Your OS is there, in front of you, daily – some of us for many, many hours a day. it often makes sounds at you, very rarely welcome sounds. Here’s an opportunity to change that.

Computers are extraordinary creative canvases for our work, but corporate branding can’t really respect that. Because Ubuntu is a free operating system, it can provide content that is free to be reused, remixed, and re-imagined. An OS’ soundscape could be provided by a user, not just a brand, and it could in turn be changed by someone else to fit what they want. And as awareness in the Linux community grows that their software is essential to musicians and artists, not just the “average” computer user, the music and sounds that a new OS release showcases have a second role. They can be a musical soundtrack to a powerful idea: the idea that all of these lines of free code are a tool for someone to use for expression. We need to make that message get across to developers and the larger free software community.

Actually, let me put it another way: knowing the community on this site, I’m eager just to hear what musical score, or sound scheme, you’d create. The results would be free to use not only in Ubuntu but anywhere you wish. Free as in freedom, free as in the beer I’ll buy you if I see you in person and you do something great. (And, hey, Brian Eno and Robert Fripp each got to try scoring sounds for Windows, so why not you as the next OS composer?)

Possible candidates here:

• A startup sound
• A sound scheme (for GNOME; I’d actually have to research how that works, but it could simply be an idea)
• A piece of music that stands on its own
• A song
• Ambient music to listen to while coding the Next Great Audio App.
• Something else I haven’t thought of that’s also sound.

It’s really open to your interpretation. As readers note, many of us find the best sound scheme for an OS to be … silence. But you could share a piece of music or soundscape. If it’s culture (according to you), and it’s free, it’s game.

I’m honored to be a judge for this year’s Free Culture Showcase, now accepting works through March 1:
Free Culture Showcase [Canonical Design Blog, itself often a good read]

To submit, you can join Ubuntu’s SoundCloud group. In addition to CC-licensed music, I’m particularly interested by the sound scheme idea. OS sounds have been largely disappointing and distracting; imagine if they were actually good. Way back in 2006, CDM readers did some amazing one-second sounds to honor the “leap second,” a chronological aberration by which clocks have to be adjusted to keep years in sync with the Earth. I’d be thrilled if some of you were to submit to this, too.

Whether or not you’re an Ubuntu user, if you believe in free licenses as a tool and option for artists, if you believe in the utility of free software, I hope you’ll get involved. There are no particular rules to the tools you use to make the work, either, and I think that’s only appropriate. I’ll be curious to hear if you do use free tools or Ubuntu, though, just to know how they’re working for readers.

Let us know if you submit, especially because entries will be free for CC use (and likely worth featuring on CDM) even if they don’t make the Free Culture Showcase cut.

I just picked up a $280 Asus netbook and installed Ubuntu on it. ReBirth seemed a perfect addition; its compact-sized UI, lightweight processing and memory requirements, and simple functions are the ideal companion to a netbook. And, thanks to Propellerhead, it also happens to be free.

If you stick with Windows, just download and go. On Linux, though, you have to give the installer some help to see the install disc. (Why install Linux? I’m finding Ubuntu is just fine for battery life, and I wanted to take advantage of the OS’ optimizations for netbooks and its flexibility for the work I do, audio and otherwise. Windows 7 Starter, by contrast, I found slow and painfully hobbled.) You’ll need WINE, a Windows compatibility tool, in order to run this Windows app in Linux without virtualization.

Here’s what to do, adapted from a forum discussion on the topic.

First, mount the disc. I’m assuming you’ve downloaded to a folder called “Downloads” in your home directory:

mkdir /files/media/rebirth
sudo mount -o loop ~/Downloads/rebirth*.iso /files/media/rebirth
wine /files/media/rebirth/"Install ReBirth RB-338.EXE"


The trick is, while ReBirth is free, it does check to see if you have the CD the first time you load it. Even though the disc is mounted, it’s not mounted in a way programs in WINE can see it. The fix: make a shortcut to WINE’s virtual “E:” drive:

cd ~/.wine/dosdevices
ln -s /files/media/rebirth e:
ln -s ~/Downloads/rebirth*.iso e::

That’s it. Now you can go enjoy some soft synth history. 13 years after its introduction and five years after it reached the end of its life, ReBirth is still a lot of fun. I hope we see software get longevity like this more often. (I plan to work out some other tweaks for my setup here, so I may add to this guide later; stay tuned.)

More:
ReBirth Museum, with community, resources, and more
ReBirth port for iPhone, plus Q&A on that version

Anyone else running ReBirth on WINE? Other tips for netbooks running Windows or Linux? Shout out.

For this book review, we welcome guest writer Andy Farnell, who himself has a terrific book on interactive sound design and free modular patching environment Pure Data, entitled Designing Sound. It began as a review of a book on using free software – but it could be, more than that, a chance to fight procrastination. And while this runs the gamut, including graphics and design and not just sound, that could be even more relevant to those of us who need to delve into those other areas for our creative work. -Ed.

We all have a stack of things to get round to one day. Building a website. Making a video. Writing a book or recording an album. Allow me to share with you ten days that will transform your list of could do, would do, always going to do… into a list of exciting projects you’ve started.

That’s how long it took me to flick through Daniel James’ “Crafting Digital Media”, a light-reading compendium of software wisdom published by APress and weighing in at just under 400 pages.

It takes two of the major excuses for procrastination, “I don’t understand the interface, so I’m waiting for someone to show me.” and “I don’t have the money to buy the latest software”, and stomps them in the face with a giant boot.

There are roughly eight topics, or chunks of knowledge covered.

The first is about photography, with demonstrations in F-Spot, GThumb and GIMP — all the free tools you need to transfer, manipulate, and polish high-quality digital images.

Every software package in the book is a free, open source product that can be legally downloaded and used. These are not shareware or limited trial programs, but full versions of powerful, standards compatible applications — all modern free software with reliable, polished interfaces and powerful features. The book also comes with a CD containing Ubuntu 9.04.

