The Best of Best Apps For Creating Music On LInux

Discuss how to promote using FLOSS to make music.

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nathan
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The Best of Best Apps For Creating Music On LInux

Post by nathan »

The purpose of this thread to highlight mature, stable, pro-quality apps that can be used for making music on/with Linux. This can include free, commercial, open, and closed source software. I'd like to see a list here, and then later transfer it over to the wiki. This could provide a starting point when discussing the strengths of Linux as music making platform.
Last edited by nathan on Thu Aug 28, 2008 3:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by nathan »

I have to start this with Ardour, the DAW for Linux that rivals Pro-Tools.
brummer

Post by brummer »

the heart of making musik with linux jack :D
I prefer qjackctl as interface.
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Post by MattKingUSA »

I love Audacity.

-Matt :D

studio32

Post by studio32 »

Linuxsampler
Hydrogen
Rosegarden
Qtractor
Musescore
Mixxx

It is not by accident that I name some apps in the newbie page of the wiki...
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Post by khz »

qjackctl, rakarrack, guitarix, tapiir_jack, jack-rack, ams, phasex, zynaddsubfx, puredata, jost, livemix, sooperlooper, freewheeling, jamin, ninjam,

u are root - u are GNU.Linux
Last edited by khz on Fri Aug 29, 2008 9:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
. . . FZ - Does humor belongs in Music?
. . GNU/LINUX@AUDIO ~ /Wiki $ Howto.Info && GNU/Linux Debian installing >> Linux Audio Workstation LAW
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Re: The Best of Best Apps For Creating Music On LInux

Post by becks »

nathan wrote:The purpose of this thread to highlight mature, stable, pro-quality apps that can be used for making music on/with Linux. This can include free, commercial, open, and closed source software. I'd like to see a list here, and then later transfer it over to the wiki. This could provide a starting point when discussing the strengths of Linux as music making platform.
free sw: gnu/linux,kernel rt patch, jackd+qjackctl, ardour, audacity, jamin, ninjam, ladspa/lv2, hydrogen, linuxsampler, rosegarden, qsynth, phasex, amsynth, jack-rack, zynaddsubfx, freewheeling, rackarrack, tuxguitar, and maybe other

closed source: renoise (sometime...), vst with dssi-vst (rarely, and only for curiosity... )
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Post by zettberlin »

Linux Audio would not be complete whithout:

Specimen
The Sampler does not need any wired proprietary file format and works perfectly stable, the only drawback is, that Specimen cannot make individual Jackports for patches - it can run in several instances though...

Alsa Modular Synth
Stable, powerful, very good sounding own modules and LADSPA-Support. You can bind any parameter of an AMS-patch to a MIDI-Controller and you can easily make a customized view of parameters, that can store presets also.

And if finally the QT-Port will be available, Rezound will have a great future also...
nostrum fungitur
studio32

Post by studio32 »

Lilypond!
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Re: The Best of Best Apps For Creating Music On LInux

Post by Sandsound »

EnergyXT2 is my pick :-)
I can do almost everything I used to do in Cubase, and the rest I can do in ReZound.

EDIT: If I had to go open-source all the way, I'd use a mix of LMMS, Ardour, Rosegarden and of course ReZound.
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Re: The Best of Best Apps For Creating Music On LInux

Post by thorgal »

it really depends on the music you're creating. I am a bit old school and don't like to rely solely on softwares. My music is mainly rock (drums, bass, guitars, vocals, and occasionally a bit of piano or synth but rarely). So with this in mind, I don't use fancy stuff, mainly ardour, jamin, and for the time being, rosegarden for my MIDI drumming with the VSTi Addictive Drums. I program every single drum hit, no loops, no pre-made MIDI stuff, it's like playing another instrument, you won't import a guitar sequence made by someone else if your plan is to play yourself ;)
I do need a couple of plugins : EQ in general, and reverb on the vocals but as soon as money allows, I will dump the reverb plugin and get myself a reverb unit that will go straight into my rackmount.
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Re: The Best of Best Apps For Creating Music On LInux

Post by raboof »

thorgal wrote:for the time being, rosegarden for my MIDI drumming with the VSTi Addictive Drums.
Why 'for the time being'?
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Re: The Best of Best Apps For Creating Music On LInux

Post by thorgal »

for the time being because I will investigate 2 roads in the future :
1- ardour3 when stable with MIDI (which could replace rosegarden and would allow me to do everything internally, provided that it does tempo ramping like rosegarden does so easily)

2- completely different road : an e-drum. I can drum basic stuff but would love to improve my drumming skills. I never had the opportunity to do it (I come from a rather poor milieu so things did not come easy in terms of gears during all these years, I am not what one calls a consumerist).
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Re: The Best of Best Apps For Creating Music On LInux

Post by simta »

i absolutely love lmms. the learning curve is lovely, its easy to get my ideas down. i can see a point in the future where i learn more about ardour and use them together but at the moment lmms is serving me nicely. hydrogen is a great drum machine, one of the best i've used (proprietary+free) but it's easier to just do the drums in lmms as i'm doing everything else in there. it's still only at 0.4 release and already a very good program.
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Re: The Best of Best Apps For Creating Music On LInux

Post by Sandsound »

thorgal wrote:an e-drum. I can drum basic stuff but would love to improve my drumming skills. I never had the opportunity to do it (I come from a rather poor milieu so things did not come easy in terms of gears during all these years, I am not what one calls a consumerist).
I know this is a bit off topic, but If you are on a tight budget and are a bit handy with a soldering iron, there's a great DIY MIDI-trigger solution on http://www.edrum.info/
And if you already have the MIDI-module (or can find a used one at an affordable price), you can build drums for almost nothing. I use pizos to trigger my module, and you can get them for about 3,-Dkr at Brink elektronik :-)
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