License of this post.
Ams is a modular software synth. You can install it with
sudo apt-get install ams
Then, assuming that jack is started, you can run it with
ams --jack &
Then go to File>Load Patch to load an ams patch.
You may want now to read this post if you don't know how to connect ams to seq24, or this one to do so with Muse.
Happy music making !
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Friday, August 29, 2008
Hexter
License of this post.
Looking for documentation on the audio on Linux subject, I found this thread on Ubuntuforums that's a valuable source of information on the subject. It mentions, among other softwares, Hexter.
Hexter is a Dssi plugin that emulates the DX7 circuit, which's a FM synth like Reason's Subtractor.
You can install it by entering :
sudo apt-get install hexter
That will install the Dssi framework too.
Then (assuming that jackd is started) you can start Hexter with :
jack-dssi-host /usr/lib/dssi/hexter.so &
Look at this post on how to connect a virtual instrument to the Seq24 sequencer (or this post to do so with Muse). The output volume is very low by default, you'll have to set it correctly. You can now enjoy the 70 Hexter patches.
Happy music making !
Looking for documentation on the audio on Linux subject, I found this thread on Ubuntuforums that's a valuable source of information on the subject. It mentions, among other softwares, Hexter.
Hexter is a Dssi plugin that emulates the DX7 circuit, which's a FM synth like Reason's Subtractor.
You can install it by entering :
sudo apt-get install hexter
That will install the Dssi framework too.
Then (assuming that jackd is started) you can start Hexter with :
jack-dssi-host /usr/lib/dssi/hexter.so &
Look at this post on how to connect a virtual instrument to the Seq24 sequencer (or this post to do so with Muse). The output volume is very low by default, you'll have to set it correctly. You can now enjoy the 70 Hexter patches.
Happy music making !
amSynth
License of this post.
If you've been googling around for "seq24 tutorial" you sure read Dave Phillips' paper on LinuxJournal. It mentions QSynth and amSynth. I tried QSynth but was unable to find real free .sf2 soundfonts for it. But amSynth ran nice. To install it, enter the command :
sudo apt-get install amsynth
Then run it with just
amsynth &
If you have read this previous post, you shouldn't have problems connecting amSynth and Seq24 (Read this post to do so with Muse). You can now enjoy amSynth's virtual instruments.
Happy music making !
If you've been googling around for "seq24 tutorial" you sure read Dave Phillips' paper on LinuxJournal. It mentions QSynth and amSynth. I tried QSynth but was unable to find real free .sf2 soundfonts for it. But amSynth ran nice. To install it, enter the command :
sudo apt-get install amsynth
Then run it with just
amsynth &
If you have read this previous post, you shouldn't have problems connecting amSynth and Seq24 (Read this post to do so with Muse). You can now enjoy amSynth's virtual instruments.
Happy music making !
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Licensing
Each post that contains a 'License of this post' link that links to this post's page, is licenced under the term of the Creative Commons cc-by-sa license. The author and copyright owner is Nicolas Chartoire.
This mean you can redistribute this work, and adapt it providing you mention the author and that your adapted work is distributed under the terms of the same license.
This mean you can redistribute this work, and adapt it providing you mention the author and that your adapted work is distributed under the terms of the same license.
Writing and recording a song using Seq24, Zynaddsubfx, Hydrogen and Ardour
License of this post.
When I started to try to make music on Linux, I gave a try to Wired and Lmms. But I could not manage to install Wired, and Lmms 4 beta was too unstable to be usable, at least on my system. Then I started to investigate on how to make music on Linux the hard way, by connecting audio softwares trough the jack daemon. I've found some useful links, so I made this short tutorial. It's about Seq24, but you may want to use Muse instead.
Here we go. First you need a realtime kernel along with jackd and it's user control GUI. Refer to this post.
Start Qjackctl with
qjackctl &
You can then click on the Start button to start jackd. Your linux station is now set up to play music.
Now we can begin to write our song.
