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Jazz++ 4.0 Released! 85

Posted by emmett from the it's-hot-it's-cool-it's-jazz dept.
lactose99 writes: "For all you musicians, head over to Jazzware and get Jazz++ v4.0. It's free, it's GPLed, and it looks like a nice improvement over v3.2. You can download versions for Linux (.RPM and .tar.gz), Windows, and the source code." You like music? You like MIDI? Go get this right now.
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Jazz++ 4.0 Released! More

Jazz++ 4.0 Released!

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  • ok ok (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    1. VST & Direct-X plugins will never work on linux, they need to be recompiled as they are win32 executables.

    2. I use Cubase VST/24, Sound Forge, CDP, etc... seriously on windows, and before these companies start making ports to windows and people start writing drivers for decent sound hardware like YAMAHA, CREAMWARE, LYNXONE, LAYLA, GINA, DARLA, etc..., linux will never be anywhere when it comes to sound.

    Try recording something with a soundblaster, you get more noise than music.

    3. It is stupid to try and reinvent the weel in open source, the app will always be 10+ years behind in features that have gotten into cubase VST for instance.

  • Good, but not good enough (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Yet another piece of open source "wishware" which claims to be the equal of any commercial offering on the market - which in this case would be either Cubase, Logic Audio or Cakewalk. Well, I've just looked at the feature list, and the first thing which springs to mind as being missing is VST plug-in support, which is a fairly major gap for a program which purports to be "fully featured". And Steinberg opened the source for the VST 2 standard, so there's not really any excuse for this omission.

    Still, as an attempt it doesn't look too bad - in fact, given that it is open source, not bad at all. But it's not going to tempt anyone away from the professional tools that they are already using, which seems to be the case with open source applications in general. Open source does not a killer application make.

  • Re:Lack of VST plugin support is bad (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    VST stands for Virtual Studio Technology. Cool terms aside, it's just a piece of code you load (hence the plugin) which mangles sound. Thus you can get those "VST plugins" for example delay effects, flangers, phasers, and so on. They're used in at least Cubase VST. I don't know more about them since I don't use Cubase. I sequence with raw iron :)
  • Is trying to use linux for midi. Right now it's just a freaking nightmare.

    If you wanna do simply playback its merely a Cmdr Taco in a leotard nightmare.

    If you want to do any sequencing it's a Roblimo in spike heels and fishnets nightmare.

    Heres a tale of woe for you.
    I've been buying souncards for 2 years looking for something fully functional. Being a cheap bastard I don't want to pop for an OSS license. A little while back I hear good things about SBLive (Manuel Buender..Fuck you, yer SBLive info is all lies). Anyway, SBLive driver is working good these days but _no_ /dev/sequencer. Requests for info on the emu10k1-devel mailing list for unimplemented features results in a "You don't like it use ALSA" response.
    As far as Alsa goes, the documentation stinks, and while it has some great features, its a big PITA to install, and most importantly the OSS emulation layer isn't perfect. I realize no software is perfect but The OSS API is what _all_ the audio programs that I know of use.

    As far as sequncers goes, right now I think my personal favorite program is Brahms...It looks fucking great but it doesn't freekin record. I guess it was more important for the developers to put their ugly faces and an eat me button in.
    Way to bloat, guys.

    Anyway to swing it back around to Jazz.....
    While it has a lot of nice features it's not pattern oriented! If anybody doesn't see why this is not a good thing, well... make sure you flame me, you'll look real bright. Not to mention its a beautiful example of the wonders of Motif, and I have to wonder why the author hardcoded those nasty colors. While I'm at it, a set of standard transport controls and key bindings would be nice (ie spacebar == pause/continue, enter == start, r == arms a track).

    And Jazz is one of the better sequencers for Linux.
  • The problem (one among many -- this app is built with Motif, for crissakes, the help engine (wxhelp) appears to be dynamically linked, and segfaults with lesstif, AND it doesn't work with an AWE32/64 worth a flip, and that RPM -- it's a tarball and a post-install script that installs the tarball, so you can't remove it with RPM which is just stoopid -- honestly, I see no improvement on my end from the older versions. OK, so I've got an AWE64. It's got great MIDI capabilities but this doesn't cut it.)

    Where was I?? Oh! The problem is in the /usr/local/jazz/jazz.cfg file. Search for ALSA and you'll find a part which specified which driver to use. It's set to "2", which is the ALSA driver, change it to "1" to get it to work with OSS or OSS/Free.

    Now that this is open source, maybe someone could port this to Gtk instead of the wxWindows/Motif beast and build in some support for the AWE.

    I may give it a shot myself after I play around with Gtk a little bit.
  • Beos may well do it better, but I challenge you to
    find any sequencers for the intel platform for
    the damn thing. I'd be happy to pay for one, if
    such a beast was even available.

    Silly musicians indeed...
  • I have relatively few problems with running Buzz under WINE (no Windows partition), and it doesn't use much more CPU than it would under Windows. There are some bugs, but they're generally tolerable.

    Also, what's the current plan for Be, Inc.? Do they still have any sort of viable business model, and, if so, are they having any success in executing it? And if they go away, is there any guarantee that BeOS will retain some degree of support?
  • This is true - Buzz is certainly a great program. However, the other two projects I mentioned are efforts to do almost exactly the same thing, except GPL'd.

