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Making Music With Linux : Notation And Alphabet Soup 49

Posted by emmett from the this-ain't-no-disco dept.
In our third and final part of the 'Making Music with Linux' trilogy, we try to make sense of the alphabet soup of the Linux sound world by exploring OSS and ALSA, and we investigate musical notation systems and software available for Linux.

In the computer world's neverending list of confusing acronyms, OSS is used in a lot of different ways. I had the opportunity to speak with Dev Mazumdar, president of 4Front Technologies, the people behind OSS (hang on, you'll find out which one!) and xmms to clear up the confusion.

"OSS is Open Sound System and in this case, the word 'Open' implies 'Open Systems' which are typically UNIX (aka Solaris, AIX, BSD, UnixWare, etc.) based."

"We coined the term OSS before there was any concept of Open Source Software pitched by ESR. However, there is an 'Open Source' version of OSS known as OSS/Free which is distributed with the Linux kernel sources. OSS/Free (aka Voxware) is also distributed in the FreeBSD kernel. OSS is actually an API with both commercial and free software implementations -- much like X Windows, where there are XFree and commercial implementations from companies like XiG, MetroLink, etc. We are just the copyright holders for the OSS API (which is distributed under a BSD-like license)."

So, what's new in the world of the Open Sound System? Dev continues:

"The biggest news, of course, is support for more and more soundcards and the fact that companies like Creative and Aureal are doing their own drivers based on the OSS API. Additionally, there are more and more commercial companies developing apps on top of the OSS API, which means that these apps work perfectly on either OSS/Free, or our commercial OSS drivers -- and this translates to FreeBSD, Solaris, and UnixWare users being able to use Linux binaries on their operating systems via Linux emulation."

"In terms of other stuff that we do, XMMS just won the Slashdot Beanie award ... that's huge."

Dev's company, 4Front Technologies, has gotten a lot of flak on Slashdot and other places for thriving on proprietary software. Dev said he hopes that Linux and Open Source advocates can see the forest for the trees, and he explained what 4Front is doing with OSS.

"If you are talking about OSS as in Open Source Software, then basically, we've given up the control of OSS/Free to Alan Cox so that he can shepherd the continuous development and as a matter of fact, there's tons of good work going on in the Linux 2.4 side -- people have been fixing configuration and driver bugs so that Linux 2.4 is going to have some really good sound support."

"However, we do have an Open Source Software program -- X MultiMedia System (XMMS) that's GPL'ed, and that as you know has been winning rave reviews. 4Front's employees, Peter, Olle and Thomas are being paid to work on XMMS. While XMMS doesn't earn us any revenue, we do sell the QSound plugin for XMMS which gives us a little more revenue from XMMS."

"XMMS is proof that 4Front is not all about closed-source software ... we do closed-source software (aka our sound drivers) to make money, in order to do other open-source stuff and of course to make a living. The fact that XMMS won Slashdot's Beanie award says volumes about 4Front's 'products' and our engineering ability."

You really couldn't ask for a better flagship sound product than XMMS, but working with OSS still has it's challenges.

"Currently [the biggest challenge is] getting the SBLive, Maestro and Vortex drivers working with all the bells and whistles. While Creative's and Aureal's own OSS compatible drivers work much better than ours, they are only Linux oriented. We have SBLive and Vortex running on other operating systems like Solaris, FreeBSD etc."

"Some of the other challenges are getting OSS supported on BeOS or other operating systems. It's more the case of lack of manpower than the engineering skills to do it."

Dev feels that the key to getting great audio authoring tools working on Linux is to pull in the celebrity angle on the production end.

"Right now, there are some really good programs like Snd, Slab, Jazzware, Rosegarden, Broadcast2K and MP3 stuff. But what is needed is one good example of a popular musician to come out and say 'I made this multiplatinum album using Linux!' The 'Titanic made on Linux' was a tremendous boost for Linux, we just need a similar boost -- even if Linux plays a small part in the production who cares as long as someone like Madonna, or any of the teen idols say they used Linux. This will be a wakeup call to the applications industry to start paying attention to Linux."

