Hip Hop Artists Developing Open Source Beat Making Software

First time accepted submitter caseyb89 writes "Beat making software is incredibly expensive, and the high price limits usage to those who can afford it. Two professors at UNC have a dream of allowing all artists access to beat making software, regardless of income level. They are rallying the community on a project to create open source beat making software. The two professors double as DJs and hip hop artists, and they recently spoke at Rio+Social."

Re:Nice Idea

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought hip hop artists just ripped off other peoples beats?

HIP-HOP ?? SUX !!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like disco all over again !! Only by people who can't play, can't keep a tune, and make farm -animal noises !! It truly SUX !!

linuxsampler dropped the ball

[akirapill]

The centerpiece of any hip hop studio is the sampler. There exists a very high quality open source sampler called linuxsampler [linuxsampler.org] but they are not included in any mainstream linux repos because of their bone-headed, legally invalid licence. So you have to build it from source, a painful process that I've never been able to do in under 2 hours. There is a lot of high quality foss studio software out there, but as long as developers keep dropping the ball like this we're going to see more reinventing of the wheel like this and not a lot of progress. An excellent foss program for beat-making I would recommend is qtractor [sourceforge.net], but it does not come with a sampler.

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Re:Nice Idea

[cayenne8]

I guess actually learning to PLAY the drums and other instruments is totally out of the question, eh?

How in the world did we ever get musical beats....before computer software?

Hmm........

Re:LMMS

[Anonymous Coward]

IMO, that type of music is so generic anymore, I'm surprised some mathematician hasn't created an algorithm to generate hit songs on command.

You know, something like (BPM / Key + Attractiveness of Prospective Performer) = $$$

Yeah really, that Michaelangelo guy, all he did was move a brush over a surface. ANYONE CAN DO THAT!

If it's that easy, why aren't you out there doing it? The answer is that, in all reality, it isn't easy. It's actually really fucking hard. If it's that easy, you should go ahead and try to make a career out of it with your spare time on the weekends. And please, keep a blog up to date with your efforts, so I can come back and mock you for failing at something that's so easy a computer should be able to do it.

Re:Nice Idea

[oldmac31310]

I'll get off your lawn. Yours is a really narrow minded view. The fact is, both 'real' musicians and people who can't play at all benefit greatly from the myriad of music software and hardware that have come along in the past 20 years. Using your logic (no pun intended) we should remove technology from music completely and go back to only using our voices, clapping our hands and banging rock and sticks. Think about a piano for example. It is a technological marvel. Should we ban it just because it makes it too easy and the musician doesn't even have to pluck or strike the strings? I consider myself a real musician and I am very happy indeed to make use of whatever tools are available.