    There are (at least) two reasons that this might be a good thing:

    1. These projects are trying to avoid some of the deeper-seated mistakes in Buzz (it's mono, auxillary machine connections are an ugly little hack, etc.).

    2. Oskari (the author) is (or at least seems to me to be) quite cranky most of the time, and isn't always responsive to his users. Also, much like Linus, Oskari doesn't scale. :)
  • Sorry about that.
    • In the words of my father, shortly after I explained to him the current problems with mp3s and dvds,
    • "Why don't you people who are making open source software start making music and
      movies the same way?"

    Your father is right.
    Music, both written and executed, is copyrightable artwork;
    Movies are also copyrightable artworks;
    software, which can be seen also as a collective art like movies are, is as well a copyrightable artwork.

    Music is made by musicians, and software is made by programmers.
    We are programmer, I am a programmer, we do Free Software, I do Free Software.
    Are there any musician which wants to start doing Free Music?

    I perfectly remember the times (not so many years ago) when I had to hear twice a day the legend "no real programmer will never work for free".
    I spent a lot of time explaining why and how I do Free Software.

    Isn't now time to start confuting the legend that "no real musician will ever play or compose for free"?

    bricius
    --
  • I know this is OT, but I've got a nagging question.

    Considering the recent (yesterday?) ruling about source code being a form of speach - and therefore priviliged to the same protections... what does this mean for MIDI files, and maybe by extension, MP3??

    MIDI is after all just the code for the piece of music. It requires 'compilation' before it can be heard. It's an algorithm, so it should be viewable as 'source'... How do musicians feel about the MIDIs they crank out? Same as programmers about their source code?

    MP3 is a different animal. It's a recording, but an encoded one. To play it back, it has to be processed in a very specific way. Almost as specific as building a parse tree and lookup tables for the decompression and playback process.. The file doesn't contain instructions for the process of decompression, but it stores instructions to the playback 'processor' that then 'runs' the file.

    Does being in accordance or violation of the law really depend on what "is" is?
  • What you're saying is obvious, change is change, and a specific instance has little effect. Maybe.

    I seem to recall a Rosa Parks, and a Johannes von(?) Gutternberg, whose singular achevements changes society profoundly.

    Now, I don't claim that a single court ruling will revolutionize the world. Not a chance, there's a mointain of history to tunnel through. But, it just might be forcing the issue. It makes (hopefully) people look at the old in terms of the new. This is where all progress comes from.
    Otherwise revolutionaries would be squelched, and the old system would always prevail. That's not intended to be self-engrandizing, it's an extrapolation of the Linux movement. Linux is a small piece of a bigger change in the world. As with Guttenberg, Linux HELPS (not DOES) bring technology within easier reach of the illiterate masses. Linux does this not by being Linux, but by just being. Some people choose it, others choose Windows or Mac - who make themselves more available to people to compete. But it isn't about Linux.

    The computer 'revolution' will be old news to our kids, as you point out. To them, the 'big thing' is likely to be bio-tech. Then maybe space, or AI, or God knows what..

    Your point is taken. Change is a constant thing that law has struggled to accomodate before. But my point also holds. Change is something that causes to law to be re-evaluated and re-shaped.

    Talking about Linux as the 'next big thing' is just that. It IS the next wave to hit the status quo. It's one of countless other waves, it just happens to be the one we're on.

    And we are beautiful snowflakes. All of us. Me, you, our grandfathers, our grandsons...
  • I use gramofile to record and split the wav files. But it didn't work very well for me in the de-pop and de-click area. What I currently do is to move the files to Win98. I remove the worst clicks/pops using Wave Repair. Then get rid of the bacon-frying using WavClean. Then I move everything back to Linux and burn using cdrecord.

    If anyone knows of a combination of tools on Linux that work please post! I'm particularly interested in an alternative to Wave Repair where I can manually redraw a wave to remove the big pops.

  • No. MIDI (hence Jazz++) is a composing tool, not a sound modification tool. Although IIRC Jazz++ has the ability to integrate wav files, etc. so there may be more sound editing features than I am aware of.
  • Durn, I knew it had been too long since I looked up what the letters stood for. Teach me to trust my foggy middle aged brain to remember things right... ;-)

    Thanks for the correction.

  • Yes, you would have been. The extreme detail in my post is because there's another bazillion /. readers who might not have heard of MIDI, wouldn't have known what a sequence was, etc., and one of them could possibly be the next all-star great MIDI composer, plug-in coder, etc.
  • All the original poster would have had to say was that it was a midi sequencer, and I would have been totally satisfied. But of course, that information is nowhere to be found in the post. People who love music don't necessarily love midis (I sure don't).
  • LyX may be OK for somebody with just a few equations to typeset, but it is WAY too buggy to use professionally. I've tried it on several different occasions with ultimate disappointment.

    I teach some fairly mathematical classes, and after I wrote some of the notes in LyX I decided it wouldn't do. Unfortunately, the migration to regular LaTeX was so bad that I just gave up and rewrote most everything.

    I'll stay a pure TeX diehard for now. Long live NEdit! Long live OpenStep! Long live TeXEdit!

    - Brian
  • Hm, LyX is okay, but doesn't deserve to call itself 1.x. For instance, a friend of mine made a document with tables in LyX 1.1.3. When I tried to view it in 1.1.4, LyX said it no longer supported that table format and SUGGESTED DOWNGRADING TO AN EARLIER VERSION! Then it segfaulted.

