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Music Media Software Linux

Rosegarden 1.0 Released 39

Posted by timothy from the what-was-promised dept.
bonch writes "Rosegarden 1.0 has been released for Linux. From the website: 'Rosegarden is one of the most comprehensive Linux music software projects, and is the only Linux application to offer full composition and recording capabilities to musicians who prefer to use classical notation.' Rosegarden is free software under the GPL. Take a tour or find a package for your distro."
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Rosegarden 1.0 Released More

Rosegarden 1.0 Released

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  • ok. that's cool.

  • Rosegarden (Score:4, Informative)

    by micromoog ( 206608 ) on Thursday February 17, 2005 @06:29PM (#11705518)
    I tried Rosegarden for some softsynth/digital recording work, but it was too crashy. I've had better luck with MuSE [serverkommune.de].

    There have been lots of exciting developments in OSS music software in the past year or two.

    • That's odd, I've found muse to be far less stable than rosegarden when I'm using it. Plus it's completely jack-based, which has never been stable on my system.
      • I run everything through jack. In fact, that's the main source of issues I've had with Rosegarden.

        So I guess maybe it's:

        • If you use jack -> MusE
        • If you don't use jack -> Rosegarden

  • Linux audio (Score:4, Insightful)

    by color ( 101577 ) on Thursday February 17, 2005 @06:40PM (#11705615)
    Congratulations to the developers!
    Rosegarden in conjuntion with jack, ladspa, ardour and a lot of other packages are getting to the point where profesional audio in linux comes closer to a reality.
    I know that it has still a way to go to be at the level of other platforms, but the gap is closing. It is already posible to work in audio with linux.
  • but can someone who is a musician splain it to me?

    1) define MIDI synth. Is this an external keyboard that is hooked up and controlled from the program?
    2) It says "Rosegarden includes synth plugin support for sample-accurate synthesis of MIDI tracks." OK. This sounds like how Voyager once got out of a sticky situation. Does this mean that Rosegarden makes the noises, and NOT an external keyboard device?

    Basically, I would like to tinker with sounds. I know my sound card that I already have, cheap and old as
    • Midi devices can be internal or external. Really MIDI is a type of networking protocol that is used for instruments to communicate with one another, but it has come to mean collections of sounds or compositions made by sequencing pre-recorded midi sounds

    • Re:I RTFA, but... (Score:5, Informative)

      by micromoog ( 206608 ) on Thursday February 17, 2005 @07:00PM (#11705837)
      "MIDI synth" could be a piece of hardware controlled by a MIDI stream from the computer, or (increasingly likely) a piece of software. It's "something that converts MIDI control messages to sound".

      If I imagine a noise and manipulate the controls of Rosegarden expertly, will I get the noise that I'm looking for?

      To be able to do that, you'll probably want something like a modular softsynth. For Linux, there's ams [sourceforge.net]. That combined with a virtual keyboard like vkeybd [alsa-project.org] is enough (given the "expert manipulation" part). Something like Rosegarden could then act as the "player" of the synth (which is like the "instrument").

      If you really want to get down to the bits and bytes, there's pd [puredata.org].

      The easy road to all this is to install the AGNULA [agnula.org] Linux disribution, which comes with a shitload of software.

    • Re:I RTFA, but... (Score:5, Informative)

      by The_Dougster ( 308194 ) on Thursday February 17, 2005 @07:18PM (#11706016) Homepage
      A MIDI synth can be external, but it doesn't have to be. If you have ALSA and a supported sound card, then ALSA provides a MIDI synthesiser on the board.

      For example, I have a Creative SBLive! card which is supported. I load a patchset using the asfxload utility, and my hardware synth can be accessed at MIDI port 65:0. I also have Timidity+ installed, and it's found at port 128:0. And finally, I have an external MIDI keyboard (an old Yamaha PSR-300) which is connected via a gameport to MIDI adapter cable to the SBLive!. The external keyboard is at port 64:0.

      Using ALSA's "pmidi" command, I can spool a midi file to any of these devices, so I can actually make the Yamaha play the file externally. I haven't checked out the latest Rosegarden yet, but if it supports ALSA now, then it should be able to output to any of these devices. Old versions only supported the old linux OSS device /dev/sequencer, or you could output a midi file and play it however works best for you. Supposedly you can also capture MIDI and WAV data from external keyboards and other sources but I haven't figured that out yet.

