Gentoo Musicians

sly514 · n00b Joined: 03 Sep 2003 Posts: 54 Location: mtl

Hi gang.

I also am a musician.

My music can be found here.

http://zed.cbc.ca/go.ZeD?FILTER_KEY=38650&page=search-results

I started working on my system in July.
Not being able to produce music is painful,
I miss reason and all the super cool tools for windows.

Sometimes I feel I am getting nowhere, I spend lots of time recompiling.

But I am so close to having the tools I need.

Here is my story:

I installed the 2.6.0-test4-mm1 kernel with alsa included and things are ¨ok¨ with ardour, jack and jamin.
There are options for real-time, alsa `s usb-midi and my sound card settings.
Very cool...

I`ve recorded and almost mixed down a tune.
Five tracks.
It works.

But...

Only this:

-I cannot get Qjackctl to start jack, I have to start it manually with:

jackd -a -R -d alsa -d ice1712 -r 96000 -p 512

I tried reducing down to -p 64 but I sometimes get xruns.
That sounds fishy since I have a P4 with 2G of RAM.

This is my fstab:

none /dev/shm shm defaults 0 0

none /dev devfs defaults 0 0

none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0

I also get freezes, and just ardour shutting down with no warning.

Qjackconnect is working good for me.

I can redirect the programs that work.

I have been running freebirth off a red hat machine because I could not untar the gentoo stages onto that machine. Why? I dunno.
I now stupidly feed the 1/8 inch -RCA-1/4 inch cable into my delta 44.
I do not need to say that it sucks that way.
I get so much noize.

Freebirth will emerge just fine on my recording machine.
Only it hangs after the command line.
I tried compiling libjackasyn so I could run some software from the computer I am recording on.
this is what i get:
libjackasyn.c:12:24: jack/error.h: No such file or directory
libjackasyn.c: In function `jack_bufsize':
libjackasyn.c:214: warning: long unsigned int format, jack_nframes_t arg (arg 2)
libjackasyn.c: In function `jack_srate':
libjackasyn.c:222: warning: long unsigned int format, jack_nframes_t arg (arg 2)
make: *** [libjackasyn.o] Error 1

!!! ERROR: media-libs/libjackasyn-0.8 failed.
!!! Function src_compile, Line 17, Exitcode 2
!!! (no error message)

Yuck.

Also, hydrogen does not emerge nor does all the other synths I tried.

I have a feeling this is jack`s doing.
Error handling seems to be hard to manage in a real-time environnement.

As for the usb keyboard, I have a mk-125 evolution with a midiman usb connector.
Nothing worked, or maybe I don't understand.
I messed around with aseqview, alsa-patch-bay and aconnect.
Judging from the dmesg I could not see the keyboard nor the connector being recognized.
No flashing lights either.
I was hoping to get rtsynth hooked up. It looks like alot of fun.

Hope you people could learn from my setup or help me make it better.

Cheers.

p.s. I would love some feedback on the music also, go to the site and vote for me!
I`m trying to get on their show.

http://zed.cbc.ca/go.ZeD?FILTER_KEY=38650&page=search-results

thank you soooo much

zie · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 26 Sep 2003 Posts: 126

Hi sly514, i can't open your music page.

Guys, let's get the Gentoo Music CD project going.

1. We need a CVS server, along with a website and an independent forum thread (newcomers are not going to read the whole thread here after it reaches 20 pages or more).

2. Get a project mantainer. Anyone with some free time to spare. Doesn't have to be a musician, but should understand something about web and cvs.

So...
1. Can we use Gentoo server to host our project? Or should we get it somewhere else. Anybody interested to host our project? The bandwith will be rather high as we are working with wav files (compressed oggs or mp3s are not good during production phase)

2. Who wants to volunteer as our project leader / webmaster??

Once we get it to work, i don't think it will be hard to get musicians to work. I am a songwriter, and a guitarist (classical - spanish). I have several things that I cannot play all by myself.
_________________
/etc/init.d/alsasound start
* ALSA driver is already running.

/etc/init.d/alsasound stop
* ERROR: "alsasound" has not yet been started.

hbmartin · Posted: Thu Oct 16, 2003 3:38 am Post subject:

I don't think CVS would be that good of an idea, it's really meant for text files.
Would the music be lyrical or instrumental?

Or maybe we should just debate these and other trivial questions endlessly and never get any music out :evil:

Harold

zie · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 26 Sep 2003 Posts: 126

As an alternative, take a look at this page
http://www.the-fix.org/songforge/

I don't know how usable it is. I think we should get a web site and a separate discussion forum, just to get the thing going, then we can find a way to do it. Let's don't worry about lyrics vs instrumental at this stage of 'development'. Volunteers?
_________________
/etc/init.d/alsasound start
* ALSA driver is already running.