    That and I think the xforms library should just die.
  • You just summed up the whole problem right there. I installed BeOS, played with it, said, "Wow, this will be great for sequencing", went to get a sequencer, and....

    Nothing. Not a darn thing is out there.

    Oh, there's plenty of MIDI players/jukeboxes -- so many that I'm starting to think BeOS has a single API call for MIDI -- PlayMIDIFile(char* filename).

    But real sequencers DO NOT EXIST for BeOS. What a waste.
  • i remember when a local arcade set up shop with a pay per play interface for pc games (doom!)

    those were the days :)

    of course, it's *still* nice to have a multiplayer starcraft/dungeon keeper session with eight or so others at a local gaming shop for 5 or so an hour, 20$ for the whole day.
  • 20 years from now people will still be listening to jazz, 20 years from now people won't be listening to punk.
    I doubt that. There's no reason that folks in 2020 won't have both Duke Ellington and the Ramones in their MP3 - or maybe MP30 by then - collections.

    Sometimes I wanna hear "Take the A Train", sometimes I wanna hear "Blitzkrieg Bop". They're both fine examples of the art of music.

  • I'd disagree that we have www covered. Netscape 4.7 is usable, but it's starting to get a little stale. The Netscape 6 beta is pretty close to unusable to me( missing some very basic features from 4.7). Even worse, there are no other browsers available that are anywhere near the point of even Netscape 4.7 yet. Opera is even worse, the interface is an absolute mess. The buttons have no icons. The basic navigation tools are missing. Etc. Etc. Konquereor is still alpha software. Hopefully something will change soon.

    Last I checked, the "masses" don't need professional-quality sound editing tools. What the masses need in the audio area are tools like the MS Media Player, XMMS, and other sound players Professionals need the tools to create, and they should have them. What the masses need are a good consistant user interface, a good office suite that runs on lower end hardware(hopefully WordPerfect 2000 fixes this, won't know till Monday :)), and a good web browser(maybe something major will happen with Netscape during the beta).

    Lets just make sure that we attribute the need for software to the right people.
    treke

  • "Isn't now time to start confuting the legend that "no real musician will ever play or compose for free"? "

    I will play for free when I can eat for free.

    Programmers have real jobs outside or they go to school. These help support their hobbies.

    Music is more time consuming. Now, hear me out. I can see the hours in the recording studio being rougly equivlent to hours of programming, but when you're done, you're done. And so is the musician, unless they want to get their music out there, then they go on tour.

    Going on tour, obviously, can take up to months (even years, if I may). There's no job that I know of that lets you go cross country and pays you well enough to finance your travels.

    When bands can eat and sleep and drive for free, they'll be more likely to play for free.

    How many programmers go on tour (unless they're giving talks, and it's assumed that they're old school or whatever and have something to say).

    Music is a time consuming activity, capable of taking months to complete one round of touring. You can't say programming is like that, even if you spend months doing a certain thing, you still can have a job or school outside that puts food on the table.

    In an ideal world, everone would work for free because everything they need would be free too. But that ain't here.

    later
  • Instant Music by Electronic Arts is the best music program for amateurs I've ever used. Unfortunately, EOA only released it for the Commodore-64 (remember the cool EOA logo that would be displayed when one of their programs was loading?).

    Jazz++ looks like it has a couple of similarities, and it's certainly more powerful than Instant Music was, but it doesn't seem to have the same cool interface features.

    Boy, I wish EOA would release Instant Music 2000.

  • Would anyone like Propellerhead [propellerheads.se] to do a port to Linux of the Mac & Windows software synth Rebirth [propellerheads.se] or of the loop slicer ReCycle [propellerheads.se] or even the software studio Reason [propellerheads.se]? If you know of anyone else doing that, let me know.

    I know of Open Sound System [4front-tech.com]'s, "a set of device drivers that provide a uniform API across all the major UNIX architectures," answer to ReBirth: Gsyn [guildsoftware.com]. It's a good start but more needs to be done before we get to the professional level.

  • http://resartus.norad.org/~vastator/qik.html

    Well I helped design this, never got around to doing much of the coding (Vastator was doing this... and quite well I might add.) I havn't talked to him in a while, and things came up for both of us, you may want to hang in #BeDEV on EF Net and find out what is up with it. As for me, I now use hardware sequencers, TRY TO GET ME TO USE A PC TO SEQUENCE WITH!!!!
  • Yup, if i was in a talented band, I'd want my music to be free, or extremely cheap. And steal it too. I'd have no problem with infecting the world with my music! You can get donations from cool people and then make money doing shows if you get some publicity, if need be. Free concerts are also awesome too, but you have to make money somewhere if it's the only thing you do.

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

  • Up until the latest version generators were mono only, true, but they can now be stereo as of the latest beta version. This means that the hack used by one generator of being coded as an effect which required a dummy generator connected to its input can now thankfully be avoided :)

    Damn I wish my PC were running, I really want to start using it now :)

  • It's a great program - a logical combination of trackers and modular synths. There are some superb generators and effects out there, and it's remarkably easy to pick up the basics of creating a song compared to using a full-blown sequencer. The latest version has got some MIDI support in it as well IIRC.

