favorite midi sequencer?

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ruhtranayr
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favorite midi sequencer?

Post by ruhtranayr »

my two favs are rosegarden and seq24

i *used* to use rosegarden...but honestly the new version's zoom wheels annoy me. i've been using seq24 for the past six months..... i like it but i don't think it supports pitch bend(?) no problem tho, i just link the soft synth to jack-rack running AM pitch shift... doing it this way you get a much broader pitch bend than you would using pitch bend in rosegarden, but this is also massively time consuming, having to record it separately and match the time in ardour. so, you have to be selective about what you are pitch bending. i honestly feel like my productivity has plummeted since i migrated to seq24.....:( with seq 24 i can make some pretty tight grooves but they lack that full bodied composition feel that i got with my tracks using rosegarden.

with rosegarden, i like having the open space to create what i want. this never-ending-time-line where i can utilize copy/paste to flush out a nice composition quickly.... my gripe with rosegarden is it's midi device management is rediculously sloppy, it's a bit too complicated to loop something and it's wayyy too crash-happy. other than that.......rosegarden is exactly that...a garden of roses... anything can happen, as long as you avoid the thorns :P.....

seq24 its constantly looping...which is kind of nice, it keeps me organized, and my beats nice and tight and concise. with such a big love for detroit techno its rather ironic how i despise repetition in my own tracks...but song editor makes up for that easily. yes, i can copy/paste in seq24... but it is rather stubborn about deleting loops.

i've sort of made a ripple or two in LMMS... the same goes for MUSE. i've yet to throw down the cash for energyXT (kind of goes against my principles on free/opensource software) but i'm considering it

anywho... what midi sequencer do you use?
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autostatic
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Re: favorite midi sequencer?

Post by autostatic »

Hello ruhtranayr, and welcome!

My fave is QTractor: http://qtractor.sourceforge.net/qtractor-index.html

Best,

Jeremy
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Louigi Verona
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Re: favorite midi sequencer?

Post by Louigi Verona »

Energy XT
When I just started out with Linux and was desperate to get some decent software, I actually thought that maybe I get EnergyXT, but when I tried the demo, I was amazed. Why? Well, honestly - it sucks. The stereotype that proprietary software should be better is just a stereotype. The only thing EnergyXT does is run proprietary VST format, so it's sort of their selling point - hey, you can trade your freedom for several software synthesizers!

There. I smashed EnergyXT.

LMMS.
LMMS is cool. Much cooler than people tend to think. Lots and lots of demos on YouTube... suck. Unfortunately. And lack of normal demos does not help good publicity and does not inspire people. I've seen a good music program fail simply because it was not bundled with an inspiring demo song.
LMMS is a very powerful set of software. It is what I call an Integrated Music Environment (IME). All Windows sequencers are IMEs. Why are IMEs cool? You can save a project with all your settings. In a modular environment it is a whole problem, especially if you have many instruments and effects used in your production.
LMMS comes bundled with a built-in Zyn (selling point!), several other synths, including a very nice triple oscillator thingy with which you can build a whole arsenal of sounds, supports LADSPA plugins, automation (selling point!) and has controllers which allow you to assign LFO to stuff (selling point!)
As disadvantage - no support for LV2, a bit confusing interface, not visually, but functionally - it is very difficult to switch between playing a pattern or a song or just one instrument and you have to constantly to bring various windows into focus to do that. Generally, you can get used to that. Also, no routing in the FX mixer, so you cannot use, say, a vocoder.

Qtractor
I don't know why I like it. It is a sweet program, it has charm. It's author considers it to be alpha stage. Maybe so, but it is very capable now. It is however in very active development, so if you find a bug - report it!
Currently, the only serious midi sequencer in the modular world. Ardour 3 has midi but is available only as a dev version and I've heard is still very unstable and not really usable yet.

seq24
Heard lots of good stuff about it, but unfortunately it is no longer maintained and I was never able to run it on my system - it has a known bug which nobody ever fixed, so I never had the chance to try it out, it just crashes on Ubuntu 9.04.

Rosegarden and Muse
Those two are oriented towards note writing and I generally consider those to be rocket science to work with. Very confusing interfaces, so you can spend a day browsing menus in order to get a simple thing done. It is a good flashback into the 90s, but in my personal opinion, if you are doing electronic kinda music, Rosegarden and Muse will not be your choice. They can be considered for orchestral music and such.
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Re: favorite midi sequencer?

Post by StudioDave »

re: LMMS: As Louigi said, it's a nice program. What he didn't add is that LMMS performance sucks unbelievably badly in realtime. Your work with seq24 indicates that you like composing in realtime.

Btw, seq24 supports pitch bend. Click on the Event button and select Pitch Wheel. You can then draw and edit pitch bend curves to your satisfaction. Of course, the actual bend width is a function of your synth, not seq24.

Best,

dp
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Louigi Verona
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Re: favorite midi sequencer?

Post by Louigi Verona »

LMMS sucks in real time, meaning that it plays fine, but if you connect a midi keyboard - it would have a noticeable latency. It does not, however, produce xruns even on complex projects. In my personal experience, a modular setup starts to lag significantly with projects that employ several fluidsynths and a phasex. In LMMS I had 9 soundfont players and 3 zyns and around 10 wav samples - and it did not freeze or lag. So... make your own conclusions. For building a complex track LMMS is cool.