The second chapter concerns illustration and font design. This is a whistle stop tour of modern scalable vector graphics tools and techniques, touching on Inkscape, FontForge, and GIMP again, showing you how to import, export, convert and edit high quality multi-layered scalable graphics.

Next comes 2D animation, where KToon and Synfig are demonstrated, showing the basic concepts of frame sequencing and tweening. And naturally, 3D modelling follows, with a look at Blender, the immensely-powerful 3D object design and rendering package with auxiliary game engine.

Although each section covers a complete production concept, it isn’t tiring or exhaustive. Just enough guidance is given to launch the program, explore the features, introduce the key concepts and leave you to play. If you actually follow along with the software examples, it’s a truly exciting journey, as you go to sleep each night with your head exploding with possibilities.

The art of publishing is the next adventure, with explorations of page layout, document structure, creating PDFs, posters, books and flyers. Subjects like fonts, typography, kerning and color processes are explained through examples with the Scribus application.

As a musician, you might be wondering where the audio tools are. The book doesn’t disappoint. There’s something for even experienced users in this compendium of tools spanning three chapters. Packages such as Mixx, Hydrogen, Jack, Seq24, Alsa Modular, Audacity, Ardour, and JAMin are explored in the context of all the common tasks like podcasting, recording, sequencing, effecting, compressing and mastering, EQ, CD production, and creating your own streaming server.

As an old fart who has just discovered YouTube, I found the next section on video editing to be very helpful since I’ve just started to explore making video tutorials. The now comical proliferation of incompatible video formats and codecs, a depressing indictment of the failure of standards, are cut through in short order. Daniel lays down the basics of formats and their conversion using AVIdemux, cropping and resizing while preserving high quality, and basic editing using Kino and the Open Movie Editor. A quick treatment of audio sync, titles and effects wraps up the section nicely.

Web development is the last chapter on software packages. Arguably there are so many choices for Web2.0 site design that it’s hard to justify any particular one. This book opts for solid and proven Drupal, along with a tour of the industry standard Apache web server, MySQL back-end, and Icecast media server to give a user-driven internet radio station as the chapter example.

Each of these topics is an entire profession in itself, about which shelves of books could be written, so don’t expect to become much of an an expert in any. What “Crafting Digital Media” does is open the door and get you started producing content very quickly. From there the opportunities are up to you.

As well as gently throwing in up-to-date anecdotal knowledge and asides from his encyclopaedic knowledge of modern media software, Daniel ties together the various threads into a whole that leaves you feeling empowered to start any new digital production project.

Let’s face it, the key to most pieces of software is a few simple steps, a few core commands, that seem so easy once you know them that you want to kick yourself for not trying sooner. Getting over that initial barrier is what this book offers.

The book would be a fantastic companion to new users of Ubuntu Studio, Pure:Dyne or 64Studio distributions, though several of the packages are multi-platform, so are available for Mac and Windows too. Ed.: Indeed, a large number of the tools are cross-platform – GIMP, FontForge, and Inkscape run on Mac and Windows, and Ardour on Mac. But then again, if you’ve got a Mac or PC, this is a great time to explore Linux a bit as a second OS, and all this software is available to you. Graphics software should even run acceptably virtualized. -PK

Title: Crafting Digital Media
Author: Daniel James
Publisher: Apress
Year: 2009
ISBN: 9781430218876
Price: $29 (RRP:$40)

Are you a World Cup fan annoyed by the constant sound of the South African vuvuzela horn? Wish you could remove that sound from your World Cup viewing experience? Do you want to learn a little bit about powerful modular effects routing can be on Linux? Either? Both? Call it “football”? “Soccer”? Any way round, we’ve got you covered.

(Disclaimer: I have nothing in particular against the vuvuzela. But here you go, anyway.)

Updated: Via comments, here’s a Mac plug-in for filtering the horn, also a notch filter, and a sign that this is getting a little carried away. (Mostly, I think this is a useful way to learn about JACK, something you can use after the World Cup. But knowing football fans, “after the World Cup” may not be a phrase with any meaning at the moment.)

JACK is a powerful audio API on Linux, and thanks to rich application support for the tool, you can route sound arbitrarily between software tools, making everything on your computer into a kind of virtual studio. (Mac users should check out the excellent JACK OS X implementation.)

Felix Kaechele, a German-based Fedora community member and Fedora Ambassador, uses JACK to filter out sound from his live World Cup feed. If you’re curious about how JACK works and how to add effects to your system (or record a system audio feed, etc.), this is the way to go. The trick here is that PulseAudio, the default sound API on Linux, actually gets routed right into JACK.

Read the full instructions here:
Vuvuzela Filter using Fedora [Felix' Blog]

Fedora is a superb distribution, and intelligent JACK packaging is a particular strong suit. (Check out the Planet CCRMA project for more.) But part of the strength of Linux is that it is open, so you’ll find these same instructions work on other distributions. In fact, so long as you replace “yum install” with “apt-get install”, you’ll find most of these packages have the same name. (Only “ladspa-swh-plugins” is missing on Ubuntu, though there are other LADSPA plugs available.)

Note that on vanilla Ubuntu, I did need to do one extra step when setting up JACK. When you launch, JACK will actually advise you to do so right in the message window, but here it is, as a reminder:

Please check your /etc/security/limits.conf for the following lines
and correct/add them:
@audio – rtprio 100
@audio – nice -10
After applying these changes, please re-login in order for them to take effect.

These steps tweak real-time performance for better JACK sound results.

Also, I generally like to launch JACK Control with the following command, in order to disable PulseAudio:
pasuspender qjackctl

But in this event, you’d actually install the Pulse module and route Pulse into JACK, as in the instructions.

Setting up Ubuntu is a topic for another article, but there’s a preview. But the musical applications here should be clear: JACK makes it easy to set up a modular rig. Want to add effects to a Pd patch? Record audio from a system application for sampling? Route together some effects to make a virtual stompbox rig for your guitar? Having JACK is a bit like having an extensive patch bay for software.

