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Next Version of Jazz++ to be Open Source 48

Posted by Roblimo from the musicians-rejoice! dept.
Patrix writes "Looks like Jazzware will release under an open source license the next version of their Jazz++ MIDI sequencer! They will also release a GTK+ version for Linux. No info yet on which license they'll use."
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Next Version of Jazz++ to be Open Source More

Next Version of Jazz++ to be Open Source

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  • Re:What about . . (Re:Good.) (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Actually the main thing musicians need is midi input and this always seems to be an afterthought. Score composition is wholly inadequate for midi puposes and how are you supposed to deal with sysex messages with score composition. Most musicians want to be able to express themselves through the keyboard or other other midi input devices. You can then use the editors - score, piano roll, controllers for compositon. Get all these features into the sequencer and then we linux users can really start competing with the others.
  • Because thier own rules at http://www.jazzware.com/doc/html/jazz116.html#topi c82 state that you cannot modify the program unless you buy an decrytion key, but IF you buy a decrytion key you can do anything you want to with their product, EXCEPT DISTRIBUTE THE decryted data it is NOT going to be an open source product.

    It will either have two source trees : a Crippleware teaser demo and a "pro" demo. Or it will be their same lackluster swill they hawk now, but with a trendy new press release and "OpenSource" obfuscation game the world has rarely seen before.

    I bet they probably will not be going free unrestricted BSD, nor the slightly closed GPV but with a wierd thing that will have hypocritical restrictions.

    THIS COMPANY is merely trying to get hype and free interest in their mediocre MIDI stuff.

    They are trying to confuse people between Open Source and Open Sound System (OSS , such as http://www.linux.org.uk/OSS/ )

    Maybe i'm just paranoid.

    I could be wrong, but I am a bitter man tired of being tricked all the time by false press releases that dont coincide with revelations of FTP sites containing all rumored goodies. Or the Lame Mozilla slop that the USA national press actually thought would contain Navigator 4 source, or Java/Javascript, or SSL, or 68040 support.

    If this company wants to impress me, maybe they would work on contributing free Open source to http://www.alsa-project.org/ to give Linux users all the USB sound technologies that Mac users are starting to get to enjoy.

  • Unfortunately none of these are even usable tools for anything serious. (What we're talking about here is MIDI+Digital audio sequencing, specifically, and I would like to see video editing in here to.) These tools may be fine for doing some simple tunes through your SoundBlaster, but unfortunately they don't help much if you're trying to manage a studio with 128+-channels, lots of instruments, and other hardware.

    A couple examples of this are how Brahms insists upon using General MIDI names instead of program/bank numbers. GM is not acceptable. It also seems to crash a lot. Both of these will hopefully be fixed - but both currently make it not a solution.

    Beast is also not a tool for a studio.

    Rosegarden unfortunately seemed extremely limited, and very willing to crash, last time I checked it out as well. (It may have insisted on GM as well, I honestly forget. It's also not being maintained, which is unfortunate, since it really does have a good start.) I will download and try it again.

    These all do your standard linear sequencing, too. Try playing with KeyKit sometime. It took me three or four tries to get "into" it, but I think it's probably one of the most powerful, cool things I've seen for sequencing yet. It is very quirky though, and the license prevents me from taking it an reimplementing it using some other toolkit.

    BTW, I've been a violinist for the past 17 years or so, so I read music as well. Sometimes the piano roll editor is more applicable to certain types of music, though, where you're not really working with notes and chords (such as ambient techno). Plus, effective controller use from a score view is near impossible, because you don't have a true view of notes over time. This means you have to switch to a piano roll at least some of the time, or have some pretty incredible AI to do it automatically.

    But then, I'd not want to play (or write) a sonata from a piano roll printout. :)

  • I've been reading the comments here and people have mentioned many sound/music projects for Linux. However, none of these has satisfactory support for input from MIDI devices. Rosegarden has a horrendous interface, Brahms just plain doesn't work and I don't know of any other notation programs for Linux.

    What I, as a musician/arranger, want to see is something like Finale. Anyone who's used the "speedy entry" feature knows what I'm talking about. I don't realy need software that can transcribe my playing real-time (though that would be nice), but I do need something that can grab a sample from the MIDI port and stick it on a staff.