And don't forget Shism Tracker. If you do go for tracking music - this is the tool to go for, it is the best Linux tracker which is free (Renoise is proprietary).
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Re: favorite midi sequencer?

Post by StudioDave »

Louigi Verona wrote:LMMS sucks in real time, meaning that it plays fine, but if you connect a midi keyboard - it would have a noticeable latency.
I should have been more specific. LMMS, in every test I've done with it, performs badly with JACK at low latencies. As long as JACK's period size is set high enough - with the resulting high latency - then LMMS performs nicely. And as long as your composition methodologies don't need JACK or low latencies, LMMS is a good integrated environment. It's certainly good for your music.

I've never tried using LMMS with MIDI input. Are you suggesting that the presence of MIDI input also slows it down ?

Btw, seq24 development was carried forward after Rob Buse stopped work on the Linux version, but AFAICT that new team hasn't been active for a while.
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Re: favorite midi sequencer?

Post by autostatic »

I'd like to add Hydrogen, even though that's not a MIDI sequencer pur sang (you even have to load an empty file as a sample before you can do proper MIDI sequencing). And when it comes to tracking, I used to work a bit with FastTracker 2 so for me MilkyTracker does the job. I just pulled in a massive XI archive so hopefully it contains some inspiring stuff enough to make me do some tracking again.
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Louigi Verona
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Re: favorite midi sequencer?

Post by Louigi Verona »

No, the presence of MIDI does not slow LMMS down - the response from your midi controller is slow without JACK.
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Re: favorite midi sequencer?

Post by Louigi Verona »

Only $15. Windows XP/2000/Me/98. Get out of here, you dirty spammer of no good technology!
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Re: favorite midi sequencer?

Post by raboof »

Louigi Verona wrote:Rosegarden and Muse
Those two are oriented towards note writing
I'm not sure this is true for either of those products. Indeed Muse originally was both a sequencer and a notation application, if I'm not mistaken these 2 functions were separated out and made into 2 applications (muse-sequencer and museScore). Never used muse-sequencer myself though.

Rosegarden imho is much more a sequencer with notation features rather than a notation editor with sequencing features. All the internals are quite sequencer-ish, and you can use it fine without ever touching the notation panels (using either audio or the matrix editing panels instead).
Very confusing interfaces, so you can spend a day browsing menus in order to get a simple thing done. It is a good flashback into the 90s, but in my personal opinion, if you are doing electronic kinda music, Rosegarden and Muse will not be your choice.
That might still be true though of course :).
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Re: favorite midi sequencer?

Post by samsonite2010 »

So far, I have found Rosegarden and LMMS the best.

Rosegarden is very feature rich and I could get going with it straight away - the only thing is that you have to setup all of your soft synths and Jack, so it is more of a pain when you first load it up. Very capable though.

LMMS has been amazing for me though. I don't need JACK, or anything else running. The plugins are amazing and I can pretty much get any kind of sound I want without having anything at all running. This keeps CPU usage down too. I have had a couple of issues with the export to WAV/OGG feature where some instruments come out too loud, but I know that I can get sound out in other ways.

For me, I just cannot use QTractor - I have it, but I have not been able to do anything with it - maybe because I use 100% soft synths at the moment, that is why, but Rosegarden and LMMS gave me instant success.
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zwenny
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Re: favorite midi sequencer?

Post by zwenny »

seq24 definetely!

I was forced to use it because there's no Jack Output Plugin for TuxGuitar.
So i exported the notes from TuxGuitar as MIDI and played this file with
seq24 to record it in ardour for post processing and song integration.
Looking forward to look back what happens now

Listen to my music at:
https://www.jamendo.com/artist/373939/zwenny
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Re: favorite midi sequencer?

Post by MattKingUSA »

I've just started making synth music but I think lmms is pretty nice. I don't have to use jack and jack is a pain on my system because I have several things running all the time that use the sound system.


EDIT: I have a question if anyone know, I want to duplicate a section of my song, like copy and paste multiple lines and multiple piano rolls, but I have been copy and pasting one section at a time, is this the only way? :D

-Matt :D

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Re: favorite midi sequencer?

Post by Pablo »

I was forced to use seq24 because there's no Jack Output Plugin for TuxGuitar.
I have used tuxguitar as a sequencer in a jack enviroment. No need for this workaround just for this. You need a jackfied soft synth, say, qsynth, linux sampler, zynaddsubfx or yoshimi, or any other soft synth, including vst instruments, dssi instruments or LV2 instruments plugins (with a suitable host). What you need is that tuxguitar has an alsa midi output port to connect to an alsa-midi input port (or even a jack midi input port thanks to a2jmidid) in the synth or host. If you are in a debian-based distro, you need to install tuxguitar-alsa, IIRC and at least for ubuntu karmic.

My favourite midi sequencers are Hydrogen and Rosegarden.

Cheers! Pablo
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zwenny
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Re: favorite midi sequencer?

Post by zwenny »

Pablo wrote:I have used tuxguitar as a sequencer in a jack enviroment. No need for this workaround just for this.[...]
Thanks for this remark. I'll try it the next time i need some midi sounds in my songs.
Looking forward to look back what happens now

Listen to my music at:
https://www.jamendo.com/artist/373939/zwenny
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