Let us know how these tips work out for you, or if you’ve got ideas of your own. (And if someone wants to do a Mac version of the tutorial, let us know!)

Via OSTATIC; thanks, Brad Linder!

Quick: you need to produce a music score. It needs to look really great. The deadline is looming. You’ve lost your serial number for [insert program here]. What do you do? The answer might surprise you.

Lilypond is something of a cult secret in music notation circles. It’s free software for high-quality computer engraving, it runs on any platform (Mac, Windows, Linux), and it produces exceptionally good-looking output, often exceeding leading commercial programs in particularly tricky notational situations. But it could easily scare off beginners, because it isn’t necessarily graphical software. The tool generates its output from text files, a bit like the way in which a Web page is rendered from an HTML file.

What beginners don’t know is that text entry doesn’t have to be slower or more daunting – especially if you choose a tool that assists you in the entry process.

Lilypond’s language for basic music entry is actually reasonably simple. If you want a g flat, for instance, you just type “gf.” (Note: you will probably need to adjust Lilypond for your native language to get an abbreviation for “flat” that makes sense to you! Hint: “flat” is in English.) To change rhythmic durations, you use a number, so two eights followed by two quarter notes would look like “c8 d e4 f.” Because it’s text-based, you can be explicit about what you want, which avoids some of the pitfalls of graphical entry methods. If text is to be attached to a specific note, you specify which note in your text file. Most importantly, this means that entering and arranging notation doesn’t get any harder as the score becomes more involved. For complex measures with densely-packed material, or tricky notations from early music to modern composition, Lilypond continues to handle layout and rendering automatically, without intervention – just at the point many graphical programs will have you pulling out your hair.

Lilypond “Switch” How-to Crash Course

Entry itself can therefore move really fast, especially if you like to sketch out an idea on paper (or in a MIDI file) first. I recently completed my first score in Lilypond, and was surprised that – after the initial hour or two of entry – I started to really like it. Getting the first few bars in was a bit tricky as I got the hang of entry, but then, to my surprise, finishing the score went as fast or faster than it had in other programs.

Find the Right Tools

That isn’t to say you won’t want some help. Music notation is always involved, because of the sheer quantity of notational conventions used – even for fairly simple musical contexts. And while text entry makes copying fast, you’re likely to want some MIDI playback and entry assistance. In fact, I’d wager the quality of your experience with Lilypond will depend on choosing a front-end tool you like.

I experimented with various tools on my Ubuntu install, including some graphical programs that can read and write Lilypad files. If anyone is interested, there are a number of programs I can recommend you don’t use. In the end, I found that what I wanted was essentially a text editor – so I could take advantage of the speed of Lilypond’s text-based language – but with plenty of shortcuts so that I’d never get lost trying to look up how to input a symbol.

Frescobaldi was a real pleasure to use, if you have a Linux install. (That’s the case for now; efforts to port KDE and Python should mean Mac and Windows versions aren’t far off.) It’ll install a lot of dependencies on a stock Ubuntu install because it relies on KDE, but it’s a nice all-in-one tool. A PDF preview accompanies your text so you can see what you’re doing, and by clicking on a note, you jump to the correct place in the text. There’s instant access to online help and notational references. The nicest feature is perhaps the MIDI input using Rumor, which worked out of the box with an M-Audio USB MIDI keyboard I connected.

Frescobaldi

The other best-of-class tool I found is none other than omni-platform text editor jEdit, with the LilyPondTool add-on (Mac, Windows, Linux). (Thanks to a Twitter friend for the tip; thanks to Twitter’s terrible archiving, I’ve lost who you are, so say hi in comments?)

Grab jEdit, and perform two steps:

1. De-uglify jEdit. Yes, that default skin is hideous, and doesn’t look like any OS you’ve seen in the past ten years. Choose Utilities > Global Options > Appearance > Swing look & feel, and set it to something native for your OS. Reboot, and take a deep breath.

2. Install the plug-in. Incredibly, it’s a default option. Choose Plugins > Plugin Manager > Install > LilyPondTool.

jEdit’s LilyPondTool does a lot of what Frescobaldi does, with wizards for setting up scores and changing parameters and various clickable shortcuts. But it benefits from putting this functionality inside an extensible, standard text editor, which means you can do anything with LilyPondTool that you can with jEdit. And there are simply more options – there are more quick menu shortcuts for symbols, tweaks, and all the other little things you have to do in notation that you don’t realize you have to do until you get halfway through a score. That makes LilyPondTool a bit friendlier to beginners. It doesn’t have MIDI input as Frescobaldi does, but it does have MIDI playback. You even get nice tools for making templates and OpenOffice-based hyphenation of lyrics, plus a virtual on-screen keyboard to aid with entry.

http://www.jedit.org/
LilyPondTool

One part of the process I didn’t quite work out was the best MIDI import tool. There’s a simple Python script that ships with the Lilypond distribution, and it can be called from tools like jEdit+LilyPondTool. But converting MIDI to notation isn’t a simple task in any tool, so I’d have to research this further. Doing note entry in a proper MIDI sequencer, then adjusting the engraving in a Lilypond editor like jEdit or Frescobaldi seems a terrific workflow, though, if anyone has found a process that works for them.

What you might miss…

So, how does a free tool like Lilypond stack up against the newest version of, say, Sibelius?

Even if you’re a seasoned Sibelius user, I highly recommend doing at least one score in Lilypond, as it’ll give you a window into how Sibelius works, and the issues that arise in computer notation. I believe Lilypond may have even helped influence modern versions of Sibelius with its approach to engraving, though that’s only from memory – don’t quote me on that.