/etc/init.d/alsasound stop
* ERROR: "alsasound" has not yet been started.

sly514 · n00b Joined: 03 Sep 2003 Posts: 54 Location: mtl

Sorry for the dead link:

here it is again. My user name is cron at zed.cbc.ca:

http://zed.cbc.ca/go.ZeD?CONTENT_ID=50457&FILTER_KEY=3997&page=content

I wouldn`t mind getting involved.

I have an old machine I could spare.

P 3 800 Mhz 256 RAM 120 Gig IDE

I have had it running as a BSD server before but only with mp3 files.

I could get it back up within a few days.

Maybe we could start off small.

I am pretty much of a noob for running servers so I would expect you guys to help me.

I have never worked with cvs.

Maybe this is a good time to learn.

zie · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 26 Sep 2003 Posts: 126

Hi sly514, nice to hear you want to spare your machine (and bandwith). Let us know if you get it to work. Maybe we need a domain name? Can we get music.gentoo.org forwarded? Btw I have a spare machine too, maybe I can figure out how to use it, but it's not going to be online 24/7 as it is the machine that I am going to use for music recording (I found that the sound quality reccorded with a headless machine is much better).
_________________
/etc/init.d/alsasound start
* ALSA driver is already running.

/etc/init.d/alsasound stop
* ERROR: "alsasound" has not yet been started.

mu-sly · Posted: Sun Oct 19, 2003 4:17 pm Post subject: Heh... me too!

I'm also a musician - heavily involved in Ampfea.org - a fantastic online community for electronic musicians. I've also got my own website complete with tracks online - only MP3s at the moment, but OGGs will be available once I finish my album.

I mostly write electronic music - unfortunately still need to use Windoze for that, although I'm hoping to change that soon. The only thing stopping me switching to a Linux-only computer are lack of drivers for my soundcard (Midiman Dman 2044) and midi box (Midiman Portman 2x4). So, I guess fairly soon I'll invest in some new audio hardware, or possibly will work on drivers for those devices. I've kinda outgrown my midi interface anyway - could do with an 8x8 box these days!

Aside from electronic stuff, I can play most instruments - some pretty well, although I'm not really a master of anything, as I'm a writer more than a player.

Anyway, if there's a Gentoo music CD going out, I'd be more than happy to contribute a track for it.

PS. If my links aren't working, it's because my web hosting company seems to be unable to keep the server up this weekend... damn them! (I work for a website company who resells virtual hosts on their servers, so I'll be kicking the server company's ass tomorrow morning if it's not fixed!)
_________________
"Nothing says 'Obey me' like a bloody head on a post." - Stewie

sly514 · n00b Joined: 03 Sep 2003 Posts: 54 Location: mtl

Sorry for getting anyone's hopes up, the machine I wanted to use for a music server is being repaired.

S :cry:

zie · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 26 Sep 2003 Posts: 126

Same here... my power supply blew up!
_________________
/etc/init.d/alsasound start
* ALSA driver is already running.

/etc/init.d/alsasound stop
* ERROR: "alsasound" has not yet been started.

Bassism · n00b Joined: 18 Oct 2003 Posts: 7

Hey,
I'm a bassist.
I also play many other stringed instruments.
I like the idea of the Gentoo-music project, even if only to see what kinds of music we could make over the internet. I think this needs some structure and some thought put into it.

Firstly, a list of the people who may be interested (I may have missed someone, and I haven't included anyone who hasn't explicitely expressed their interest):

As you can see, there are a lot of us interested. For a 7 track CD, if everyone submitted one track, almost 20 people would have to be turned down.
I think this project would be a great forum for some collaborations.
I'm proposing that everyone who is still interested, or anyone (like me) who is newly interested, make a post here with what you do, and maybe an musical idea that you have. This should get some creative juices flowing.
Also, we should try and set up a meeting or two on the irc channel

zie · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 26 Sep 2003 Posts: 126

** Server Update

OK, my new power supply should be here tomorrow, so i can set up something over the weekend. But my bandwith will probably blow up soon :p

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

** Process

As far as the process goes, it has to be some form of colaboration. I don't want to see somebody to submit a finished track. No matter how good it is, there is no sense of 'community' involved., which is really important for this project.

