2010-03-08 von ekkehard.

A very very early version of my new music editor MusicEd, which is still a work in progress. It’s written in C and uses SDL for its graphical user interface. This also means that all controls are self-drawn. I chose a look and feel akin to that of AmigaOS 2.x/3.x, mainly b/c it was the quickest to implement and also renders quickly, since it needs only 4 colors / palette entries and hence can run in SDL’s palettized 8 bit per pixel mode.

MusicEd v0.0.7 - Update (see comments)

MusicEd v0.0.6 - Update (see comments)

MusicEd v0.0.5 - Update (see comments)

MusicEd v0.0.4 - Update (see comments)

MusicEd v0.0.3 - Update (see comments)

MusicEd v0.0.2 - Update (see comments)

MusicEd v0.0.1 - Initial version

MusicEd SourceForge project

Geschrieben in Music, Ideas, Personal Projects | 6 Kommentare »

2010-03-06 von ekkehard.

I’ve created a binary package for Ubuntu 9.10 64-Bit (x86_64) from Rosengarden source using “alien”, a package converter tool. I simply installed Rosegarden into an empty directory (using a “–prefix=/homedir/tempdir/usr” configure script option), tar-gzipped the result at the root node and converted it using “alien –to-deb zipfile”. I inspected the dependency list in the package settings, and they seem to be okay. That was quick!

Rosegarden 10.02 binary package for Debian-based systems, architecture x86_64

Geschrieben in Music, OS Experiences | 1 Kommentar »

2010-03-05 von ekkehard.

After fiddling around with various solutions for some years, I think I’ve found something now that looks promising, on Ubuntu 9.10 (64 bit). The following text describes how to install the packages. Everything is free open source software, and hence won’t cost a penny:

Install Jack Demon (package “jackd”). This is a program to serve as an audio and MIDI hub. It’s like a switchboard, of sorts. After installation, the demon needs to be configured in “/etc/default/jackd” (you can use “gksu gedit /etc/default/jackd” or “sudo nano /etc/default/jackd” from a command line to do that). It can be run using “sudo /etc/init.d/jackd start” from a command line. If you don’t set up the demon, you have to start Jack manually using the Jack Control program (in the “Applications / Multimedia”  menu); Otherwise, the demon runs as soon as the system starts.

Install package “timidity” (you can do that by either using the Synaptics package manager or “sudo apt-get install timidity”). There’s also a “timidity-daemon” package. Timidity is a program to emulate a MIDI synthesizer module on the computer. Since Timidity is sound-font driven, the included sound fonts are open source, and they lack some instruments, but I didn’t find that to be a problem.

Install Virtual Keyboard from the repository using “Application / Software Center”. In the Jack Control program (available in the “Applications / Multimedia”) program, you can set connections between devices. In the “ALSA MIDI” section of that, you’ll find available MIDI ports (real and virtual). Connect Virtual Keyboard to one of Timidity’s output ports, and you’ll be able to play all the instruments Timidity provides. The user interface of Virtual Keyboard can be changed using the menu to show all elements.

Rosegarden is a MIDI and audio sequencer program using musical notation (which is often preferrable to tracker-style programs for various reasons). Install Rosegarden using Software Center. Note that this version (1.7.3) is pretty old. From the Rosegarden website (www.rosegardenmusic.com), you can download the latest source code (version 10.02). Unfortunately, compiling and installing that from source (which shouldn’t be done anyway normally) is only for advanced users. Currently, there’s no Ubuntu package available for that (it’s pretty new). For the curious: You start by changing into the source directory and enter “./configure”, then “make” (after you’ve manually installed all the dependent packages) and finally “sudo make install” (by default, it’s installed into “/usr”). You can manually remove it only by entering “sudo make uninstall”. I’ve had the thought of making an Ubuntu package for it myself, but I’ve not begun working thru the Debian Maintainers Manual yet. If you search through the Ubuntu forums, you can find a thread about “Rosegarden 10.2″ (sic). There is apparently a package for the 32 Bit version of Ubuntu 9.10 made by one of the users. (BTW, if you’re using ArchLinux or Gentoo Linux, you can get a Rosegarden 10.02 package from the website.) UPDATE: In fact, I managed creating a binary package today using the “alien” package converter tool. See this new blog entry.

Anyway, after you have some version of Rosegarden installed (don’t attempt to minimize the window in Version 1.7.3. there’s apparently a bug preventing it from coming back up in the build that I used), you can use the Jack Control panel to check and set up connections between Rosegarden, Virtual Keyboard and other things you might want to connect to your PC (like external MIDI synths, keyboards, etc.). Version 10.02 apparently fixes a lot of bugs found in the older versions still in Ubuntu’s or Debian’s repositories, so it might be worth going the extra mile for that.

In Ubuntu’s repository, there are plenty of tools for Jack that you can install using either Synaptics or Software Center.

I hope this can help people like me who want to make music with their computer for the least amount of money possible.

UPDATE: If you read the comments that I wrote, you’ll see which other changes might be necessary to make it all work.

Here’s a screenshot of  the finished environment:

Geschrieben in Music, OS Experiences, Personal Projects | 7 Kommentare »

2010-03-01 von ekkehard.

In an effort to create a GUI framework that can be used on web pages, I managed to complete a first, very early version. It includes a session manager demon for UNIX-like systems, a CGI frontend that communicates with the daemon, an AJAX library for communicating with the CGI frontend, and a simple test page to write the screen size to the session manager.

GobSmack v0.0.5 - Version with bugfix for get_resource() and the new features of configuration files and JavaScript serving.

GobSmack v0.0.4 - Version with bugfix for internal document fragment serving.

GobSmack v0.0.3 - Version with bugfix for invalid CGI request handling.

GobSmack v0.0.2 - Version with bugfix for random number generator.

GobSmack v0.0.1 - Initial version.

Geschrieben in Ideas, Personal Projects | 5 Kommentare »