You will see some advantages of Sibelius. Sibelius’ graphical layout means there’s no separation between what you see and what you edit, and one big edge of the Sibelius engine from the beginning has been its ability to reflow even huge scores almost instantly. That visual process could become part of your compositional workflow, too, with on-screen clipboards for ideas and quick playback of ideas. Sibelius has also done a lot recently with DAW-style tools for MIDI, live tempo tapping, integration with ReWire, and so on. That makes Sibelius a powerful tool for creating high-quality playback right in the score.

Nice as Lilypond is, I certainly have an easier time imagining teaching students notation with Sibelius than with a text editor.

Advantages of the Lilypond approach

I commonly hear odd, defensive barbs about free software, especially in the music community. People will casually drop statements like, “but the open source community doesn’t innovate. They just rip off commercial software. And it’s just not as good.” As near as I can figure, this entire argument is often based on one or two bad experiences with OpenOffice a few years ago.

Now, some of this defensiveness comes from the fair perception that discussion of free software often centers more on philosophy than practicality. And there, I agree. Software is a tool. Philosophy matters, but you ought to be able to look at tools in more or less objective terms. You ought to be able to like using the tool.

Lilypond is a perfect counter-example. It is innovative software, period; now well over a decade old, it’s well-respected in the engraving community. I’ve been surprised to find out how many people use it, and they do so because it saves them time and headaches and they like the output.

It’s also just plain different from the commercial offerings. Its free nature means it can do things that commercial software doesn’t even try to do. (Can you imagine a major vendor unveiling a text-only notation app? Didn’t think so.)

As with any design, this means some trade-offs. They aren’t as simple as “Sibelius and Finale are for casual users; Lilypond is for hard-core geeks.” On the contrary, I found some real advantages.

Text input means backup, file exchange, and tracking revisions becomes a whole lot easier. Lilypond’s output is more like traditional engraved scores than anything I’ve seen from Sibelius or Finale, even when swapping fonts in those packages. Lilypond is uniquely equipped for doing early music notation; it makes a lot of alternative notations as easy as modern notation. Sure, that sounds like an “advanced” feature, but it’s an “entry level” feature if you happen to perform or research early music.

Also, despite improvements to things like Sibelius’ “magnetic layout” and other automated features, I find that even the newest versions of these apps still require a lot of tweaking after the fact. Lilypond still requires “subjective” tweaks – adding a page break where you want one, for instance – but I tried some tests with bars of music that broke my favorite commercial tools, and Lilypond was very hard to stump. There’s also the simple fact of the matter that with graphical tools, it’s easier to screw up the notation yourself, by attaching text to the wrong note or dragging something slightly out of place. Those changes are hidden in the graphical view, too, whereas they’re explicit in the textual score.

I don’t think one approach is necessarily better than the other. The point is, you need both. Something like Sibelius or Finale is just not going to evolve in free software. But something like Lilypond isn’t going to evolve in commercial software.

You also don’t have to choose one or the other. Thanks to MusicXML, an interchange format, you can exchange files between Sibelius or Finale and Lilypond easily. If you work a lot with scores, it’s worth a download – and the price is right.

And I don’t believe Lilypond is “for geeks only.” Give yourself a simple job, like a lead sheet, and pick a solid tool. Give it a real try, with a couple of evenings to get used to the language. I think whether you like the results will have more to do with personal preference. But I’m glad Lilypond exists, and I think you may find it’s something you want to add to your arsenal, even if that arsenal also includes one of these other tools.

For good measure, here’s a visualization of the open source contributions to the project.

code_swarm: LilyPond apr 23, 2010 v2 from Paco Vila on Vimeo.

Keep up with news from the project, and some good tips, at:
http://news.lilynet.net/

Share your experience

If you want to give this a try, I recommend both the jEdit and (for Linux) Frescobaldi routes. Each has links to Lilypond tutorials and documentation right in the program. I’ll try to work out a quick tutorial at some point, too; I’m planning a bigger set of scores and am going to give Lilypond the old college try.

Worked with Lilypond? Found a tutorial that helped you out? Got some tips? Trying it out and need help? Do share.

By the way, that score I worked on will be premiering as part of a party with operatic and musical theater types Monday in New York. Alongside digital music made by computers, it’s nice to get to work with humans, too, which is why I suspect notation will be with us for a long time to come.

New music party, NYC, Monday night 5/17

For a generation of musicians of nearly every genre, the laptop has become an instrument. It’s easy to take for granted, but the rise of the computer for music has been remarkable. Less than twenty years ago, real-time digital synthesis and audio processing was the domain of expensive, specialized workstations. Now, $700 per seat can buy you a full-blown musical rig, with the computer hardware, gestural input courtesy the Nintendo Wii controller, and even a DIY speaker made from IKEA salad bowls. The next challenge is to make this setup as flexible and reliable as possible. Enter Linux.

According with the laptop’s graduation to instrument status, laptops orchestras have spread worldwide, inspired especially by the innovative Princeton Laptop Orchestra (“PLOrk”) directed by Dan Trueman and Perry Cook. PLOrk’s alumnus Ge Wang has even gone on to greater fame making applications for the iPhone via ocarina and T-Pain app developer Smule. The sounds of these ensembles may sometimes be strange, but by pushing laptop performance, the groups are a great place to look for how to get the most out of computer music, whatever your tastes may be.

Virginia Tech’s L2Ork’s claim to faim is that it’s a laptop orchestra powered by Linux. Why does that matter? For one, it makes a big difference on cost. By using Linux-powered netbooks, they’ve slashed the per-student cost from that of the Mac laptops used in some other ensembles, on a machine that’s more compact. Far from making sacrifices to save money, the result is actually  greater reliability, flexibility, efficiency, and audio performance.

As with the PLOrk ensemble, L2Ork combines expressive input with open-ended digital sound making production, localizing the sound near the computer itself using hemispherical speakers. In this way, the laptop instrument can attempt to learn something from acoustic instruments, which are played with human gestures and have sound sources that are positioned physically where the instrument is.

