LINUX programs for making music

i wanna start making sequenced music on my linux machine. there's a lot out software out there. LMMS looks promising, but it's a fruity lueps style program, and i'm kind of sick of the clunky piano roll interface. i've never been good with trackers, hoever. what should i get?

what's wrong with trackers?
actually, how were you hoping to sequence things without a tracker?
most trackers let you input through MIDI keyboards now if that's the roadblock.

Probably useless to you but Audacity is a very good audio file editing app.

ardour perhaps

renoise is a tracker, and not particularly simple, but it comes with a very good tutorial that will have you making songs within minutes.
i'm still curious what kind of non-tracker program there could be for making sequenced music?

fruity loops' piano roll is technically a tracker, i suppose? i've used that a lot. i guess meant i'm not good with old-school hexadecimal trackers like renoise or LSDJ. maybe it's time i tried them again?

actually, what i would love is a cross-platform interface that used actual, traditional staff notation. is that out there? excuse my ignorance...

ardour doesn't have a sequencer, it looks like.

I used to love trackers, and self-taught myself almost everything I know about how to make music composing with Protracker, but have they ever got over the handicap of quantising everything to a rigid grid? Fine for some music, but awful for others.

i'm still curious what kind of non-tracker program there could be for making sequenced music?

Obviously not on Linux, but you've got Ableton, Cubase, Logic, Reaper, Sonar… the list goes on. All fine tools for writing and producing.

yeah, the rigidity of fruity loops is what frustrates me. not that you can't choose your time signature, etc., but the design definitely anticipates a certain kind of music. it makes it too easy for me to fall into certain conventions without really wanting to.

someday i hope to be able to write out a part on staff paper, jot down "sine wave" next to it, "with squelchiness", and just hold it up in front of my laptop.

i've not much experience with stuff like ableton but my understanding is they are loop-based, which doesn't make them that dissimilar from trackers (which also can be used from a loop-centric POV)
LPSG? is a free loop-oriented thing I think.

I get that sequencers tends to push people to making regularized, cut-and-paste style music, but staff notation seems pretty grid-centric, too.
also, i think i ran reaper under linux a few times -- there is either a port or you can run it under wine.

how would you design a non-trackerized sequencer though?

Chachuuung, try MusE or Rosegarden?

well with staff you're not really stuck in a grid of fixed time slots. a whole note doesn't look four times longer than a quarter note. maybe that's what makes staff easier to scan, if not write.

whoah hey, Rosegarden looks pretty great:

"Rosegarden includes a powerful notation editor – essential if score is your preferred way to compose, or just to give you a different view on your work."

plus external synth support, plus audio recording/editing..

've not much experience with stuff like ableton but my understanding is they are loop-based, which doesn't make them that dissimilar from trackers (which also can be used from a loop-centric POV)?

Well, if you want to break it down to computers playing notes, they aren't really dissimilar, but Abelton (and most SAWS) are more visual rather than data-table based, and allow you to draw - and move around my hand - notes and effect parameters.

um, not sequencers, but i'll post this because i'd already written it before i saw that requirement 8)

i liked spiralsynth http://www.pawfal.org/SpiralSynth/ as a little synth but it's no longer developed.

freebirth as well (free rebirth clone).

alsa modular synth is fun, if you know what you're doing patching different synth modules together (i don't).

there was also a reactable clone out there... oh, psychosynth http://www.psychosynth.com/index.php/Media which looked promising

maybe we should try and do a s/d music making software for linux?

anyone ever tried this one: http://www.mixxx.org/ ?

― tpp, Friday, 1 July 2011 08:13 (27 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

there is a thread somewhere for linux music tools. but these things change so frequently.

i have tried mixxx but not recently.

― koogs, Friday, 1 July 2011 08:38 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

was it any good?