  • The sheet music is the source code, IMHO. To claim that music can't be GPL'ed because it wasn't written in (or converted to) MIDI format is absurd.
  • public license. I wrote up the license mostly for fun, but also out of curiosity, to see what options are out there. Didn't want to release it to the public domain, but didn't want to mess around with too much legalalese, either.

    www.dragonfly dynamix.com

  • It's not like this AC has any good points, he's just flaming because he's too snooty to use tools that aren't intended for "com-PO-suhs" like himself.

    Some people watch too much PBS Masterpiece Theatre.

  • I think if you perform a GPL'ed song in public, you have to give credit to the composer of the song on stage (o in some other obvious manner). The point of the MOOO public license (www.dragonflydynamix.com), at least, is to give othe people the opportunity to hear, copy, or cover your music, while making sure you get proper credit.

    Just my 2 cents.

  • Hey! I Love GAMH! you guys rock!

    I want to see your license, it sounds really cool. I've been considering a lot of the same things for my own music.

  • "If I play your GPLed song in a place where people pay to get in, is that commercial use? (Or is it considered a service?)"

    My *guess* is you can - after all, you can assemble gpl'd software and sell the cd. GPL says we have to make it free as in speech, but anyone can charge for it.

    "Do I have to put all the rest of my songs in the same set under the same license?"

    If a performance is like a distribution, than you don't have to - gpl'd software can be sold along with proprietary stuff.

    Imho, I don't think you should have to, but that's just me. Maybe there are reasons why it should be so, but I don't see them.

    "Do I have to tape the show and make it available for modification?"

    I don't think so, but I think you'd have to let anyone in the audience, or the place that invited you, to record you. Like the Grateful Dead do. As for modification, beats me.
  • Well the feature list looks pretty good and the minumim hardware req is pretty low (pentium & 32mb)
    We don't use the VST-plugin side of cubase so no bother there.
    A great growing Free product is great for musicians all around. Keeping up with the Cubase family is expensive - and quite right too because they produced a product that opened up a great market - the crackz for cubase market.
    If it works well enough then another anchor to Windows is weighed.
    .oO0Oo.

  • But music differs from source code in one aspect. It can be performed

    I'd consider a MIDI file (MIDI can now store lyrics) the source code, Timidity [google.com] the compiler, .wav an object file, BladeEnc [mp3.no] a linker (even though it may be illegal), and the MP3 file the compiled executable that runs on a machine called Diamond Rio [diamondrio.com], I mean, Diamond Rio [diamondmm.com].

    Games can be publicly performed for pay too. Have you been to a video arcade?

  • MIDI (hence Jazz++) is a composing tool

    Which just shows how Jazz++ fits in twice with the open source model. According to the GNU GPL [gnu.org], "The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it" and that's the MIDI format, right?

    One thing I don't get is what's the "++" in Jazz++? Is it an overly large object-oriented variant of Jazz?

  • I thought Freshmeat was meant to deal with software releases.

    • The Rest © Andover.Net: Freshmeat is also on Andover.
    • News for Nerds: This one's especially newsworthy because it's an open-source tool that lets you write open-source (i.e. MIDI) music.

  • So MIDI files would count as free speech, and MP3s wouldn't.

    But a MIDI file can be converted to an MP3 file by piping it through Timidity and BladeEnc. So you're saying DeCSS's source code is free speech, but the executable isn't?

  • I agree. I was a musician before I was a "computer guy," and learned alot about computers by playing with MIDI interfaces, sequencers and stuff. I actually bought my first PC because I needed something more powerfull than a stand alone sequencer to compose with. Then of course I needed more RAM, SCSI interface, Internet access so I can get program updates/help, real OS so this all works well togeather...
  • This wasn't a troll!!! it was an honest question... all the linux sites seem to be covering this stuff... I even pitched in with a link to an underated music app that I use.

    Are moderators little kids? or are they the real trolls...
  • oh, if your younger brother doesn't listen to it, then it must be going away
  • 20 years from now people will still be listening to jazz, 20 years from now people won't be listening to punk.

    think about it
  • I reckon this would work very well. It should also work for cleaning up audio tape recordings.

    Two things to consider though:

    1. You'll need to synchronise the two (or more) .wav files before you try and merge them. This should be quite easy since you can just slide one set of samples past the other until you get a peak in the correlation.

    2. You'll need to keep the two .wav files locked to each other as you process the thing. This is because the two recordings you make are very unlikely to be exactly the same speed. A few samples (~ hundreds of microseconds) off and the thing would be knackered. You would need to perform short range correlation on the section of audio you are processing and then skip or insert samples to keep the things in sync. Not easy but doable.

    Jeff

  • Why not ?

    It's good that there are music apps for BeOs, but that shouldn't stop anybody writing them for Linux; just like there are plenty of apps for DOS/Windoze, but that shouldn't stop anybody writing them for BeOs. Choice is good.

  • Well it is gpl'ed now isn't it? send them a patch :))

    Grtz, Jeroen

  • My comment wasnt based on the thought that there should be no music programs for Linux, I was just saying that BeOS is made for media editing. Its the same as networking, you could run a network server with windows but why would you want to when you could use BSD or Linux which are better suited to handle networking situations.
  • BeOS was created for media editing. In simple terms it makes better use of your computer's resources for this purpose than other OS's. On my p3 600 i can stream and edit 2 full movies in full resolution with no locking up. This makes BeOS the ultimate media editing OS. If you want details go to the website.
  • First of all, the three biggest uses of home computers are multimedia, www, and gaming. Linux has www covered, and gaming is starting to come along, so the area that needs the most work to make Linux popular to the masses is multimedia. Right now, we have GIMP. That's it.
    GIMP is great for images. It's adequate as a professional tool. So, with images covered, the next tool in the multimedia progession is for audio (video is a little bit of a way off yet, even on commercial platforms). It makes perfect sense that audio tools would be one of the hottest emerging genres for linux right now.
    As has been said before, though, there is a serious need for sample editors. There are a number of linux apps right now that make great shells, but without plugins to actually do anything with those shells, they're useless.