L2Ork

You don’t have to enroll at Virginia Tech to apply these lessons to your own music making, however. You can apply the lessons of the L2Ork ensemble to put together your own Linux audio machine. They’ve even further-documented the process of making PLOrk’s signature “salad bowl” speakers. And you can do it all without breaking the bank.

I got the chance to speak with Dr. Ivica Ico Bukvic, director of the Linux Laptop Orchestra and the DSISIS Interactive Sound and Intermedia Studio at Virginia Tech.

CDM: What is your software rig for this ensemble?

Ivica: We basically use Ubuntu 9.04 (vanilla) with our own custom-built rt kernel, which apart from solid performance also offers full support of standby/hibernate/external monitor, webcam, wireless, bluetooth, etc. We also have various patches/scripts that deal with chronic UI bugs (e.g. order of panel icons in gnome getting trashed whenever a resolution is changed).

Basically, our configuration supports every single functionality of MSI Wind netbooks, which we use as the backbone of the orchestra.

FWIW, our setup offers pretty darn cool price point. The entire setup (MSI Wind, UA-1G soundcard, hemi speaker, [Nintendo] Wiimote/Nunchuk, all the cables/accessories, headset, and case) comes down to approximately $700/seat which arguably makes it as cheap as an iPhone setup, except you get to enjoy flexibility of using a laptop (ok, a netbook .

What music software are you using?

Our audio platform is currently exclusively [multimedia patching environment] Pd-extended 0.42.5 (running through [low-latency audio server] JACK) which we’ve also customized to allow advanced GUI setup (e.g. per-patcher configurable background, menu/ontop/resize/scrollbar toggles, what is IMHO better scrolling algorithm than what we currently have) as well as integrated several new objects whose source we are about to release (our multithreaded version of the Wiimote object for Linux has been already posted on the Pd-list a couple weeks ago, and it fully supports Wiimotes/Nunchuks without any interruptions to the Pd’s audio thread).

What do you do to get Ubuntu running properly?

Basically, it’s lightly-modded Ubuntu 9.04 that allows us to support all the hardware on the netbook, thus offering a quality desktop experience as well as RT audio performance. The kernel is custom-built 2.6.29-rc6-rt3. We have it available for download from a temporary folder off of my personal site
(http://ico.bukvic.net/Linux/). Once we clean everything up we will actually generate a full HD image and offer it for public download in hope to allow people to load that thing and thus allow them to have the best possible out-of-box experience (obviously as far as MSI Wind is concerned).

Is the hemispherical speaker something readers could build?

There are probably dozen videos on the VTDISIS Youtube channel that are designed to help potential L2Ork adopters build their own speakers, from cannibalizing/retrofitting the amps to improve their performance, to building cables and final assembly.

Videos

Rehearsal video shows how the L2Ork work out playing and soundmaking as an ensemble.

A quick look at how to make your own hemispherical speaker pod:

Local news coverage:

Virginia Tech students demo new laptop orchestra [WSLS10 NBC]

Laptop orchestra at Virginia Tech gives people an affordable alternative [WDBJ7]

More videos, and lots of how-to’s on the speakers (including the conclusion of the video above), are available on the VTDISIS channel:

http://www.youtube.com/user/VTDISIS

Got more questions for the ensemble? Let us know.

I’d definitely like to offer, as well, some information on how to make Ubuntu work this well for you, and how to learn Ubuntu, Pd, JACK, and other free tools, in a way that’s beginner-friendly. That sounds like a decent New Years’ Resolution.

In the meantime, it’s worth mentioning that if you aren’t excited about the prospect of custom-configuring kernels yourself, the Indamixx Linux laptop we’ve featured previously is pre-configured in a similar way; the netbook I’m testing now even runs on the same MSI netbook. And that also, in turn, illustrates how research and volunteer efforts can go hand-in-hand with commercial solutions:

http://www.indamixx.com/

Here’s a switcher story of a different color: from the Mac, to Linux. It’s one thing to talk about operating systems and free software in theory, or to hear from died-in-the-wool advocates of their platform of choice. In this case, we turn to Kim Cascone, an experienced and gifted musician and composer with an impressive resume of releases and a rich sens of sound. This isn’t someone advocating any platform over another: it’s an on-the-ground, in-the-trenches, real-world example of how Kim made this set of tools work in his music, in the studio and on tour. A particular thanks, as he’s given me some new ideas for how to work with Audacity and Baudline. Kim puts his current setup in the context of decades of computer work. Even if you’re not ready to leave Mac (or Windows) just yet, Kim’s workflow here could help if you’re looking to make a Linux netbook or laptop more productive in your existing rig.

Stay tuned, as I’ll have some other stories on how to make your Linux music workflow effective creatively, particularly in regards to leaping over some of the setup hurdles Kim describes. -PK

Historical Evolution

I’ve been working with computers since the 1970s. Inspired by the work of composer David Behrman, I taught myself assembly language and programmed a simple digital sequencer on a KIM-1, single-board microcomputer, controlling an Aries modular synthesizer I had built. I discovered a then-new magazine called Computer Music Journal at the local computer shop and bought every copy I could get my hands on. (I still have them, too.) Later, I helped a friend’s father, an executive at IBM, unpack and set up the first personal computer IBM made. The manuals alone took up two or three feet of bookshelf space.

Fast-forward through a couple of decades of owning Commodore 64s, Apple computers, and PCs. In 1997, I purchased my first laptop: a woefully-underpowered Compaq Presario. It wasn’t fast enough for real-time audio, so I had to render sound files to hard disk using the audio programming language Csound. I created many of the sounds this way for my CD ‘blueCube( )’. But the capacity to work anywhere was enough for me to give up ever owning another desktop computer.