"The future of music on Linux lies in application support it receives. Currently, we do have all the major apps like RealAudio, MP3, Flash, ViaVoice [and] Loki Games working, but some of the 'pro' audio stuff like ProTools, SoundForge, or Cakewalk are sorely missed on Linux. But we think that these apps will never see the light of day on Linux because the userbase is most happy with the Macintosh or Windows environment. I have many friends in Hollywood who are either scoring music for movies and music videos or are sound engineers, and all of them are wedded to their Macs -- you couldn't pry their cold dead hands off their Macs! We really need support for the pro audio hardware -- stuff that sound engineers use on their Macs. We'll probably get there some day, but until then, we in the Linux community have to bite the reality pill and accept that Linux is not there yet."

"There is another side to music production and that's the realaudio or icecast/shoutcast MP3 stuff. This is where you'll see more Linux/Unix machines. We're working with a couple of radio stations to implement Real Audio live streaming servers using Linux."

When it comes to breaking into the semi-professional and professional audio production space, the ALSA team is making some strides. I spoke with Jaroslav Kysela, SuSE developer and head of the ALSA project. First, I asked Jaroslav about what ALSA was, and how it differed from the OSS efforts.

"The ALSA abbreviation means the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture. We offer a modern sound driver and basic audio library for this driver. Along these main goals, we are working on configuration tools for end users to simplify the installation and usage."

"We want to give the real audio power to the Linux users, because interfaces, used in Open Sound System, seem to be very limited to us. But compatibility is a major key for us, too. We provide the complete OSS emulation implemented in add-on layers."

"We definitely entered into world of semi-professional and professional audio. Actually, the ALSA driver package contains code for RME Hammerfall, RME Digi 96 and Envy24 (MidiMan Delta series) soundcards."

"Other hot news is that the ALSA driver can forward the AC3 stream through the S/PDIF output. Linux DVD players may use this feature."

"Also, we have positive signals that the ALSA driver is going to be merged into Linux 2.5 development kernels. That is a preliminary fact, but we hope that our dealing with Alan Cox will be successful."

SuSE is well-known for a solid Linux distribution as well as video card support out the wazoo. What's SuSE doing with ALSA?

"I have to do some advertisement here ;-) SuSE is very helpful, because the ALSA professional team works full-time on the ALSA project. The team has two members and we will grow to three members soon."

"More information about the ALSA professional team may be found at http://www.alsa-project.org/announce.html."

"The primary goal is the integration into the Linux 2.5 development kernel. Also, the development continues. Some things are still waiting for the implementation. I may notice support for four and six speakers to create a interface for 3D audio layers and software DVD audio decoders. We want to finish the documentation for application developers and the work on the driver configuration utility is in progress."

What about music production on Linux, Jaroslav?

"This is a bit difficult question, because I am not a musician and I spend most of my time only with the driver development. I personally think that the current progress in this area is very promising. For example, Jazz++ sequencer is covered with GPL now. The support for professional cards in ALSA provoked next reactions like Ardour (a multitrack recording application). I feel, the actual situation with Linux music and audio applications will be better and better."

Well, the worlds (and acronyms) of OSS and ALSA are no longer a mystery. Moving steadily from technology to the artist, we turn to the universe of notation. While it may have been good enough for the Beatles not to be able to read sheet music, the rest of us may need a staff and notes to know how to play 'Please Please Me.'

Well-known Linux music packages Brahms and Rosegarden handle notation, as do lesser-known programs like Lilypond, which can convert your source file to a TeX file, or Mup, which will convert your music to a postscript file that can be printed as standard sheet music.

For a super-techy way of handling notation under Linux, check out Haskore. From the Haskore web documentation: "Haskore is a collection of Haskell modules designed for expressing musical structures in the high-level, declarative style of functional programming. In Haskore, musical objects consist of primitive notions such as notes and rests, operations to transform musical objects such as transpose and tempo-scaling, and operations to combine musical objects to form more complex ones, such as concurrent and sequential composition. From these simple roots, much richer musical ideas can easily be developed." An example of Haskore expressions, check out http://haskell.org/haskore/onlinetutorial/childsong6.html.

I hope you've enjoyed reading this series as much as I have writing it. From professional music production to hobbyists, from track editors to free content licenses, from acronyms to notation, we've run the gamut. If you have any cool Linux sound news you'd like to share, or know about a really cool open source sound project, share it in the comments below!
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Making Music With Linux : Notation And Alphabet Soup More

Making Music With Linux : Notation And Alphabet Soup

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  • Quicherbitchin.