      Rosegarden is very cool if you have ALSA sound. I use it to write sheet music scores for my drums, bass, and synth tracks. Then I play the midi file and jam along with my electric guitar which runs into the soundcard through an amp simulator on the line in port. The computer mixes the output together and sounds great. The amp simulator (Zoom 503) basically makes my guitar sound like its being miked from an overdriven Marshall stack and that way I don't have to have a bunch of effects pedals daisy chained together to get a decent sound from the guitar. There are newer amp simulators like the PoD units that are also ideal for running a guitar directly into a soundcard.

      Yes, you too can be just like Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails, making weird music in your own home all by yourself with a Linux computer, Rosegarden, and some rather inexpensive equipment.

      Another really cool music creation program to check out is Cecilia [ufl.edu]. It is a pretty technically oriented synthesizer package which can make some really weird sounds: think Pink Floyd. I haven't figured out how to really use it in combination with Rosegarden yet, but its a blast to play around with it and make strange sounds. Cecilia is pretty crashy and hasn't been updated in a while, but it's still a very nifty toy to fool around with.

  • 1 2 3 1...? scores

  • I took a look at Rosegarden not too long ago and thought it was impressive, but it really isn't a turn-key system--there are just too many ducks to line up (ALSA, JACK, getting MIDI sound libraries, etc.). I got the impression that if I had already shelled out the big bucks for the right hardware, it would be a lot easier. But for someone who just wants to play around with notes on the screen, is there something simpler and turn-key?

  • Linux Audio Aplications (Score:5, Informative)

    by color ( 101577 ) on Thursday February 17, 2005 @07:07PM (#11705906)
    For those of you interested in an multimedia distribution, I would recommend checking planet ccrmma (pronounced karma) http://www-ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccrma/software / [stanford.edu] It is RedHat/Fedora centric, but it made me shitch from Debian for the multimedia workstation. Works great with apt too!!

  • ardour (Score:3, Informative)

    by free2 ( 851653 ) on Thursday February 17, 2005 @07:09PM (#11705924) Homepage
    ardour is another good free recorder (ardour looks more like protools than cubase)

    ardour [ardour.org]
  • I haven't had a chance to try it out yet, but from the looks of the screenshots it reminds me alot of Fruity Loops [fruityloops.com] (aka FL Studio now), but with real music notation options... I imagine with this and audacity you could do some really cool stuff.
  • I have the "old" rosegarden (I guess it's called X11 Rosegarden now) and this completely kicks the pants off of it. If only I had a computer that wasn't my laptop...I doubt this will run on a Pentium 1 (100 mHz of processing power! Oh yeah!) Seriously though, this looks to be even similar to GarageBand (please God let it be as good as GarageBand) which is the only reason I would want a Mac. That would be the greatest thing ever. I've looked for a GarageBand clone for Windows/Linux and this could be it
  • It seems that neither OSS nor ALSA support the SBLIve midi device very well or at all. I have heard about some success, but not much. Nor have I been able to get my other computer's opl3sa2 midi device to work with ALSO or OSS.

    Kinda a bummer, to have to use timidiy to play sound.

    • Midi synth works fine with alsa for me. Make sure you (or rosegarden, check the settings) load the soundfonts to the synth, and make sure the "music" volume control is turned up. If you need em, there's some free sound fonts (CT8MGM.SF2, etc) on the SBLive CD that comes with the card .

    • Re:now I just need a working midi device.. (Score:4, Informative)

      by The_Dougster ( 308194 ) on Thursday February 17, 2005 @11:55PM (#11707842) Homepage
      Yeah, the SBLive MIDI is totally supported. All you have to do is load a soundfont using "sfxload".

      A couple of large soundfonts are here at this site: PersonalCopy [personalcopy.com].

      These fonts suck up a ridiculous amount of RAM, like 500M or so, so use the ones from your CD if possible (I bought my card second hand so I had to scrounge around).

      Honestly, the SBLive (emu101k) is probably the best supported modern sound card available for Linux. When you compile your kernel for ALSA, just check all the MIDI options and build them all as modules. In this case its better to make modules which you don't know what they are than to not make them.

      If you are using some distro with a canned kernel, then try running "alsaconfig" which should set up the modules automatically. ALSA used to be a huge pain to set up but in the last year or so there have been some big improvements since it is now the default sound system for Linux and OSS has been declared obsolescent.