Frustrated with the ‘code-compile-listen’ process of working with Csound and wanting to work in real-time, I switched to the graphical multi-media programming language Max/MSP, which necessitated a move back to Apple hardware, so I bought a PowerBook. Having Max/MSP running on a laptop was the perfect environment for me. I could build the tools I needed whenever an idea presented itself. The computer functioned as both sound design studio and stage instrument. I worked this way for ten years, faithfully following the upgrade path set forth by Apple and the various developers of the software I used. Continually upgrading required a substantial financial commitment on my part.

Apple Seeds of Discontent

When I’m on the road, I use my laptop as a music studio, performance instrument, and administration office. I don’t like surprises on the road. Having a computer fail means a loss of income, and makes for an embarrassing moment if the failure happens during a performance. If watching laptop music bores some people, watching a musician reboot is even worse. So to be safe, I stress-test all new hardware or software in my studio for at least a month before I take it on the road. Max/MSP patches run for hours, software is used for weeks, and hardware is left on for days at a time to help induce failure before I leave home. But as fate would have it, an iBook I was touring with died a few years ago. I brought the laptop into an Apple repair shop in Berlin, where a technician diagnosed the problem as a faulty logic board. The failure rate on logic boards was high for that model of iBook, and in response to public pressure, Apple instituted a logic board replacement program. Luckily, my laptop qualified and the logic board was replaced for free. But the failure and ongoing buggy behavior impacted my work schedule and added to the stress of touring.

I’ve now replaced logic boards on three computers; the other two I paid for out of pocket. The out-of-warranty cost of replacing a logic board on an Apple laptop is around six hundred dollars — cheaper than buying a brand new laptop, but still significant.

If you make your living with applications that run on OS X, there are no options if a laptop fails. You either repair expensive Apple hardware or buy new expensive Apple hardware. This is called ‘vendor lock-in.’

Then, during my 2009 spring tour, my PowerBook G4 exhibited signs of age, with missing keystrokes, intermittent backlighting, the failure of a RAM slot, and reduced performance. As an alternative to repairing the PowerBook, I investigated what a new MacBook Pro and upgrades for all my software would cost. A quick back-of-a-napkin estimate came to approximately $3,000, not including the time it would take tweaking and testing to make it work for the tour. If the netbook revolution hadn’t come along and spawn a price-wars on laptops, I might have proceeded to increase my credit card debt. But as a wise uncle once advised, “you invest either your time or your money; never both.”

Meeting Ubuntu

I had tried Linux in 2005 on PowerPC-based Mac laptops, though at the time I couldn’t get audio working, even after extensive tweaking. But I had kept an eye on Ubuntu ever since. After considering MacBook Pro prices, I checked out the new netbooks coming to market and picked up a refurbished Dell Inspiron Mini 9 with Ubuntu pre-installed.

I loaded up my Dell with all a selection of Linux audio applications and brought it with me on tour as an emergency backup to my tottering PowerBook. The Mini 9 could play back four tracks of 24-bit/96 kHz audio with effects – not bad for a netbook. The solution to my financial constraint became clear, and I bought a refurbished Dell Studio 15, installed Ubuntu on it, and set it up for sound production and business administration. The total cost was around $600 for the laptop plus a donation to a software developer — a far cry from the $3000.00 price tag and weeks of my time it would have cost me to stay locked-in to Apple. After a couple of months of solid use, I have had no problems with my laptop or Ubuntu. Both have performed flawlessly, remaining stable and reliable.

Getting Past Ubuntu Audio Complexities

There are a few differences between how audio works on Mac OS X and how it works on Ubuntu Linux. OS X uses the Core Audio and Core MIDI frameworks for audio and MIDI services, respectively. All applications requiring audio services on OS X talk to Core Audio, which mixes and routes multiple audio streams to the desired locations. Core Audio is simple, monolithic, and easy to set up, and all the end-user controls are accessible from one panel. You can even create a single aggregate device from multiple sound cards if you need more inputs or outputs than one sound card can supply. To Apple’s credit, Core Audio and the applications that make use of it are the reason why you see so many laptop musicians seated behind glowing Apple logos on stage.

On Ubuntu, audio is a rather different story. Apple’s slogan ‘Think Different’ would be good advice for musicians encountering Ubuntu’s audio setup for the first time. Audio in Ubuntu can appear at first to be a confusing jumble of servers, layers, services, and terminology. Go to System->Preferences->Sound, click on the Devices tab, and check out the pulldown menu next to ‘Sound Events’ at the top of the panel. You will see various acronyms, possibly including cryptic-looking technologies like OSS, ESD, ALSA, JACK, and Pulse Audio. These acronyms represent a byzantine tangle of conflicting technologies that over time, and due to political reasons or backwards compatibility, have ended up cohabiting with one another. ‘Frankenstein’ might be an accurate metaphor here.

Thankfully, there is a simpler way, which is the combination of ALSA [a high-performance, kernel-level audio and MIDI system] and JACK [a system for creating low-latency audio, MIDI, and sync connections between applications and computers]. The battle-scarred among us have learned to ignore all the other audio cruft bolted on to Ubuntu and just use ALSA and JACK. One can think of the ALSA/JACK stack, the heart of most pro Linux studios, as the Core Audio of Linux and in my opinion Jack should be the first thing installed on any musicians laptop. I’d go so far as to suggest placing it in the Startup Applications so it’s always running.

The ALSA/JACK combination is a little more complex to set up and tweak than Apple’s Core Audio, but there’s a lot of good information online. [Ed.: ALSA, JACK, and the real-time Linux kernel also have some advantages over Mac OS X that can be worth the effort. While JACK has been ported to Mac, Linux has more JACK-aware tools, which is necessary for transport sync. Just as importantly, once configured, you can build rigs with Linux that have greater low-latency performance than may be practical on Mac or Windows. In other words, while it may require an investment of time, it can be both free and better! -PK]

Workflow

Over the past ten years, I’ve developed a workflow that has worked well in the studio and on the road. Since I created most of my tools in Max/MSP, they could shape-shift to fit any musical task I encountered. A sound mangling tool I’d written for studio use, for instance, I could then adapt for a performance with Tony Conrad. I modified parts of my performance patch for sound installations. This environment served me well over the years – until recently, when my aesthetic focus changed from using randomness in my work to taking a more deterministic approach. This happened to coincide with my change of operating systems.