    It's a good moderate newbie bit. We have a lot of them around here these days; Guys and gals that wouldm't know mpg123 from a hole in the ground or even their own behind. Not for lack of trying, they just haven't had any one to feed their brain.

    Timothy is feeding them, and making them into us. Information is always a good thing.
  • mudshark wrote: "It's pretty trivial for a DAW to do this. All you need is to produce a sum of the M (omni) signal and the S (figure eight with null axis directed at the source) signal. That's one channel. Now do a difference of the two signals, and that's the other channel. Voila, M-S stereo."

    Yes, I know what needs to be done; I'm just wondering if there is software running under Linux which does this. (Does slab?)

    thanks for further opening the "what does OSS mean" can of worms ;) with the excellent Jecklin Disc page you link to. I'd never heard of these before, though they certainly remind me in concept of various binaural-recording dummy heads.

    timothy
  • There only real limitation is that, right now, AC-3 forwarding will probably only work on Trident 4DWave NX [hoontech.com] based cards like the Soundtrack Digital NX. This is no incident since Trident has released ALL of their soundcard documentation to us. The SBLive! card should support AC-3 forwarding, as soon as Creative releases more documentation that describes the S/PDIF interface in detail. RME cards will probably be next on the list of fully supported S/PDIF cards.

    I have had great success with playing full Dolby Digital 5.1 sound from within Linux using an external decoder (Matrix baby!). This is one less hurdle in getting good DVD support in Linux (excuse the blatant shameless plug :-)

    Check out ac3play and alsaplayer [alsa-project.org]

    -adnans
  • thank you for the complements of my ass. but really what do you have against these sorts of stories. it isn't as if they take anything away from other stories being posted. space is not a scarce resource.
  • Yeah we need to start increaing the signal to noise ratio around here. Maybe anonymous posters should have a 15 min delay on postings so they won't get instant gratification from posts of grit pouring or other adventurous misdeeds. At least that will kill most of the first post junk.
  • Unfortunately the best hardware like from manufacturer like: DAL, MOTU, Digidesign and other pro-audio manufacturers will probably never have decent linux support.

    Since programs like Cubase VST, Cakewalk, Sadie and ProTools sell very well under Windows there is no incentive to port to Linux. It is a catch 22 without these programs hardware support is pointless and vice-versa.

    I have used Slab under Linux and it has a long way to go before it gets anywhere near Cubase VST.

    -dp
  • I would love to only load linux for my music needs, but there are too many things that are still in beta, or does not exist.
    Wav editors are getting better, but still a ways off. I'm not giving up Soundforge yet. (Is there a linux version equivalent?)
    Mpeg, Midi and Mods are supported very well. Not sure about sound font support.
    I'm currently using mpeg-4 (divx) or mpeg1 (vcd). For Audio its mp3, works great.

    Mostly I think we need better codec support. I have almost 35 audio/video codecs loaded in windows.
    Soon as Linux has more programs and native codecs, people will convert.

    -IronWolve-

    BTW, that www.opencodecs.com isnt taken. (;

  • Spend $40-$60 on a Trident based card, such as the Hoontech Soundwave-NX, and you'll have efficient full duplex PCM, 32 streams h/w mixing, a sensibly implemented MIDI port, and more. ALSA has a slightly better driver than the current OSS/Free driver in the kernel, but the latter is derived from the former anyway. For $60 you should be able to pick up a version with both optical and RCA S/PDIF output.
  • I've only really ever used the sound cababilities of linux to play MP3s. I think I played a recording of Rishard Stallman in au format once. Point being that I've had numerous problems.

    Many times XMMS won't work on my system since I am using Window Maker. It works fine under GNOME, but I don't want to use such a bloated and slow WM. I use a 150 MHz pertium, so its barely good enough to play MP3s. (Listening to MP3s while using Netscape seems to rapidly cause me great amounts of frustation.)

    Many times the MP3 sound comes out at half speed or twice the speed. Between kernel re-compiles I'm lucky if it works again at all. I did get it working under 2.3.99-pre3, but that was more flakely then 2.2.14.

    Why? Is it the player, the cards or the drivers? Is it going to get better in the future?

    I know there are answers to all of these problems, but overall sound seems to be on ongoing issue.