    I'm buying a computer today. As much as it pains me, I'm putting an MS OS on it. The ONLY reason is windows-compatible professional-quality sound editing tools.
  • I have a friend who has limited hardware and likes to make music on his PC. He right now uses Windows and Cubase Score 3.01. But a Pentium 166 and 32 Megs of Ram don't seem to be enough. So I thought what better OS than Linux could be there to make best use of limited resources. Then I looked at app and found Brahms, which he can't use, because he can't "record" Midi from his Keyboard and Jazz, which has (why???) no score editor. Every good midi sequencer has one. Maybe there is a chance now since it is GPL, but I am betting on Brahms, since it was GPL from the begging on and GPL is just better IMHO.

    Peace
  • I think their list of problems is already quite extensive. Is your average Windows user going to understand what to do when it says the wrong file is/has been dl'ed? Bugs aplenty...gives me a creepy-crawly [crawly-bugs, get it? sorry.] feeling about this one.
  • I miss my sock puppet friends *ROCK*

  • Re:Good, but not good enough (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Yet another piece of open source "wishware" which claims to be the equal of any commercial offering on the market

    Actually, it's an yet another ex-proprietry piece of software that has gone Open Source because it can't hack it against the big boys.

    However, I think you're missing the point of Open Source (like alot of busineses do). Open Source means that that users can make improvements that they need, and the software gradually improves over time. You want VST plug-in support? code it instead of whining. If you want a professional music suite to fill your needs now, pay for one and be at the mercy of the company that coded it.

    and yes, IKIHBT

  • Yikes! (Score:2)

    by hawk ( 1151 )
    I've been too busy to follow the last few months of development. My copy seems to be a variant (custom mail merge) from 1.0.4pre7 . . .

    Tables are not LyX's strongpoint; this is inherited from LaTeX (yes, it can do some wonderful things, but most word processors have had it beat for years).
    I don't use many other than simple supply/demand tables I put in homwork sets and tests.

    Equations, though. . . WOW . . . that was what sold me on LyX, and got me to buy an x86 box instead of expanding my fleet of Macs.

    He shouldn't be too surprised by a 1.1.x, though--the odd minor indicates a development branch where anything can happen . . .
  • > LyX may be OK for somebody with just a few equations to typeset,

    I did an entire dissertation in computational economics with it . . . *editing* without a display of the equations becomes a problem forr me; just too bloody many braces, parenthesis, etc. for me to mess with.

    My natural inclination would certainly be raw LaTeX, but the editing and matchig gets extreme. And perhaps as importantly, lyx takes less keystrokes (though I'm not yet to where I was with word4/5, typesetting commands, and external macros . . .
  • Does anyone know if you can use this (or any other open source option) for noise reduction / pop & click removal.

    I wanna move LP collection to CD, but need a way to clean up the WAV files and get rid of clicks etc. Do I have to go commercial on this ?

    I'm also wondering about writing my own. If I took 2/3 recordings from an LP, then used the 2nd copy to repair the waveform at clicks rather than guessing or manually drawing it in, it seems like pretty decent results should be possible (of course, this won't help with scratches, but it would help with random noise). Has anyone tried this ? I would like to try coding this myself, but I'm kinda busy right now - one for the backburner.
  • That's just the ticket. When I have time I'll
    integrate the dual-sample processing idea into gramofile, the source looks respectable.
  • Not implying that you are, but I am starting to get a little irked about the number of posts about the aptitude of the average musician. (Not just your post, or this article. I'm talking about the past couple of weeks.)

    The majority of musicians may not be incredibly computer literate. But then again, neither are the majority of computer users. :)

    Most of them (non-literates) don't tend to hang out here very much, either.

    I may do computers for a living, but I've been a musician for much longer. And so has my drummer. And quite a handful of other techies I know. (If fact, I can only think of one person in our whole IS department who ISN'T a musician on the side.) Not to mention the sound-engineer types. Ever play with multitrack recording, mixers, and all of the wacky electronic gadgets around nowadays? They're not exactly "point, click, and drool" (If it is, you're doing it wrong, and it probably sounds like crap, too.)

    Even if a musician doesn't start out as some form of geek, many turn into one eventually. Or at least one person in every band will. (Someone has to figure out the equipment.) Unless, of course, they do absolutely nothing but bang on instruments, and never record anything unless a pro studio is doing the work for them. Which pretty much guarantees that they won't be sitting here reading Slashdot instead of solving peoples problems. Or trying to run Jazz on any *nix (or other) system.

    Besides, what is a computer? Other than a really complicated instrument to be mastered, and to do/produce wonderful things with?

    Isn't that what musicians like to do?

    Isn't that what programmers/techs like to do?