I do a lot of location recording while on tour. My rig consists of an Olympus LS-10 digital recorder and an Audio Technica AT-822 single-point stereo microphone. I record at 96kHz/24-bit to a 16GB SDHC card in the LS-10. When I want to audition sound files in the field, I use my netbook’s SDHC reader, renaming sound files directly on the card. I can look at some of the files in Baudline if I need to check for low-frequency rumble or technical anomalies. I have come to use Baudline on a daily basis.

Back in the studio, using the sound editing program Audacity, I remove voice slates, trim heads and tails, adjust gain and EQ as needed, then save them to a project folder. And because I don’t like surprises in the studio, either, this folder gets backed up onto a remote network drive as well as a local USB drive.

Building my sound library takes weeks or months. During this time, I start filling a notebook with ideas, drawings, plans and marginalia, from which a score emerges. I import all my project sound files into the open-source Digital Audio Workstation Ardour, arranging them to loosely resemble the score in my notebook. Once my Ardour session is set up, I move sounds around, try different effects, create new textures by layering, then render and re-import sub-mixes until the piece starts to take shape. I use a KORG nanoKONTROL as a mixing surface. I assign faders, pans and switches assigned to the DAW allowing me to quickly play around with different mix ideas.

Once the piece sounds finished, I mix down to a stereo .WAV file at 24-bit/44.1kHz, without using compression or EQ on the mix bus. Tip: mastering engineers really appreciate getting a raw 24-bit master that hasn’t been fiddled around with by the musician. For performances, I also use Ardour and the nanoKONTROL to do an acousmatic presentation. This version of the Ardour session will have compression and/or EQ on the mix bus, since I want the material to sound more polished. As a side note: I am looking into using the mastering tool JAMin [JACK Audio Mastering Interface] for this purpose in the future.

Sayonara, Apple

After ten years of working on Apple laptops, I’ve left the fold. Not only was the expense of owning and maintaining Apple hardware a key factor in my switch, but the operating system had become a frustration to me. Details like not having a tree-view in the right hand panel of the Finder window slowed me down. Ubuntu, on the other hand, feels more like an operating system made for grown-ups. And what’s especially nice is that Ubuntu scales nicely to the expertise of the user. Your cousin the computer geek or your Grandma can install and use Ubuntu and get as deep as they like. Combine this with the recent rash of cheap, powerful laptops, and Ubuntu’s market share is bound to grow.

A Request

It’s important that kernel and audio application developers (1) ensure all audio creation software has support for JACK, (2) improve and update tools for JACK to make it easy for musicians to install, configure, and use, (3) ship distros with the realtime kernel already tested and configured for use, (4) to integrate the real-time kernel patches into the mainline kernel. [Ed.: On each of these points, distributions and kernel builds are steadily improving, partly thanks to feedback from communities like the music production community. The realtime kernel likely won't be the default, mainline kernel, but it's important to have well-maintained optional packages at the very least. That doesn't mean you have to wait for improvements to happen, though, and in future articles I'll talk a bit about how you can configure your system now to take advantage of this functionality. -PK]

Most importantly, consider paying a subscription to support developers of JACK and your favorite Linux audio software, or, if you can write code, proofread text, write a manual, do a translation, contribute graphic design, or create content; please help by contributing something to the development of the software you use.

I would like to thank Ken Restivo, Mike Rooke, Paul Davis, Philip DeTullio, Jörn Nettingsmeier and Matt Griffen at Canonical Ltd. for advice and inspiration in the writing of this article.

Kim Cascone is a composer, sound artist, touring musician, lecturer and writer. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife Kathleen and son Cage.

Links:
http://www.osnews.com/story/6720/Introduction_to_Linux_Audio
http://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Main_Page
http://ardour.org/node
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
http://www.kokkinizita.net/linuxaudio/
http://www.baudline.com/
http://jackaudio.org/
http://drobilla.net/software/patchage/
http://www.ladspa.org/
http://lv2plug.in/
http://dssi.sourceforge.net/
http://jamin.sourceforge.net/en/about.html
http://linuxaudio.org/
http://www.ubuntu.com/
http://code.goto10.org/projects/puredyne/
http://www.bandshed.net/AVLinux.html
http://rt.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Main_Page
http://www.pulseaudio.org/
http://developer.apple.com/audio/overview.html

Corrections / clarifications:

Ed.: I originally claimed that JACK Transport sync is not possible on the Mac OS X port of JACK. As kindly pointed out by a reader, this is not correct. JACK Transport-aware applications on the Mac will work.

Secondly, Kim argued that you could pull out a drive without having to go to a lot of trouble unmounting it first. At least one commenter argues that risks data loss, and given that users may be using something like FUSE to access foreign file systems like NTFS or the Mac’s own HFS+, I don’t yet know what the exact details will be. As I said in comments, however, Nautilus and the command line eject function for me are quicker and more effective than similar unmounting on Windows and Mac, so I still notch this one for Linux. -PK

Laptops for music are nothing new. But better versions of Linux make no-hassle music production easier and more powerful – and new netbooks make it cheap and ultra-portable, too, for times when even that 15” laptop feels clunky. Netbooks aren’t for everyone, and I imagine some people will miss Windows and Mac OS, even with better compatibility and powerful features on Linux. But if you are looking for an additional, more mobile machine, the combination is definitely worth a look.

A significant revision to the one netbook customized for Linux music has just become available today – you read about it here first.