    Just as important is hardware support. I've got a SoundBlaster 16 with a crappy MIDI port. The thing doesn't work at all. So I went and got a parallel port MIDI interface that works like a charm under Windows. The problem is, there are no Linux drivers. I offered to develop some for the company, but they would not release specs. I can't imagine that this is a difficult driver to write or that the hardware configuration of the interface is so radically innovative that the company (MIDIMan) can't release its top-secret information.

    I'd like to see some of these sound applications support MIDI input and some of the hardware companies actually giving a damn about their customers.

    Can anyone help me? :)

    --

  • The "development" page on their website is dated 1998. The project seems unmaintained, they haven't had any releases for over a year.
  • What sort of hardware support is available under Linux. Can I use, say, a Layla or a Gina by Echo under it? I would love to go full bore into home recording. What about sample editing?
  • Howabout those people who would pay for it anyway, because they're smart enough to realize that free speech != free beer, and good code is worth paying for, whether its source is available of not?
    --
    - Sean

  • I don't agree that Logic, Cubase, Cakewalk, and other "professional quality" commercial sequencers actually suit the needs of their target users. I am in the target audience, have tried everything on the market, and find all of them to be very lacking.

    The good news is that there are a whole crop of new sequencer projects coming from the open source community. In approximate order of vintage, these are Rosegarden, Jazz, Cantor, Gseq, Brahms (aka KooBase), Melys, and Muse. The bad news is that most of these are so busy trying to be clones of the leading commercial ones that they don't have any groundbreaking features of their own.

    My own sequencer project "PEGS" is a long way from being ready for users. However, it is based on a very different premise from the leading commercial sequencers, and thus will be able to fill a unique, useful niche of its own when it's finally ready.

    -- Div.


    But my grandest creation, as history will tell,
  • Not to be a jerk here, but Logic for Be is still very vapor. Even when it comes out, I wonder what MIDI interface cards will be supported. For a Media OS, Be's support for serious MIDI interfaces (meaning MPU-401 UART or similar) seems a little light. Hopefully, the new USB MIDI interfaces will have more support -- I'll happily blow a hundred bucks on hardware to have a quality MIDI interface working in Be.

    Does anyone know when the release is expected?
  • SLab Direct to Disk Recording Studio. 64 track mixing with 64-16-8-4-2 configuration, user designable desk, floating point mixing. Per track digital dynamics and digital filters. Stereo bus groupings, VU metering, continuous controller recording (mixdown sessions). 16 Effects send busses with stereo effects API, FX chaining, signal level trimming, bus/FX bypass. Includes echo, reverb, flange, phase, chorus, leslie, valve, compressor, limitor, stereographic EQ, etc.

    Wave editor, cut/copy/paste/fade/reverse/etc, n-undo backout edit support, sample loop previewing, freehand wave painting, zero cross detection, metronomic bar/beat and SMPTE frame selection editing.

    Full tape spooling with location memories, SMPTE counters. Up to 16 IO channels (8 Stereo devs), with IO noise reduction processing, audio data compression to disk, audio metronome, micro-adjustable speed, punch in/out. TCL/TK 8.0 based "drag and drop" user interface. MultiProcessing/shared memory mix engine.

    Kernel requires SYSV_IPC, OSS/Linux 3.9.2m/k2.0.35 advised for full duplex.

    Does anyone know if there is any midi integration into the audio direct to disk functionality? I had a quick scan, but couldn't find any immediate information on the official web site [tudelft.nl].