I can think of 3 scenarios:
1. We can have a drummer to submit a long enough pattern (with a lot of variation), and then let the basist add his part, guitar, etc up to the vocalist (if we can find a good one). It will going to be a lot of fork in the process. After a certain deadline, we can select which songs is the best and put it into the CD. It will definitely be the most 'communitive' approach.

2. Have songwriters submit MIDI files, vote, and then assign musicians to do some real recording, and finally let the electronic guys to put some final touch. This way we can save a lot of bandwith. But note that not everything can be represented in a MIDI file.

3. Combine the two. Make it a 2-phase project. In the first phase we can have people to submit song concepts, and let others edit them. We can have lyricists to work here as well. After a certain deadline, we vote, and proceed to the production phase.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

** Genre

This is just my personal view. I want that the music can be associated with the entire humankind, linux is for everyone. It would be great if we can find traces of all different genres in one song. You know, a tenor singing with a heavy metal band accompainement in samba rythm (okay, that might be too much). This can only be possible in a colaborative work like this project. So I want people to put their own style instead of trying to be in harmony with what has been made.

Also, lyrics doesn't have to be in English. We can put some xazcheradzjian words in as well. English translation will be provided with the CD. Plus some ethnic instruments is going to be really really helpful.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

** About Me

I am a musician and a songwriter. As a songwriter, i cannot really classify my music into any available genre. I'm still experimenting with my gentoo box for reccording. As a musician, i play classical guitar and flute. Recently i have been able to make some pretty good recordings for my guitar, but for flute it doesn't really sound like a flute.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

** Organization

Let's start creating a structure. Add or delete as you wish.

Project leader (volunteer?)
>Songwriting leader (volunteer?)
--songwiters, songwriter, lyricist
>Musician leader (volunteer?)
--wind, string, percussion, electronics
>Webmaster (volunteer?)

What else do wee need? A lawyer to sue RIAA? Somebody responsible for selling the CD?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

** Meeting

Lets meet on a hacking time. What about next Saturday (15 Nov) at 10pm GMT? (it will be 5pm here, a few hours before going to parties).
_________________
/etc/init.d/alsasound start
* ALSA driver is already running.

/etc/init.d/alsasound stop
* ERROR: "alsasound" has not yet been started.

Bassism · n00b Joined: 18 Oct 2003 Posts: 7

Hey zie,
If you can set up a server, that would be great.

As for the writing process, I think it would be a waste of effort to have midi written first, then rerecord it as audio. I think people who are going to be contributing acoustic (real) instruments should start out acoustically, and electronic instruments should start out electronically.
I know of a program for Windows that can convert MIDI files into wave files using soundfonts. Although we couldn't use it, as it's not a Linux program, and it's Shareware, there may be a similiar alternative for Linux.
To be honest, I haven't even started playing around with audio in Gentoo, so I don't really know what options there are.
Another option is recording directly from the audio output of a sound card. We can figure out these technicalities later.

This list sounds pretty good. I've added Technical Coordinator. TC's job would be to tke care of any software/ebuild problems, perhaps oversee burning/production of the CDs themselves, things like that.
I'll volunteer to be either Project leader or Musician leader.

An IRC meeting on 15 Nov at 2200 GMT sounds fine. I'm also EST. Depending on where the responses are from, times could be adjusted to compensate for different timezones. Also, any time you are on, I'm often idling on the IRC channel, so you could always stop in and see if you can get a response.

I also think that the CD should appeal to as many people as possible. With the various styles represented so far (jazz, rock, avante-garde, electronic, classical), this shouldn't be hard to do, especially if musicians are open to experimentation. For example, my buddie's band is playing around with "jazz-core", some pretty sweet stuff.

Sorry about the rambling-on-ness, and unorganization, I'm just writing as things come into my head :lol:

Also, any word on what the "official" Gentoo people think of our idea?

Bassism

sly514 · n00b Joined: 03 Sep 2003 Posts: 54 Location: mtl

Ok,

looks like everything is shaping up.

I have a machine up at www.studiozodiak.com if you want to use that.

We can change the name no problem.

I'll install a 120GB hard drive on it tomorrow.

I have to know what to do from here so I need some expert advice on how to set this up so

people can upload.

The IP changes once in awhile and I need to know how to make a script regulate that.

Anyway I'm going out to party for the night.

Later!

S

sly514 · n00b Joined: 03 Sep 2003 Posts: 54 Location: mtl

Ok,

The drive is installed.

I'm ready.

I'm really not steeped as a web-master so I need help.

I really can help with the technical music part thaugh, My system is fully geared for recording on linux.