    ProcessTree Network TM [processtree.com]

  • For my sequencing needs (composing for small jazz combos, etc.), I use Jazz++...it's finally to the point where it can replace Cakewalk (at home). For my tracking, SoundTracker is nice, as I was "raised" on FastTracker in DOS.

    jMax, however, is something entirely new and different...and free. Just as many people have realized the cool potential of Max in the Macintosh world, let's not forget that we have something all our own (jMax is currently available on Linux and SGI)

    http://www.ircam.fr/equipes/temps-reel/jmax/

  • Yeah, well, I heard that RMS called to make OSS OSS, and to prove that he is down with OPP, he and ODB are gonna mix some tunes with TLC and DMC using XMMS with ALSA in his BVD's.

    I think this is great for the Linux community in general, cause it shows that we can make some phat tunes using only acronyms.
  • To my ear ALSA definitely has better sound quality It's just that it can be such a bitch to install or to get working absolutely perfectly. A good sound App is Ecasound. This man knows his shit and gives very good support. Almost instant. Slab is good too. It's seems to lack in usability but that was probably just my technique. Both the creators of these apps are serious about improving and are way open to suggestions. But time is money so priority goes to surviving long enough to create some more. Give them a try if you need to record. If the big guns had even one pro working on porting to linux then they would see dividends. I geuss they are just too busy sucking uncle Bill to care though. If I had as much usability with sound apps as I do with my console then I would die happy.
  • yeah when I get moderation. Sometimes I just get that for no apparen reasons. moving left right on a 233 machne with ie is a absolute nightmare. I will have to save it on disk and read with lynx. Slasdot.org is browser coders' nightmare. Besides the nn3 crasher yankees.com

    CY


    /_____\
    vvvvvvv../|__/|
    ...I../O,O....|
    ...I./. .......|
    ..J|/^.^.^ \..|.._//|
    ...|^.^.^.^.|W|./oo.|
  • I use a 150 MHz pertium, so its barely good enough to play MP3s.

    I was able to play MP3s on a 120 mhz cyrix (P150+) under kde and xmms almost seemlessly by setting the buffer to something like 9000.

  • Even if you do not user ALSA drivers I would
    check out ALSA Player. It is the only CD and MP3
    that I know of that can play music backwards and
    at different speeds. Because of this I removed
    the cable between my CD and sound card (this
    reduced the line noise considerably!) XMMS is a
    better program all together, but ALSA Player
    is must have for the variable speed play.
  • Timothy -

    I haven't played with any Linux sound editing apps yet. I use Cool Edit Pro on Windoze because Linux doesn't yet support any digital-only IO devices (please, someone correct me if I'm wrong). Anyway, in CEP there is an amplify preset that does just that: turns an MS pair into a stereo mix. My gut tells me that any decent DAW app should be able to do that. It's as simple as doing a sum of the M and S, then reversing the phase of S and doing a second sum.

    HTH,

    ps

  • This GNU software has a utility that converts midi or ascii file-of-song to to postscript sheet music.

    for a fewl like me, who just bangs out notes for fun, it's kinda cool to grab a midi file from the net, covert it to sheet music, and bang away.

    LilyPond [cs.uu.nl]

  • Of course there are, just look at the docs for LAME [sulaco.org]. One (perhaps the only in common use) of the modes of joint-stereo mp3 encoding is mid-side stereo.
  • oops, should have previewed that. At least the link works...:)
  • I care VERY VERY MUCH! I'm (trying to be) a musician, and currently I only keep windows around for the music apps (cakewalk, cubase, rebirth, soundforge, cooledit, etc)

    Think of it this way:
    Many of you complain about the lack of games for linux, and how you only keep windows for gaming.

    Well the same is true for me and audio apps! Just because some people have different interests, don't dismiss their voice.

    c.
    http://www.mp3.com/salemgunclub

  • but unfortunately I have to switch by 1280X1024 to fit this article on the page.

    Anyone else have this problem? It wouldn't bother me as much but I have crummy eyesight and the type looks TINY at that resolution.