  • If you want to work with ProAudio, yet get a little bit nervous of the stability of Windows then I would take a serious look at BeOS as an audio platform. Can't seem to find any confirmed drivers for the Mark of the Unicorn hardware as yet, but various rumours seem to be floating about concerning imminent support...
  • I can't wait for the day that I can do everything I need to, music-wise, on Linux. Jazz++ has all the features of expensive high-end sound software? If Cakewalk Home Studio is considered high-end, then sure.
    This is where Linux sure could use some more hardware support. I'm currently using Cakewalk Pro Audio in Winderz, and here's why:
    1) Native soundfont support! Maybe someday Linux will have soundfont support with the SBLive. I load up to 64MB worth of soundfont banks into memory, 32MB of which can be used at any given time by the Live card. GM/XG doesn't do it for me. CL has good OS driver support now, so maybe it won't be long.
    2) Multiple soundcard support? Maybe Linux does this, but if it does, the current version of Jazz++ doesn't (didn't see a feature list for v4 on the site). I've got an SBLive and a Turtle Beach Pinnacle, which is hooked up to my DAT for digital transfers. They get along surprisingly well under Win98.
    3) Cakewalk has a very nice built-in patch manager, with name search. It's a good thing, too, because my wavestation has 500+ ROM patches that I'd hate to have to enter the names for (that's a Cakewalk feature, most studio software under windows or mac does something similar).
    4) Linux has nearly non-existent support for external MIDI I/O ports. I'm using the joystick ports on both my soundcards (Wavestation SR and Proteus MPS on external interfaces). External MIDI support may be there on the Pinnacle but it's not on the current Live drivers last time I checked. And what about real multiport midi interfaces like MOTU?
    5) I surely don't have what I consider high-end hardware, but no MIDI sequencer can be called "professional" if it doesn't have support for digital mixers, multi-port digital I/O cards (Like Event Layla, etc), ADAT, etc. However, if your job is strictly to create GM MIDI sequences, then Jazz++ under Linux may fit the bill just fine (especially if v4 is free as in beer). The problem is that there's just not much need for GM sequences anymore.

    The way I see it, Linux multimedia support is where Win3.11 was back when the Mac was the multimedia king, and there wasn't any REAL studio software for Windows. I'll give it some time-- I like Cakewalk P/A because I know it inside and out, and if the day eventually comes when Cakewalk (or Cubase) runs natively under Linux, supporting all my hardware, that will be a very happy day. In the meantime, I gotta stick with what works.
  • Slashdot lags seven days behind the initial announcement, duh.

    Hehheh... I sent it in to them the day that mailing went out, but I guess they didn't like my wording or somethign because it was rejected =)
  • Netscape has always been free for non-commercial uses.

    --
    WorldServe Consulting [worldserve.net]

  • Though music is still a niche industry when it comes to software and hardware manufacturers, I just wish that some companies would belly up to the bar and commit to Linux. I recently begged/pleaded/sucked up to Midiman to provide I/O register specs for one of their older, but more pro-oriented, audio cards: I could not seem to convince anyone that it was in everyone's interest to provide such info, which may eventually build a bigger market for their products. I need a new multi-MIDI interface, but I'm not gonna buy one until I see that it is supported by Linux. Perhaps if people hear this from enough of us, they might get the hint.
  • I'm a musician, and used to ($500) cubase, only thing is with the crappy steinberg company, they are a little bit slow in developing also I don't seem to have another choice than windows with my pc for my sequencing. So I remind myself to save a lot in hope the computer doesn't reset.. I think this might help people to switch to a more stable environment (excuse me: stable) and it'll help to develope new sequencer-apps aswell, this is a good step forward and I'd like to enjoy the future fruits of this.


    Regards,
    Sarin [mailto]
  • The term "open source" really doesn't mean much anymore ...

    In the short term, I suggest people stop getting excited just because a company announces releasing something "open source". We should wait until the sources and the license are available for everybody to look at.

    In the long term, I think we need to replace the term "open source" with something more self-descriptive.

    We already have a "more self-descriptive" term - free software. There would be less of this ambiguity if we all just called a spade a spade. As you rightly point out Open source software is not necessarily the same as free (speech not beer) software.

    I think a return to out "roots" is long overdue.

  • To answer some frustrations that several posters had...

    ** Soundcard Support **
    In order to find out what support exists for high-end audio cards, look at what OSS and ALSA support. For example, OSS has commercial support for several high-end cards...

    It's the same situation that the Linux community encountered with high-end graphics cards over the last few years. Manufacturers refused to release information for developers to write drivers. Some released their own proprietary drivers.

    Please don't blame the developers. Also make sure to email your demands to the soundcard manufacturers!

    ** Lack of professional sequencer software **
    Jazzware releasing their source code as Open Source should be viewed as Good Thing (TM). Let's hope this builds momentum towards an Open Source, professional-level MIDI sequencer. (Note: MOD trackers are different animals.)

    I'm excited about the ALSA sequencer API. AFAIK, the OSS MIDI API only supports only one connection at a time to the MIDI port and doesn't use a timer. Having a better API should help. Does anyone know if the ALSA sequencer API code is ready for prime time yet?

    On the other hand, you could always email requests to your favorite sequencer application company like Steinberg or Cakewalk...