The elements of Linux-based music making have reached a nice convergence with the release of Ubuntu 9.04 – the combination of a polished, mature Linux distribution with a newly-updated real-time kernel for low-latency audio is looking especially potent. At the same time, the increasingly-popular netbook has also improved in the latest generation. Ronald Stewart of Indamixx, a custom Linux mobile computer builder and OS packager, writes to brag about his latest generation. And he’s even found a way to do mobile music in his vehicle. (Let’s hope traffic in the LA area isn’t so bad that you’re actually adjusting beats in a tracker on the road, however.)

Indamixx has three products here, one software and two hardware:

• The original Indamixx portable studio is built on Samsung’s OLPC platform. I reviewed it for Keyboard Magazine. It’s really, really ultra-portable, and is something of a technological achievement. But most of us would prefer something more like a laptop, with a little more power and a conventional keyboard/mouse. Good news:
• The Indamixx Laptop is a netbook, with more power and more conventional uses – but still pre-tuned to run Linux audio, and still ultra-portable.
• Transmission is Indamixx’s custom Linux distribution, built on Studio64 and Ubuntu 9.04, but with extra tools to make hosting Windows VSTs and importing your existing projects easier.

Transmission should be available soon for people who already own a netbook. You get more than you get with a stock Ubuntu install. For instance, the included commercial product ardourXchange allows you to import AAF files from Pro Tools, Logic, and the like into the open source Ardour DAW.

It also ships with the commercial app energyXT. I think it’d worth buying a copy of the superb, modern tracker Renoise, which has excellent Linux support. Renoise also got a significant update, now in beta, which I’ll talk about by next week. Ardour 3.0 is expected to be a major update, as well, with support for MIDI and VSTs – that could be a game-changer when it happens, so stay tuned.

The laptop is what especially intrigues me. Linux is great, but it is nice having a configuration that’s static, because it helps navigate around potential compatibility issues with specific hardware specs. (That’s a problem we see regularly on Windows, too, and even occasionally – as with a specific wifi bug on an early build of Leopard – on the Mac.)

Indamixx has a special version of the MSI Wind that comes pre-optimized for Indamixx. Ronald describes the newly-updated Indamixx Laptop specs. (We saw the laptop here on CDM first in November, but this is a significant upgrade from that model):

• Transmission OS 3.0, which thanks to the new kernel and Ubuntu 9.04 has various enhancements and does a much better job of handling network 3G / HDSPA cards for mobile connectivity
• A 2.0 GHz CPU – the only overclocking-capable netbook
• 2 GB pre-installed RAM from the factory, which (sadly) is rarity in netbooks
• 160 GB HDD (doubled from the previous model)
• 10.2” widescreen display, up from the somewhat-cramped 8.9” on the previous model
• Large-style keyboard layout, roughly 95% of the size of a regular keyboard
• 2.6 pounds, up to 4 hours battery life

The 2.6.29.1 kernel is new to Ubuntu 9.04. Combined with the real-time JACK, you get excellent low-latency performance. (Incidentally, I’ve found that also applies to Windows software running in Linux under the Windows compatibility environment WINE – I’ve had success with NI’s Reaktor. Not officially supported, but quite a lot of fun. Ronald reports at least one user running Guitar Rig 2, as well.)

Indamixx also throws in a carrying case and free FedEx shipping.

I’ll be installing Ubuntu 9.04 on my main PC laptop soon, and possibly also my MacBook. Stay tuned for more on the latest Linux OS and what you can do with it for creative music making.

More info:

http://www.indamixx.com/

Indamixx Laptop @ Amazon: Indamixx Portable Studio Netbook Edition Model 2

(also available from Musicians’ Friend)

Mixxx is an impressive-looking, fully free and open source DJ package for Mac (Intel only), Windows, and Linux. (It’s also the featured DJ tool on the Indamixx, Linux-based ultra mobile PC – mine just arrived, so hands-on is coming soon.)

Adam Davison from the Mixxx development team points out some juicy features in the new 1.6.0 release, out yesterday:

We now support vinyl control with Serato, Traktor, and FinalScratch vinyl, as well as Serato CD. This means that you can use vinyl control to drive your mixes without having to buy expensive software or branded soundcards. We also have greatly improved support for MIDI controllers such as the Hercules Mk2 and RMX.

Other features:

• MP3, OGG, WAV, FLAC support
• The usual DJ stuff: dual waveform display, pitch-independent time stretch (key lock), BPM detection
• Crossfader curve control
• Adjustable EQ shapes
• Wave recording
• Multichannel playback and capture support
• Multi-core CPU support, GPU-accelerated OpenGL graphics display

And unlike some open source music tools, it’s got a polished website with lots of documentation. High performance could be a big draw, particularly on Linux. I’ll let you know how it works coupled with a custom Linux distribution, mobile device, and touchscreen on the Indamixx. (Personally, I like the idea of keeping a DJ mix ready to go on a portable or older machine, alongside the usual live laptop set.)

Stay tuned.

Mixxx: Free DJ Software

Mixxx blog

[Note: as reader bliss kindly pointed out, Mixxx has three X’s, Indamixx has two X’s; quit with all these extra letters, already!]

Our friend Marc (“M-.-n”) writes to let us know version 1.0 of music tracker (think alternative sequencer / music making tool) LittleGPTracker is here, with quite a lot in the way of new features. As always, the banner feature of LGPT is its ability to run on the open, Linux-based GamePark mobile game console, making it an ideal choice for tracking on the go. But it runs on Mac, Windows, and Linux desktop systems, too, with features enhanced in this release. The list from Marc:

• Sample library & import support


• Groove support for odd time signature


• Debian build & JACK support


• Allows creation of project from the program itself


• new Feedback parameters at the instrument level


• new Looper Sync looping mode for automatic looping on the current tempo


• Engine optimization


• New rendering system allowing to render directly from the application


• either the mixdown or the 8 separated tracks.


• External joystick control on all platforms

littlegptracker.com

Debian build, eh, with JACK? Have to try this on the Ubuntu Studio system I just installed. For your viewing enjoyment, here’s Patric C and M-.-n playing with 2 GP2x, each running LGPT.