(I will only give short instructions. You may want to prefer to refer to this tutorial on the ubuntu documentation if you get a bit lost).
(from now this document is an adaptation from this tutorial by The Ubuntu Community Documentation).
Install Zynaddsubfx, Seq24 and Hydrogen with the command :
sudo apt-get install seq24 zynaddsubfx hydrogen
Then enter the following command :
seq24 --manual_alsa_ports & zynaddsubfx -r 48000 -b 128 & hydrogen -d jack &
Click on the "Connect" button of QJackctl. Check on the "Audio" tab that Zynaddsubfx and Hydrogen outputs are connected to ALSA's PCM input.
On the ALSA tab, connect Seq24 first output to Zynaddsubfx's input, and connect Seq24 second output to Hydrogen's input.
Select an instrument in Zynaddsubfx in the Instrument>Show Instrument Bank menu. Then set the MIDI channel of Zynaddsubfx to 2 (It currently shows "1"). Select another instrument for the second midi channel. Repeat the operation for a third instrument.
Right-click in Seq24's grid and choose new. You will get a sequence edition window. You can adjust the length of the sequence, which is by default 1 bar.Let's tell Seq24 we want to play on the Hydrogen rhythmbox :
In the Output Bus menu left to the field that shows "[1] seq24 1" and set it to "[2] seq24 2". Remember we connected Seq24's second midi output to Hydrogen.
There's three MIDI buttons in the down left corner of the window. Click on the first one to tell Seq24 to send midi events to Hydrogen. You can now edit your pattern by holding right-mouse's button and left-clicking to paste notes. You can adjust their length with the field next to the sequence length. You can click on the piano keyboard to ear how each note sounds. Hydrogen set's runs from C2 to D#3. Press "Play" to listen to your sequence.
Once you have a Drum sequence, you can repeat theses steps to add our three Zynaddsufx's instruments. Just select the first Output Bus for the sequence (we connected the first seq24 output to Zynaddsubfx already). To select one of the three Zynaddsubfx instruments, click on the button showing a MIDI plug next to the Output Bus field and select one from 1 to 3.
Once you have some sequences, you can use them to compose the song : on the main Seq24 windows, there's a 'Song Edition' button in the right down corner. Click on it. In the new window, you can click the same way that in the sequence windows to draw song sequences. Click on "Play" to play your song.
(end of the adaptation from the document from The Ubuntu Community Documentation).
In a few time I had a basic song with a drum sequence and four Zynaddsubfx tracks. The question is now : how to record it ? Enter the following command to install the Ardour multitrack recording software :
sudo apt-get install ardour
Launch Ardour and create a new project. Insert two new audio tracks in Ardours. In the "Audio" tab of the QJackctl "Connect" window, connect Hydrogen's and Zynaddsubfx's audio outputs to your Ardour's tracks audio inputs, one instrument per track.
You can then press "Record" in Ardour and "Play" in Seq24 to record your song. You can then export it to .wav using Ardour's export function.
(If you are using many other synths besides Zynaddsubfx, you may end with recording glitches and synths that start late, especially on low-end hardware. To avoid this you can :
-add four bars of silence at the beginning of your song
-minimize all windows while recording
-record several synths on a single track, since multitrack recording can be heavily resource-consuming. To do so, just connect several synth audio outputs in qjackctl to the same ardour input.)
I used then Audacity to generate a fade ending, and lame to encode the song in mp3 format. You can install them with
sudo apt-get install audacity lame
Happy music making !
When I started to try to make music on Linux, I gave a try to Wired and Lmms. But I could not manage to install Wired, and Lmms 4 beta was too unstable to be usable, at least on my system. Then I started to investigate on how to make music on Linux the hard way, by connecting audio softwares trough the jack daemon. I've found some useful links, so I made this short tutorial. It's about Seq24, but you may want to use Muse instead.
Here we go. First you need a realtime kernel along with jackd and it's user control GUI. Refer to this post.