  • I have used version 3 and I must say that they are in bad need of some Open Source help. You can get better performance from some of the cheaper and/or free packages out there.

  • Does saying 'Open Source' (with capital letters) always mean a license compatible to the Open Source Definition? Wouldn't it be more accurate to talk about OSI Certified licenses? (the article talks about 'Open Source', but I was just wondering..)

    I read on the opensource.org website's FAQ the following:

    While there is agreement on the broad term `open source' as meaning approximately what is captured in the Open Source Definition the term has, ironically, now become so popular that it has lost some of its precision. We strongly encourage everyone who cares about open software to use the term only to describe licenses that conform to the OSD, or software distributed under such licenses; but since the term has passed into more general use, we also encourage people to refer to the ``OSI Certified'' mark, which has precision and legal force in identifying software distributed under licenses that are known to meet the OSD requirements.

  • Good. (Score:2)

    by oGMo ( 379 )

    Finally. The one thing Linux needs and is severely lacking is good multimedia studio software. Correction. Any multimedia studio software. The only projects are not really in active development from what I can tell, except Melys [sourceforge.net], and that's fairly new. KeyKit [thompsonresidence.com] is pretty cool, although a bit ugly by modern standards, but it has a few problems, especially the license.

    As you can see from general searching and The Linux Sound and MIDI page [bright.net], there isn't much else going on. I don't even see an attempt at a nonlinear video editor.

    Also there are some unfortunate driver issues. I requested specs for the Motu MTP AV [motu.com] after purchasing one, only to get a reply that the information wasn't available to the public... so I can't write a driver, and am forced to use it like a cheap MIDI switch. (I'm going to continue to bug them, of course. It would benefit them and the Linux community to at least have open drivers. They sell more, we get software support and better, more capable studios.)

    This really is a step in the right direction for the Jazz people, though, since they don't have a lot of regular updates. Hopefully they will use a Free(tm) license like the GPL. I applaud them in their decision, though, this is something I've been hoping for for awhile. Thanks guys!

  • From the website: "We give this information some time in advance to give new Jazz++ users a chance to decide whether to wait for the Open Source release. It will of course be possible to buy licenses for version 3.x up to the time of the new release in order to be able to use the current version. There will however be no refund of licenses bought in this period."

    Sounds as though they're being pretty upfront with potential (paying) customers about the situtation, which is good enough for me. (Not that I matter in the slightest, you understand)

    ...j
  • The original authors of Rosegarden have recently issued a patched up release that fixes a number of bugs. Personally I haven't had it crash on me, but I do agree that aRts/Brahms is a bit buggy at present. There again, I stopped using Cubase because Steinberg seem more interested in adding new features than sorting stablility issues. Thank god for the decent hardware sequencer in my W-30!


    Chris Wareham
  • I'm surprised theres's been so many posts already without any mention of Rosegarden [bath.ac.uk]

    When i first started playing around with midi on Linux, the first program i found was Jazz++. It's got plenty of features if you like editing music on what looks and feels like a piano roll.

    Unfortunately, I've been cursed with the knowledge of how to read music, so the piano roll feels clumsy.

    Rosegarden is GPL'd and includes a well developed notation editor, it's own scripting language for the technically inclined, and will even help you print sheet music.

    It's known to run on Linux, FreeBSD, Irix, and even OpenVMS. And yes, it's completely free and open source.

    Jazz++ does have some nice features, like GS compatibility, but for my purposes it would be incredibly obtuse to use for anything other than final touch-ups to the score.

    What i need, and what i suspect most musicians prefer, is a midi sequencer with a notation editor - and there's already a pretty good one out there with a GPL license.

  • I invaded a Windows machine with Linux over the holiday - the spare machine in a basement digital recording studio. It only has 45 gig of disk whereas the main machine has 100+ :-) - anyway, there was room to put in Linux on one of the ide drives - I guess 13 gig should be enough room for now :-). The machine got Mandraked.

    Unfortunately, we seem to be some distance away from being able to replace the rather awesome digital audio software running on the main machine under Win98. This is German-made software the name of which escapes me at the moment. Suffice to say that the Win98 drives are not going to get fdisked until Linux can do *everything* the Win98 machine can. (Except crash "once a week" of course.)

    So, please help me, what have we got *now* that can be evaluated, and falls into the professional digital audio category? What's coming down the pipe?