    Truly, there are people who care about advancing the state of the art in audio composition and multitracking tools. I'm one of them...if only so I can take advantage of those tools for my own work. =P

  • Not to sound rude or anything, but have you checked linux.aureal.com? I have a stupid OEM Turtle Beach Montego card (go Dell...) and it has the Vortex 2 chipset and the drivers they have there work peachy keen with it...well at least the initial public release ones do, their second release didn't work at all with my card...eh, go figure.
  • some decent hardware has support under linux from motu, and rme, as well as sonoros.
  • I care about being able to make professional quality music under linux (and not just electronic music per se). you should also realize that every story will not be of interest to everyone.

    what sort of things do you consider geekworthy btw ?
  • Oh get a life.
    1) Beowulf is for //'/ computing

    2) A Jecklin disk is for increasing the accuracy of stereo recording

    I fail to see the connection

    -dp
  • There's a very promising open-source software project, OCTAL (supported by GNU, btw), being developer right now and it uses, instead of traditional musical notation, a tracker notation (probably most /. readers don't know about tracking, so they can find out at united-trackers.org [united-trackers.org]). (note that it's only an alternative, not a replacement.. both notations have their pros and cons)

    Basically, the idea is that you have patterns of rows, in which you can input data, such as note trigging, effect parameters, etc. Then you make a sequence out of these patterns and the program plays them.

    OCTAL is going to have virtual sound machines, meaning modules that can produce or transform sound. You then program each of these machines to play music or produce effects.

    An app similar to OCTAL is already out for Windoze, called Buzz and it has proven that such a concept works great and has the ability to produce unique sounds. (I should know, I wrote a whole lot of songs using Buzz). Unfortunately, Buzz is not open-source (albeit it's free) and it's not available for Linux or anything like that. So, I'm definitely looking forward to OCTAL coming out, as it's going to kick loads of ass.

    I don't like using CSound because it's too cumbersome and nonrealtime for me. With OCTAL (and Buzz), things are much easier (although you don't have as much power), yet you still get very nice results. Finally, compared to old-style trackers that only played samples at different speeds (that's where tracking began), OCTAL soft-synthesizes sound right on the spot, giving you the best sound possible. The main disadvantage of this all is that it's quite CPU intensive.

    So, check it out: http://www.gnu.org/software/octal/ [gnu.org] I can't wait till it comes out and I'm drooling over it. Serious. Very exciting stuff (at least for me).

  • In the last article on this, I put a link to my old Electronic Musician article [hayseed.net] about Linux MIDI + sound, but it was really late in the lifespan of the Slashdot article, so I'm pretty sure most readers missed it. It lives on my site because EM's site managed to munge the archives for 06/99, when it was published.

    I'm posting it again, along with a link to Electronic Musician magazine [emusician.com] itself, because they're a great magazine, and had the forethought to commission an article on Linux music support over a year ago. Check them out, and check out the article.
    --
  • Incidentally, something I've been wondering . . . ALSA is very nice, from all I've heard. Good architecture, and many nice features.

    Only thing is, I have an Ensoniq SoundScape, which is only supported by the OSS drivers in the stock kernel.

    Has the ALSA folks been eyeing the OSS drivers, to "absorb" them into ALSA? Would retooling the older drivers be too nontrivial? Are they focusing their efforts on newer hardware? What's the situation?

    What sucks about the OSS driver is its lack of MIDI support (okay, you *can* do MIDI, but you can't adjust the volume and it plays EXTREMELY LOUD) and the annoying "pop" it makes whenever it starts playing digital audio. ALSA fixes both these problems, and goes way beyond.
  • I was somewhat trolling and somewhat mustering an attempt at humor. However you interpret, you either replied to a troll, or flamed a joke. Good work.
    signature smigmature
  • Sound and Music creation should definitely be a priority for Linux development.
    Despite what trolls (who tend to exist outside of the "real world") would have you believe, there are many people out there who want an alternative for x86 music creation. Advancements in this area for Linux could be really useful. There are even casual music-makers who still have to reboot to Windows in order to make music-- there are simply no Linux alternatives.
    Unlike gaming and other fields Linux is exploding into, music may be an area where they could really carve out a niche and I anxiously await future articles on Linux as a music development platform.

  • Re:What is the best affordable card? (Score:3)

    by technos ( 73414 ) on Friday March 31, 2000 @07:27PM (#1157879) Homepage Journal
    I personally like the ES1370/1371 based Creative cards (eg, the PCI128). A good 256 stream through one sounds almost as good as the CD, whereas the Awe32 sounds like a dying Black and Decker jigsaw and a SB16 sounds like Norm just started every powertool in the New Yankee Workshop.

  • What sucks about the OSS driver is its lack of MIDI support (okay, you *can* do MIDI, but you can't adjust the volume and it plays EXTREMELY LOUD)

    Depends what program you're using...

    and the annoying "pop" it makes whenever it starts playing digital audio. ALSA fixes both these problems

    Does it? In my experience, CLUNK ALSA is even worse about the latter than OSS is CLUNK...