    You see where I'm going with this, right? :)
  • ... mostly along the same lines, including BEAST/BSE (sorry, don't know the URL - should be linked from the GNOME site), GNU OCTAL (http://www.gnu.org/software/octal/octa l.html [gnu.org] - the Gsynth guy is now working w/ this project), and Buzz under WINE as a stopgap until one of the others gets usable.

    I should note, though, that none of the things I mentioned, or Gsynth, for that matter, are quite the same thing as Rebirth, ReCycle, or Reason. The ones I mentioned probably share more of a common heritage with trackers, though they're also based on modular soft synths and effects processors.
  • Believe it or not, the whole legal system does not revolve around software. I know this comes as a surprise to those who wonder how people lived before the Intel 80386.

    Now THAT is just uncalled for. We all realize that computers are just a small piece of society; there's no need for sarcasm here.

    The point of my question was that new technologies force society to re-evaluate some old perceptions and precedents. Source-as-speach is one example of this. Knowledge workers are another... We MAKE nothing, yet are higher paid than most professions.

    Another interesting result of modern tech is the government mandate that health insurance can not discriminate or deny coverage to people who have a genetic pre-disposition to certain chronic or terminal disease...

    Computers, bio-tech and space exploration, althogh very recent and small in the grand scheme of things, have had a HUGE impact on modern society, culture, and {wait for it}... law.
  • This is old news. jazz 4 has been out for about 2 weeks now and I sent in this same post then. Well enough griping.

    I showed it to a friend of mine who uses windows (I use Linux) and he is into music composition and playing the violin, and he liked it. I told him I could help him install the windows version of the software, he said he was fine using my Linux box ;-).

    I originally had a few problems setting it up. It looks for /dev/sequencer2 and for some reason my Redhat 6.1 did not have it. I looked at MAKEDEV and uncommented it out and it fired right up. Course it took me a little time to figure this out.

    I like the drum machine. It is nice to be able to give custom drum tracks to music. The only issue that I do have is that the GUI is not the most intuitive interface. I could figure it out and get it to work, but I wonder what kind of study they did on usability and if any. I often wonder how many studies are done on this. I know MS and MAC does studies on this and many software companies do. But I also know that many don't. hmmm

    send flames > /dev/null

  • Starting at the very simplest level: Jazz++ is first and foremost a Musical Instruments Digital Instruments (MIDI) Sequencer. MIDI is essentially a protocol that allows computers and digital musical instruments to communicate with each other.

    What the protocol enables me (amateur musician only BTW) to do is to connect a number of different sound modules --including one which is actually a card in my PC-- to a musical keyboard, then use that keyboard to tell all of those modules when to put out an audio signal, and a little bit about how.

    A "sequencer" captures a "sequence" of midi events (those key presses, etc.), so it is essentially like a digital multitrack recorder -- except that instead of recording sounds, it is recording the "you pushed middle c on channel 1 which is assigned to voice piano" event

    The sequencer essentially lets me become a whole band, orchestra, etc. and write music for a wide variety of instruments that I otherwise cannot play.

    Although I don't know of an sequencer + integrated printing package on the Linux side, there are "musical notation" programs that essentially allow me to print out my own sheet music of stuff I've composed on the sequencer.

    Anyway, Jazz++ seems to be the best solution available for MIDI right now, and the fact that they GPL'd the code is great because others can stand on their shoulders, or work from the ground up to create *nix stuff that can compete with the WinTel/Mac hegemony in the musical arena.

  • I don't think GPL is quite the right copyleft license for music. Releasing the source just isn't that important -- you can listen for lyrics, play along with the music, and even filter drum tracks and what not out of a finished recording. Unlike for a computer program, "wrong" interpretations of the music can lead to new works themselves.

    I am slowly putting together a copyleft license for music called the Free Music Public License. When I have time (sometime next week), I'll have the terms up at http://gamh.cx/fmpl, and ask for comments from musicians, then turn it into a real license with the help of a lawyer. My band (God Ate My Homework) will be using this license. We hope others will follow us.
  • It was released for the Amiga as well. I had no MIDI equipment whatsoever back then, but it could use the internal audio, too.

    Later on, the Amiga also had "Bars&Pipes", which was pretty cool for its time, too.

  • Well I'm not so sure about open source, but there are plenty of freeware/shareware tools at MAZ Sound Tools [maz-sound.com] which might be of use. You can get Cool Edit from there, which has a noise reduction option IIRC, and support for very large files.

    As for writing your own, you'd better get a book out on statistical sampling and analysis and prepare for a long reading session... :)

  • The loss of DirectX plugins may be a downer on the Linux front, however.

    Yeah, especially since Jazz++ doesn't seem to support VST plugins, which are pretty much the de facto standard, especially since Steinberg opened up the specifications last year(see here [geocities.com] for some VST stuff). If they were supported then the lack of DirectX plugins wouldn't be so bad, but as it is it puts a serious downer on the audio side of Jazz++.

  • until he has a solid sequencer and soundforge type app he can't consider it (unless vmware).

    Yeah, but a sequencer doing a full hard-disk recording of both MIDI and audio tracks with effects/plugins is one of the most processor and IO intensive things you can do on your PC. I wouldn't dare to do this using a virtual OS running under VMWare, and I doubt he would.

