send me private message to me for testing, for real thing cannot help
b) respond to this so that you get your post count high enough so that private messages work

Stage 1:

• If you already have a laptop available, go ahead and use it.
• You might consider AV Linux, or if you want to use Ubuntu Studio, that is probably fine. Honestly you can take pretty much any Linux distro and adapt it for audio production.
• For audio hardware, how many microphones do you want? Do you want it to include midi input/output? Some inexpensive choices are Behringer and Focusrite.

Stage 2:
Ardour, LMMS, Muse, QTractor, and Rosegarden are all multitrack audio apps that will do everything you listed, given the right plug-ins. It really depends on what you want to do. Will you mostly be sequencing MIDI? Or mostly audio tracks with a little bit of MIDI?

Hey Michael,
thank you very much for your kind answer.

1. Yes, I do have a laptop available for this and I have already installed Ubuntu Studio.

2. What I want to do is, in a first stage, to do MIDI sequencing and using a software sampler module.
For this I will need a sound card with MIDI capability, I am not sure how to select one that will work with Ubuntu Studio.

3. After a while I would like to be able to record a few tracks, mostly bass guitar and a voice so 1 mic will be OK.

Thank you again for your help.

If you are using MIDI only in software, your sound card doesn't need MIDI capability. That is only needed when you want to interface with an external MIDI device like a hardware synthesiser and even then many use USB instead these days. There is a lot of discussion on pros and cons of various sound interfaces in this forum.
You will probably not find a teacher specialising in teaching Linux audio but there is an encyclopaedia of knowledge here at LM if you search or need to ask questions. Also a plethora of videos on Youtube - some I have found particularly helpful are YPhil's intro to Qtractor series, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Q0PyzzDjUY and some videos from unfa, https://www.youtube.com/user/unfa00

sunrat wrote: ↑Wed Jun 16, 2021 11:28 pm ...
You will probably not find a teacher specialising in teaching Linux audio...

I do teach music production (in studio and online via Skype) using Linux audio tools, but I have no students currently using Linux. One fellow is running Reaper on Windows, that's an easy match with the native Linux Reaper. The other student is using a Mac with Ableton Live, so Bitwig works for teaching her. I have another student learning how to do better home recordings but he's working with simple recording with Audacity, a DAW doesn't work for him.

I had one student using Linux on the desktop but that was primarily for his programming classes at school. We talked a lot about using the system but we didn't use any audio tools (except his guitar) for his lessons.

Incidentally, I'm running Ubuntu Studio here, on Ubuntu 18.04.

Best regards,

dp

...some I have found particularly helpful are YPhil's intro to Qtractor series...

The audio quality has a lot of echo in that video - I can't be certain, but from the intro it looks as though he has a large diaphragm capacitor mic a long distance away, angled with the end, rather than the active side of the diaphragm pointed at his mouth, so the only audio that would pick up would be the reflection from the desk and / or the ceiling, and similarly, another mic closer, but angled perpendicular? to his mouth - so again, in that situation the dominant audio source is that reflected from the walls - you might not want to follow that example too closely - but the rest of it is interesting.

mike@overtonedsp wrote: ↑Thu Jun 17, 2021 7:45 am

...some I have found particularly helpful are YPhil's intro to Qtractor series...

The audio quality has a lot of echo in that video

You are being overly critical about an irrelevant aspect of the video. Thankfully it's about making first steps in QTractor for which it is very helpful, and not about how to get perfect audio on a Youtube video. You can see his mic setup in a couple of shots, how he is mixing them is unsure but the speech is perfectly clear and comprehensible.
It is the first of a series of 10 (iirc) videos on Qtractor.

Hey @sunrat I need to use a MIDI controller so yes I think that I will need a soundcard to do that, unless there are any controllers that can go directly to USB, of which I am not sure.

Fatima wrote: ↑Thu Jun 17, 2021 10:09 pm Hey @sunrat I need to use a MIDI controller so yes I think that I will need a soundcard to do that, unless there are any controllers that can go directly to USB, of which I am not sure.

Most MIDI controllers go directly to USB these days. I have a Novation Nocturn 49, about 12 years old, which sends MIDI over USB. Do you have one now, or which one are you considering?

Hey @sunrat thank you very much for pointing me to YPhil's intro to Qtractor videos - definitely, Qtractor is something I can use and I do like it. I have it installed already with Ubuntu Studio and I doing my firsts tests with it as I watch the videos.

Hi again @sunrat no I do not yet have a MIDI controller. I would like to buy one with soft-keyboard (not piano like) and 5 octaves. I will see what I can get locally and let you know. Thank you very much for your tips, they are very useful to me.

Hi again @sunrat sorry to ask so many questions
I have installed Qtractor in my Xubuntu machine so I do not have to switch to the other laptop every time I wanna use it.

In the videos from YPhil's, Qtractor looks like this:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EeMj-p ... sp=sharing

But my Qtractor looks like this:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bkv2FU ... sp=sharing

His version looks much more practical for working - how can I blend the mixer like that?
Thanks in advance,
Fatima

I think he just resized and moved the windows. AFAIK the mixer window is always separate.

Hey @sunrat in YouTube I have found a nice Qtractor tutorial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYyeHomJCUQ

So now I have a similar arrangement like that on the picture.
This is starting to look good.