  • I have a Sound Blaster Live! Value with Klipsch ProMedia speakers (they rule, www.klipsch.com [klipsch.com]), and I tried the drivers from opensource.creative.com and they were cool, but then when I tried ALSA drivers, the install scripts (buildrpm scripts for redhat/mandrake/rpm-bitch-distros) were VERY easy to use, and ALSA drivers put out WAY better sound and bass with my music, so I'm pumped. It also has many things on its page, such as new mixers and programs that it works well with.

    only problems i'm having are from not being able to compile c++ executables (i've tried everything..) and i can't set up an alsamixer to make my rear speakers louder. Also, the xmms alsa plugin doesn't work for me (xmms segfaults), and without it, there's a bit of static at the beginning of each song. But it still sounds way better..

    Go alsa/SuSE!

    Mike Roberto (roberto@soul.apk.net [mailto]) - AOL IM: MicroBerto

  • What sucks about the OSS driver is its lack of MIDI support (okay, you *can* do MIDI, but you can't adjust the volume and it plays EXTREMELY LOUD)

    Depends what program you're using...

    No, it's an actual limitation of the driver. I e-mailed the OSS guy (Hannu something) a while ago about this, and he said that the driver doesn't do it. That the commercial OSS one did :-P

    I didn't know ALSA had similar bugs . . . but those are almost certainly getting looked at. The OSS drivers, I'm pretty sure no one is hacking on anymore.
  • Either that, the lack of comments could be due to the fact that it's late on a Friday night. I just got back, but I'm sure a lot of people are still out. I would consider anything having to do with Linux geek news. Perhaps you could suggest some other newsworthy events, or maybe even submit an article of your own that you deem newsworthy.

    Wigs
    --To see my .sig press 3.

  • Unfortunatly I havn't kept up on this thread much, but I thought it important to plug the work of Chris Walshaw on the ABC Project [gre.ac.uk].


    While originally created to notate traditional (i.e. Irish, Scottish, Bretton, etc) music using simple ASCII text, the standard now supports some pretty complex notation. In fact there is a version of Beethoven's Symphony No.7, Movement 2 [ucolick.org] by Steve Allen.


    Most of the ABC interpreters out there are GPL'd (including abc2ps, the ABC to Postscript Converter) and there are apps ou there for just about every platform (including a java based interpreter for embedding in you web pages). There are also a couple converters to or from MIDI, and a few apps that get a little fancier (add harmonies, etc). See the ABC Homepage [gre.ac.uk] for a complete list of software and music available.


    Anyway I'm done ranting....just wanted to see my favorite notation system get some air time. :}

  • A good 256 stream through one sounds almost as good as the CD, whereas the Awe32 sounds like a dying Black and Decker jigsaw and a SB16 sounds like Norm just started every powertool in the New Yankee Workshop.

    Hint: set "ogain" to zero before using awe64 (and probably awe32) card. Of course, comparing anything with SB16 is plain stupid -- in its "normal" form the card has really noisy amplifier and only FM MIDI that indeed produces extremely awful sounds.

    However SB PCI 128 (that is not even originally from Creative -- it's Ensoniq AudioPCI) is a very unremarkable card except for the fact that it has two identical devices, one of which is used by all-software MIDI.

  • I thought the article was great! Kudos to the writer.
  • They called Cakewalk a professional product.

    With a bias like that, we'll be waiting for a long time...
  • There should be a major market for Linux-based music software, because the pre-existing Win and Mac software is terrible. Possibly this problem arises from the fact that very few people share interests in coding and in music theory. I don't want to get into the problems at length, but they include: 1. Staff notation for writing/editing - this was useful in the 17th century on parchment, but on a computer, it's one of the worst interfaces I can imagine. I know some people still want it, but little alternative is provided. The one other notation, "piano roll", is even worse. 2. Complete lack of interpretation on the staff - come on, how hard can it be to determine why an accidental exists?? Professional musicians are confused by finding an A sharp when they expect a B flat. 3. Reliance on only MIDI and WAV - MIDI sounds terrible, and electronic music has so much more potential than being used as an expensive 4-track. Professional software completely fails to incorporate MOD or its upgrades, or support for mixing soundfonts into the audio, or anything. There are more. Personally, I and many other musicians I know feel an intense need for open-source music software - after all, composition was pretty much perfected in the 16th century, and ever since Hendrix tried ripping up his amp tubes, modern musical creativity has relied almost entirely on experimenting with and modifying sound and the media that produce it.
  • Haskore is a small library for representing music written in Haskell. Haskell is a non-strict purely functional programming language. The Haskore tutorial (last update: 1997) used to contain some music notation fragments, but its author, Paul Hudak, explained to me that they were from a time that Haskell-implementations still ran inside LISP interpreters. This made it easy to snarf notation functionality from Common Music Notation [stanford.edu] (a LISP package). Now that the Haskell community moved to stand-alone compilers and interpreters, the notation functionality of Haskore is defunct.