    And it's not really suprising that BeOS will get more support as an audio platform, especially now it's freely available. It was designed with multimedia as one of its primary goals, and succeeds brilliantly, whereas Linux and Windows include audio as an afterthought. Given the performance requirements of serious audio tools, making the move to BeOS rather than Linux is the obvious move for Steinberg et al. It's not about Linux at all, it's about BeOS's audio performace.

  • Sorry to tread on your '733T attitude, but for some of us, warez aren't an option for various reasons.

    1. It hurts developers as well as consumers. Developers write software for a company, software is cracked. Company loses money on software due to proliferation of cracked copy. Do the suits in the boardroom lose their bonuses? Hell no. They hike the price of the software and keep developer pay down, using piracy as an excuse. They get off scot-free nad can afford another year at the golf course.

    2. It hurts platform development. If a platform isn't as globally entrenched as MS-DOS/Windows (Like Atari and Amiga back in the day, and Linux and BeOS now), and a lot of software is cracked, the companies don't develop for the platform anymore, and Bill gets richer.

    3. Cracked versions are usually pre-release, despite all the FINAL!!!! and 100%!!!!! crap. It therefore has a tendency to *crash*. Especially with software like SoundForge and VST, which do a lot of direct writing to your HDD, a BSOD is not a good thing to have to deal with. Not only do you lose your work, but you tend to have to do a lot of HDD restructuring afterwards (Unless you can afford a RAID-5 solution at home, which, let's face it, is unlikely.)

    We all know that software is overpriced, but using warez wholesale isn't the answer. It hurts us, and people like us more than the software companies. Using warez is a useful way of deciding whether to buy software, but let's face it, unless you want your platform to disappear, or your descendants paying even more astronomical money for software (the honest ones at least), warez are not the way to go.

    TuRRIcaNEd - A former pirate atoning for his sins by living in a Microsoft world.

  • Many musicians already do this sort of thing.

    For example, check out Dennis Bathory-Kitsz [maltedmedia.com].

  • Yes, check out the Free Music [twisted-helices.com] movement. There is also the Open Content [opencontent.org] license. IIRC, Richard Stallman is working on a similiar license.

    But music differs from source code in one aspect. It can be performed. If I play your GPLed song in a place where people pay to get in, is that commercial use? (Or is it considered a service?) Do I have to acknowledge everyone who contributed to the song from the stage? Do I have to put all the rest of my songs in the same set under the same license? Do I have to tape the show and make it available for modification?

  • You obviously have no idea what your talking about as to call VST "the latest proprietary gimmick" and that it only has to do with audio effects. VST is effects plugins plus virtual instruments that synch perfectly with cubase or logic. Check out native instruments Pro Five. VST is a great idea.

  • Re:Good, but not good enough (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06, 2000 @01:15AM (#1148650)
    Where is the moderation here at Slashdot? I tried Jazz for Windows years ago and found it difficult to use (compared with some other midi software), but if there have been any improvements + open source this is great news for Linux. Jazz++ does have some nice features and does do what it promises to to - provide a way to create midi tracks (not necessarily the latest audio effets) either with real time input through a midi device or with score or piano roll tracks plus some nice tools for composition. You dumbasses who whine because this lacks the latest proprietary gimmick found on Win or Mac - which has only to do with audio effects and not music composition - know nothing about music composition. What is needed is a way for a musician to quickly input and record midi tracks which are not the same as audio cuts (although these can optionally be mixed in or be synched to a midi track). A great musician or any creative person wants to COMPOSE, not produce sound effects only for immature persons who don't understand the difference. I will certainly give Jazz++ another try - this time on the Linux side.

  • LyX, LyX, LyX (Score:3)

    by hawk ( 1151 ) <hawk@eyry.org> on Thursday April 06, 2000 @03:43AM (#1148651) Journal
    An open source application that sucks people away from its commercial competitors in droves.

    Sometimes it pulls so hard that they switch hardware platforms to run a *nix so that they can use it.

  • It's evolution. (Score:3)

    by zCyl ( 14362 ) on Thursday April 06, 2000 @02:12AM (#1148652)
    In the words of my father, shortly after I explained to him the current problems with mp3s and dvds, "Why don't you people who are making open source software start making music and movies the same way?"

    The future structure of entertainment will be decentralized. The artist on the street will be able to be an artist, and the suits will go on building factories to manufacture suits.
  • Hey, if this is going to be freshmeat.net, that's fine, I understand, but can we get a little more info on what the software does? This posting reads like all the spam e-mails that clutter my in-box.

    Take a look at the article posted about Lego today, and notice how descriptive it is while still maintaining the same length. It's just a matter of exchanging one sentence of hype for one sentence of description about what the software does. Can we pull that off? Thanks!

  • GramoFile! (Score:3)

    by evilquaker ( 35963 ) on Thursday April 06, 2000 @12:27AM (#1148654)
    GramoFile is built exactly for removing clicks and pops from digitized LPs. Here's the homepage for GramoFile:

    http://panic.et.tudelft.nl/~costar/gramofile/

    GramoFile will not only remove clicks and pops, but it does so on the fly, and it will also automatically split the tracks for you... it's a neat program. Unfortunatley, it doesn't do noise reduction. You can check out:

    http://www.sci.fi/~mjkoskin/

    For dnr and denoi, two command-line denoising programs. I've used them a little, and they seemed okay, but I haven't gotten around to really testing them out.