      To test it out, use the "pmidi" command. For example:

      pmidi -p 65:0 myfile.mid

      If you don't hear anything then either your mixer has the "music" slider muted, you haven't loaded the right kernel modules, or you haven't loaded a soundfont. Once it is all set up its pretty sweet.

      BTW, the OPL3 is just the (Adlib) FM synthesis chip, it doesn't have anything to do with MIDI for the most part.

      • Hey thanks! I had to load every midi module before /proc/asound/oss/sndstat showed up with synth and midi devices. Once they showed up sfxload was able to load my SB sound fonts. I had to do this for by othe opl3 and SB Live cards. I've now installed rosegarder4 and run it. WOW! Its f***in HOT!

        I need to get some better midi patches, but its way better than the old rosegarden. To many features to learn all at onces, but its got pretty good documentation in the help. I really love this, thanks a bunc

  • Great program. I only wish it was'nt dependent on QT and kde
    • Looks like this is one of those threads where I am a mini-expert for a change, since I have fooled around with Rosegarden on and off for many years.

      Yeah, the QT and KDE dependencies kind of suck, but what are you gonna do. I run Gentoo with Gnome, but there are a couple of programs that I use that require QT and there is just no getting around it. QCad and LyX come to mind. I was really bitching to myself about LyX depending on QT until I read somewhere on the net that LyX's author is the founder of KDE! O

    • Re:QT dependent... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by LizardKing ( 5245 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @09:18AM (#11710628)

      There's a lot of history behind the Rosegarden developers choice of Qt and KDE. The original Rosegarden dates from the early 1990's, when free toolkits for X GUI development were limited to pretty much nothing but Athena. Rosegarden managed to look good, which was a remarkable acheivement for any application written with the Athena toolkit.

      In the late 1990's, the original Rosegarden developers wanted to do a ground up rewrite using a modern GUI toolkit. One of the main developers is very keen on OOP, so C++ was the obvious choice for the implementation. This was attempted using bits of the then nascent GNOME platform, but got bogged down because the GTK+ binding for C++ was not up to scratch.

      The dissatisfaction with the GTK+ bindings for C++ lead to the current incarnation of Rosegarden, which uses Qt and KDE. The Rosegarden developers have commented a number of times that using the Qt/KDE framework has saved them having to reinvent the wheel on a number of occasions.

      GNOME is my preferred desktop, and GTK+ is my preferred toolkit for GUI development. However, I'm more than happy to install the base KDE libraries to run Rosegarden, as nothing else can touch it for sequencing on Linux.

  • The earlier pre-releases had major bitness issues on my Mandrake 10.1 x86-64 machine, but rc3 and now 1.0 work fine. You do need to specify paths for Qt libs and includes, but that's probably a Mandrake thing. I'm looking forward to using it to create vocal part CD's for my various choirs. The notation output to Lilypond will also get my attention: think individual voices on a vocal score highlighted to match the midi/audio output. A great package with wonderfully helpful developers: mad props to Chris, Ri

  • Rosegarden and VST support (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I have been using Cubase and other sequencers for since 1997 and I think that the Rosegarden project is great thus far, but IMO they will not gain many users until they support VST and or other software synths and effects. It can be done as Muse Research has produced a Linux based VST rack hardware device. Here's the link: http://www.museresearch.com/ Also check out http://bloodshed.net/wired/ another Linux based sequencer.

  • hardware issue (Score:2, Interesting)

    by guignome ( 860672 )
    Well, actually, I think that one of the main issues in linux audio is the quality of the drivers for the soundcards. Even if most of the basic functionnalities of the soundcards are supported today, which allow people to play mp3s and watch movies on linux, the advanced functionnalities often don't work. Maybe any of you could give me their advice on which soundcard is fully supported under linux? Take care, the alsa database at http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/ doesn't give too much details on the adv
    • Just get a cheapo used SBLive! Value edition. It has great sound and works just as well as any of the more expensive versions. The front panel options are pretty cool but I have no idea if they are supported yet in Linux. A LiveDrive might work but I don't have one so I can't say. Radio Shack has whatever plug adapters you might need to interface with your 1/8" stereo input port on the card so that is enough to handle a lot of purposes.
  • I've been trying to find a Linux library to call that will filter MP3 data natively (without decoding from MP3 to process, then reencoding). Even with de/reencoding, there's libst, but where's the API doc? This is a small feature in a large server app, but it has to work. Maybe EQ, or just bandpass, or mixing 2 MP3 buffers, in realtime (or faster). Where's that code hiding?

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