    Haskore would best be described as a `music representation formalism', and not a music notation program. If you want to produce music notation, you should consider lilypond [cs.uu.nl] which, incidentally, has an input grammar that closely resembles the grammar of Haskore.

  • 1) GNOME isn't a window manager.

    2) XMMS works fine with WindowMaker. You may need to switch off save unders in ~/GNUstep/Library/WindowMaker/Defaults/WindowMaker - this is in the FAQ, so you'll know this already.

    3) XMMS runs fine here with 2.3.99pre2

    4) If you can play MP3s, pretty much any other digital audio format should also work.

    5) Those errors sound more like driver issues rather than anything else. What sort of card do you have?
  • If only I could get my soundcard to work. I guess then, I might worry about making musica or listening to it.... stupid vortex soundcard...
  • M-S, or Mid-Side, stereo recording [voicenet.com] is a a really neat way to capture ambience and be able to vary the perception of stereo depth.

    Does anyone know of a software / hardware combination under Linux or other free OS which allows for this?

    Ideally, I would like to make multiple 2-track recordings simultaneously of the same subjects, in order to go back and compare the differences in approach, mic placement, mic type, etc, and M-S is one thing I've heard about but don't have the equipment to do right now.

    Anyone doing this?

    timothy
  • good luck on that. Aureal is about to cease to exist. Last week all the executives resigned. Hopefully, their last act will be to open up the specs to their chips and open source their drivers for linux. I have a vortex 2 and have been happy with it, but with out open source drivers or even a company to support it, i will have a new piece to put in my useless hardware collection.
  • It's pretty trivial for a DAW to do this. All you need is to produce a sum of the M (omni) signal and the S (figure eight with null axis directed at the source) signal. That's one channel. Now do a difference of the two signals, and that's the other channel. Voila, M-S stereo.

    OTOH, I've been using a Jecklin Disc [josephson.com] for recording orchestras and chamber ensembles for a couple of years. I like the sound, and it was easy to make. Mono compatibility is superb, and there are no weird comb-filtering artifacts like you get with XY and ORTF pairs of cardioids.

    ps

  • I wondered myself. A single article one this length would have been more than enough, but for God's sake, three? Bleh.

    What bothers me most is the let down. I, like many others, compulsively and obsessively reload Slashdot. For that brief, fleeting moment, when I notice that a new article has been posted, I find myself elevated to a state of euphoria one would be hard pressed to compare. But as I realize it's another stupid Professional music on Linux article, my heart sinks. I crash hard. It's probably physiologically comparable to a heroin addict quitting cold turkey. So please Emmett, think twice before you post another music on Linux feature. Think of the horror you put me through. And think of the people around me.
    Thank you.

    signature smigmature

  • OSS... (Score:1)

    by pb ( 1020 )
    ...using the OSS[1]-emulation from the OSS[2] ALSA project, I managed to produce an OSS[3] from my hi-fi speakers...

    Seriously, though, that was a good article. I'll just be happy if I can get a sound card that does full duplex under Linux, I want to try out those Internet phone programs... (multiple DSP's would be cool too!)

    I haven't checked out the ALSA project, but I've been having problems with some poorly written applications that end up locking up my sound card. However, if it gets stuck into the kernel anyhow, or if I get a new sound card, hopefully my problems will go away.

    ---
    1) Open Sound System
    2) Open Source Software
    3) Optimum Stereo Signal

    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [152.7.41.11].
  • CSound home page [mitpress.com]

    It's free, the source is available, and it can synthesize some amazing sounds. What more could the /. community be looking for?

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