    You can also apparently use Broadcast 2000 for noise reduction, but I couldn't get it to work. It's homepage is:

    http://heroine.linuxave.net/bcast2000.html

  • Mirror Site (Score:3)

    by laursen ( 36210 ) <laursen AT netgroup DOT dk> on Thursday April 06, 2000 @12:04AM (#1148655) Homepage
    Lets make some mirrors before their site is /.'ed
    (Server located in Denmark/Europe)

    http://www.iot.dk/~laursen/jazz/

  • Re:Music as source code: Off-topic (Score:3)

    by spiralx ( 97066 ) on Thursday April 06, 2000 @02:36AM (#1148656)

    Hmm, a tricky question, but I'll give it my expert IANAL opinion :) MIDI files are simply a method of encoding instructions for playing a piece of music - they are a digital equivalent of a musical score. Since a musical score is protected as free speech, so really should a MIDI file - it allows the musician to "express" the ideas they have about music.

    But an MP3 cannot be used to exchange information or express anything about music in that way - its only use is for playing back a *finished* piece of music. This is the key difference between the two formats - one can communicate the idea behind the music, one can only play a finished product. So MIDI files would count as free speech, and MP3s wouldn't.

  • Re:Good, but not good enough (Score:3)

    by guran ( 98325 ) on Thursday April 06, 2000 @01:09AM (#1148657)
    Yet another piece of open source "wishware" which claims to be the equal of any commercial offering on the market...

    Isn't the point of Open Source that someone else can turn A Good Start into KillerApp 7.2?

    If [program X] is Open and [standard Y] is open... well what is keeping you (or someone else) from releasing Y-enabled X?

  • Re:What's up with music apps on linx???? (Score:3)

    by bfree ( 113420 ) on Thursday April 06, 2000 @12:23AM (#1148658)
    It's simple, linux is a viable platform for most things, but NOT audio....yet
    I have a friend who amongst other things even sells linux boxes but he doesn't run it himself as he is a audio artist primarily, until he has a solid sequencer and soundforge type app he can't consider it (unless vmware).
    We need to plug this hole in our software soon otherwise the support Be is receiving as an audio platform (from Steinberg et al) will mean linux will never be acceptable as an audio platform. Not everyone needs high power audio capabilities, but if every home can use there PC with a simple midi controller as a piano type tool (with free software) thats yet another reason why joe bloggs will go there.

  • Has anybody gotten this to work? (Score:4)

    by Holger ( 36233 ) on Thursday April 06, 2000 @01:09AM (#1148659) Homepage
    I see a serious problem with the "free music software helps free music" point of view. Musicians are not usually the most computer literate people around, and Jazz is still kind of difficult to install (this is not the first version I tried to check out). OK, so they have a rpm now - guess what it does? It contains the single file /tmp/jazz/jazz-bin-4.0.0.tar.gz and installs from there, then deletes the file. rpm deinstallation is of course not possible that way.

    Then it complains about ALSA missing - well, I am using OSS, but that should be supported too. No problem - just a quick look in the documentation (no man page, btw, just some html) to find out that there is a .cfg file with options that can neither be altered from the program nor from the command line. So I configure the program for OSS there. Then it looks for /dev/sequencer2 or /dev/music, neither of which are standard linux devices according to /dev/MAKEDEV. And when I simply link /dev/music to /dev/sequencer, it asks me if I want to use my AWE64 as Midi output (so it kinda works), but when I try to play the demo song jazz.mid, it keeps spitting out errors ("sndctl_tmr_tempo: Invalid argument ioctl time_base: Invalid argument ioctl speed: Invalid argument unknown sequencer status 08" and so on). I stopped here. I doubt the average musician would even have gotten so far without help.

    So now I am asking for some - is anybody able to enlighten me what I might be doing wrong?

  • GPL and Music (Score:4)

    by Domini ( 103836 ) on Thursday April 06, 2000 @12:31AM (#1148660) Journal
    Wouldn't it be great if...

    If music was GPLed, and you released it with all samples and scores etc. (including Licence Agreeement...), forcing other people to do the same if they used your samples, etc.

    Just a thought - does this trend exist someplace?

    My Minor $0.02.
    Domini.

  • Reasons for music on Linux (Score:4)

    by TuRRIcaNEd ( 115141 ) on Thursday April 06, 2000 @12:20AM (#1148661)
    Point No. 1:
    The generally agreed (stereotypical) musician is usually not very high up on the financial food chain (especially so if said musician is unsigned). OK, so the prices of Windows PC's (and usable Macs to a certain degree) is coming down. Unfortunately, the price of musical software on these platforms (At least musical software that is stable and is actually useful) is unacceptably high, bordering on extortionate. A good *free* (even as in beer) system would be a serious boon to those budding musicians who can't afford the overheads. With a free OS and a free package, the offer is seriously inviting. (This point is slightly negated by the fact that Jazz++ is also available for Windows, although Windows 9x's inherent instability could cause a problem, and most home musicians won't fork out for NT or 2k. The loss of DirectX plugins may be a downer on the Linux front, however)

    Point No. 2
    It is a documented fact that many computer freaks are avid followers of music too (Maybe the combination of form and artistry makes music appeal to them as much as programming). Many of these people (myself included) are not avid Microsoft fans, so the opportunity to have a usable music program on the OS of choice is a very cool idea.

    The only worry is that RMS will inflict on us ever longer versions of the Free Software Song [gnu.org], with him on lead vocal [gnu.org] ;-)

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