Start Qjackctl with
qjackctl &
You can then click on the Start button to start jackd. Your linux station is now set up to play music.
Now we can begin to write our song.
(I will only give short instructions. You may want to prefer to refer to this tutorial on the ubuntu documentation if you get a bit lost).
(from now this document is an adaptation from this tutorial by The Ubuntu Community Documentation).
Install Zynaddsubfx, Seq24 and Hydrogen with the command :
sudo apt-get install seq24 zynaddsubfx hydrogen
Then enter the following command :
seq24 --manual_alsa_ports & zynaddsubfx -r 48000 -b 128 & hydrogen -d jack &
Click on the "Connect" button of QJackctl. Check on the "Audio" tab that Zynaddsubfx and Hydrogen outputs are connected to ALSA's PCM input.
On the ALSA tab, connect Seq24 first output to Zynaddsubfx's input, and connect Seq24 second output to Hydrogen's input.
Select an instrument in Zynaddsubfx in the Instrument>Show Instrument Bank menu. Then set the MIDI channel of Zynaddsubfx to 2 (It currently shows "1"). Select another instrument for the second midi channel. Repeat the operation for a third instrument.
Right-click in Seq24's grid and choose new. You will get a sequence edition window. You can adjust the length of the sequence, which is by default 1 bar.Let's tell Seq24 we want to play on the Hydrogen rhythmbox :
In the Output Bus menu left to the field that shows "[1] seq24 1" and set it to "[2] seq24 2". Remember we connected Seq24's second midi output to Hydrogen.
There's three MIDI buttons in the down left corner of the window. Click on the first one to tell Seq24 to send midi events to Hydrogen. You can now edit your pattern by holding right-mouse's button and left-clicking to paste notes. You can adjust their length with the field next to the sequence length. You can click on the piano keyboard to ear how each note sounds. Hydrogen set's runs from C2 to D#3. Press "Play" to listen to your sequence.
Once you have a Drum sequence, you can repeat theses steps to add our three Zynaddsufx's instruments. Just select the first Output Bus for the sequence (we connected the first seq24 output to Zynaddsubfx already). To select one of the three Zynaddsubfx instruments, click on the button showing a MIDI plug next to the Output Bus field and select one from 1 to 3.
Once you have some sequences, you can use them to compose the song : on the main Seq24 windows, there's a 'Song Edition' button in the right down corner. Click on it. In the new window, you can click the same way that in the sequence windows to draw song sequences. Click on "Play" to play your song.
(end of the adaptation from the document from The Ubuntu Community Documentation).
In a few time I had a basic song with a drum sequence and four Zynaddsubfx tracks. The question is now : how to record it ? Enter the following command to install the Ardour multitrack recording software :
sudo apt-get install ardour
Launch Ardour and create a new project. Insert two new audio tracks in Ardours. In the "Audio" tab of the QJackctl "Connect" window, connect Hydrogen's and Zynaddsubfx's audio outputs to your Ardour's tracks audio inputs, one instrument per track.
You can then press "Record" in Ardour and "Play" in Seq24 to record your song. You can then export it to .wav using Ardour's export function.
(If you are using many other synths besides Zynaddsubfx, you may end with recording glitches and synths that start late, especially on low-end hardware. To avoid this you can :
-add four bars of silence at the beginning of your song
-minimize all windows while recording
-record several synths on a single track, since multitrack recording can be heavily resource-consuming. To do so, just connect several synth audio outputs in qjackctl to the same ardour input.)
I used then Audacity to generate a fade ending, and lame to encode the song in mp3 format. You can install them with
sudo apt-get install audacity lame
Happy music making !
Introduction
License of this post.
Here you will find some useful links to make music under Linux.
I'm using Ubuntu 8.04.1 LTS. Don't expect this blog to be updated very often.
Here you will find some useful links to make music under Linux.
I'm using Ubuntu 8.04.1 LTS. Don't expect this blog to be updated very often.
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