Bassism · n00b Joined: 18 Oct 2003 Posts: 7

Well, if you don't mind the bandwidth use, it would be great to use your server. You've obviously got a webserver up already, I think all the project would need other than that would be an ftp server. I don't know which of the alternatives would be the best; I've never set up an ftp server, because I'm behind a proxy. If you contact me on IRC, fretlessbassism@hotmail.com on MSN, or levanonmerrin on AIM, or email me at levanon@sympatico.ca, I can help you out.

Thanks!
Bassism.

P.S. I know there are other musicians reading this, c'mon let's get some more response!

subik · Posted: Sun Nov 09, 2003 12:56 pm Post subject: some suggestions

hello all.

I'm interested in music too. Check http://www.yarpen.cz/sinnocence/en/arxiv.php (it's old and very cheap recorded stuf

) I'm involved in some fun-revival parties http://www.yarpen.cz/content.php?id=14...

And now to my sugegstions - can you describe (in some special web page) your sound tools - especially SW you use with some exapmles? Because I've freeze in 80's - just guitar and wall of the amplifiers and apms

)) I don't know the right apps.

Now I'm using trommler or hydrogen as metronome for exercise but I would like to recors some sounds too... I'm emerging jack rigth now

p.s.: I heard that linux geeks have to have long hairs or bear or so - just gues who am I

)) http://www.yarpen.cz/foto/milicin02/96.jpg.jpg
_________________
Kuolema Kaikille (Paitsi Meille)
Today is good day to end it all

zie · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 26 Sep 2003 Posts: 126

Wow,great, we got a server. but it looks like that your IP changed again. I have set up a webserver too. I'm hosting my own website there now. It is http://www.fauzie.com But my HD won't be able to handle all of those large files.

Off course we need a name for our project.

Answering subik question...
I recorded everything with audacity. I'm not doing that much editting as I am an accoustic musician. I have no idea how to play sound while recording, so my work now is limited to solo recordings. I heard ardour is a better recorder, but it is even harder than windows to use.

Other than that i am using ctronome, a simple command line metronome on my 2nd computer (now a web server), to help me mantaining a steady beat during recording. It's not in the portage but very easy to install.

Also use bladeenc to convert wav to mp3. I don't know how to make ogg yet.

regeya · Posted: Wed Nov 12, 2003 4:50 am Post subject:

subik · Posted: Wed Nov 12, 2003 7:11 pm Post subject:

zie · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 26 Sep 2003 Posts: 126

Hi, anybody here has the 8mb soundfont from SB ?? I bought an audigy card without driver (got a discount for that) because i thought the CD is useless for Linux, but the soundfonts are there. =(

zypher · Posted: Thu Nov 13, 2003 2:24 pm Post subject:

Bassism: Count me in for the bass-player track

Thoug I play for a while now I 'm not much of a solo-player so that should be some other's part.
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linux user 65882

sly514 · n00b Joined: 03 Sep 2003 Posts: 54 Location: mtl

Hi gang.

Now, I have 100G for us to work with, everything looks pretty solid.
The apache server is up.
Only, My DNS www.afraid.org has started to charge for his service, and I didn't know.
So I have to get that rectified.
He has a pearl script to keep up with my changing IP, but I've never been able to make that work.

*****
What is the condition for handling large files?

this is the machine.

P3 800
256
ISDN connection

Is that enough?

******

My IP right now is 67.69.202.230:170.
It changes often
Can anybody help me arrange a domain name toward my gateway at all times so we can get this show on the road?
What should the name be and who is going to buy it?

*****

What should I Install ?PHP?
Or do we keep it straight and simple.
Would anybody want to submit some html or should I take care of that?

******
just tell me what too do.
looking forward,

S

zie · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 26 Sep 2003 Posts: 126

I think we just need an ftp server (or sftp). sftp server should be in your system already, you just have to activate it.

zie · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 26 Sep 2003 Posts: 126

We cannot use any of the *.gentoo.org name for servers not hosted by gentoo. So we should find something else. We can either use a generic name gentoo-musician.org, or maybe use something that can sell better.

Bassism · n00b Joined: 18 Oct 2003 Posts: 7

Wow.
Gentoo Forums decided to sotp telling me when there were new posts to the thread, so I thought that there was just nobody responding. :oops:

Now we're starting to get some more responce. This almost seems feasible now.

However, for the next week and a half, I won't be able to do much of anything. It's now the last week before we do our musical at school this year, and we're having many late praactices now. For example last night, I got to play upright bass from 3:30 until 8:30, then I got home at 9:30.

So I'm tired, for now.

I also missed the IRC meeting for the same reason.

Bassism