    Software is needed to:

    do 12 + tracks of real time mixing/filtering/other processing at 96 khz, 24 bits/sample quad

    support a-d input 24 bits/sample stereo interfaced through a high-end card I forget the name of (hey, I wasn't expecting the issue to come up today, I'm just the mechanic, ok?)

    do all kinds of other neat, wizbang digital studio stuff

    I apologize for the imprecise definition of the problem, but please, help me anyway. Goodness me, if we don't liberate this machine soon it could get sucked into the Win2000 black hole. :-o

  • Who's going to buy it? Of those who really have to have it right now, who's going to buy it and not throughly resent it?

    People who need it and don't think the price is too high. People who want to wait can do that too: it's a free world, at least as far as that goes. This is nothing but good for all concerned.
  • We already have a "more self-descriptive" term - free software. There would be less of this ambiguity if we all just called a spade a spade. As you rightly point out Open source software is not necessarily the same as free (speech not beer) software.
    The interesting point here is that often when the term "free software" is mentioned, the example of "speech not beer" is also tagged on. There's a reason for that. "Free" means many things. In business, its usually closer to the free beer than free speech.

    Enter "open source". Good attempt. Avoids abiguity over the pricing issue. Opens up a different can of worms (as this thread has pointed out).

    We need a new term.

    Or maybe we need to continue playing by the business world's rules. That's what true "open" licenses do. They use the license tool business usually use to lock away code to open it up (no jihad on licenses, please). The next logical step is to define what this software is (ie: Open Source) and protect that definition with legal tools. Be that trademark or what have you.

    I know, I know... its nasty work. Its something we'd rather not soil or ideology with. But we either do it or allow profiteers to muddy the waters for their own gain.

  • http://beast.gtk.org [gtk.org], also heard good things about SLab [llornkcor.com] but haven't used it myself.
  • They hope to release Version 4.0 as Open Source by mid-Feb, but until then they're still charging for Version 3 just as before.

    Who's going to buy it? Of those who really have to have it right now, who's going to buy it and not throughly resent it? When Netscape announced the open sourcing of Netscape 5, they had the sense to make Version 4 gratis at the same time.

    I'm not in the audience for this software anyway, it just seems a curious decision...
    --

  • "open source" by itself doesn't say much anymore (Score:3)

    by jetson123 ( 13128 ) on Monday January 10, 2000 @08:06AM (#1387984)
    The term "open source" really doesn't mean much anymore, other than that you get the sources in one way or another. I don't necessarily fault companies for that. The common sense meaning of "open source" is that you easily get the sources somehow, nothing more. I think the term is not well chosen, and we should abandon it. Many licenses that can be reasonably called "open source" do nothing to encourage sharing and joint development; in fact, they may outright prohibit it.

    The "official" Open Source Definition [opensource.org] tries to define "open source" more tightly. But since the term isn't trademarked and since it has a different common sense meaning, it fails. Furthermore, even the "Open Source Definition" has some holes in it.

    In the short term, I suggest people stop getting excited just because a company announces releasing something "open source". We should wait until the sources and the license are available for everybody to look at.

    In the long term, I think we need to replace the term "open source" with something more self-descriptive.

  • Two up and coming alternatives (Score:4)

    by LizardKing ( 5245 ) on Monday January 10, 2000 @02:01AM (#1387985)
    There's aRts and Brahms for KDE which provide a virtual synthesiser and sequencer respectively. There is even talk of adding direct to disk recording (think Cubase VST) as aRts provides the means to do this. The URL's are:

    http://www.arts-project.org/
    http://lienhard.desy.de/mackag/homepages/jan/Bra hms/

    For the GNOME fans among us, there is Beast which has been in devlopment for a long time but only recently saw the light of day. This gives similar functionality as aRts/Brahms. It's URL is:

    http://beats.gtk.org/

    Also check out news.gnome.org for the official announcement of a Beast snapshot.

    There is also a venerable package called Rosegarden. Development has been a little bit spradic in the last couple of years, and it may be a little bit archaic to those used to GNOME or KDE interfaces. It is IMHO the best looking X Window application that doesn't rely on a true toolkit. Check it out at:

    http://www.bath.ac.uk/~masjpf/rose.html

    There was talk of a new Rosegarden using the GNOME framework, but it hasn't progressed beyond the conceptual stage yet.


    Chris Wareham

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