What's your workflow?

[Eli]

Typically, starting a song section for myself goes chords > complimentary melodic/harmonic layers > bass > drums > FX > transition to next section

[Impostor]

1-Throw shit around until something sticks.
2-Fuck around some.
3-Clean up the mess.

Then start up the computer and make some music:)

[Eli]

Last couple of years, I've gone for randomness in the process. That's the goal, at least. When I hunker down into a routine, a creative rut becomes inevitable. Wasted years not producing anything of value because I got stuck in routine.

[mcord]

Like @LAM mentioned a while ago in this thread, I've also switched from Ardour to Bespoke, and I've come to like it very much. Ardour still has advantages in specific areas (multichannel I/O for plugins, MIDI regions with separate MIDI channels etc.), but in Bespoke, I find it quicker to jump right in and add/remove small elements or even entire sections as well as find my way around my session.

My workflow all comes down to one thing: trusting my intuition on what to do next. So, I start with something I feel like experimenting with, add a new layer, tweak/remove what doesn't sound right, add another layer, and keep doing this until it feels complete. (Well, a piece of art is never really complete, it's just the artist stops working on it. I would like to give credit to whoever said this, but I don't remember. )

[folderol]

Varies a bit.
Often I'll be noodling around on the keyboard and changing instrument sounds when something 'clicks' and I'm away on an improv. It might stand as-is (like Open Harp) or I might add extra tracks to fill it out.

Other times a short phrase will pop into my head. I'll find it on the keyboard and record it. I'll then come back to it later to add a complementary phrase. Rinse-and-repeat!

I've got a lot of these short phrases in my 'music bits box', and sometimes go through them and see if I can stitch a few together.

[Linuxmusician01]

What do y'all use to "save" your work: do you record the audio or the Midi (notes)? Some of us even use music notation software and export it as Midi. What software/DAW do you use?

[Impostor]

What do y'all use to "save" your work: do you record the audio or the Midi (notes)? Some of us even use music notation software and export it as Midi. What software/DAW do you use?

I mostly just fool around in a DAW (MusE, sometimes Renoise). If I ever stumble on a good beat or melody, I press the "save project" button, and hope it will be useful sometime. I almost never get far past the "cool loop" phase, though..

And my noodling with standalone Pianoteq are automatically saved by Pianoteq (as midi files). Never had the nerve to listen back to that though!

[folderol]

I don't use a DAW as such.
The "Source's" directory contains project directories which contain all the project directories.
These contain sub directories of older versions, the build history, the Yoshimi patchset, the Rosegarden file.
There is also an "Audio" directory which contains the finished audio files .wav for older ones .flac for newer ones.
If I update an older file it moves across to .flac,

[mcord]

What do y'all use to "save" your work: do you record the audio or the Midi (notes)? Some of us even use music notation software and export it as Midi. What software/DAW do you use?

BespokeSynth has a feature that allows you to export whatever has been played in the last 30 minutes (this timeframe can be adjusted in the options) into a WAV file. So, what I usually do is play the full song or a specific part with the help of songbuilder, hit export, then slice it up with a shell script that uses some ffmpeg magic (based on the first comment here):

Code: Select all

#!/usr/bin/env bash
export INPUT=$1

ffmpeg -i $INPUT -filter_complex "[0:a]silencedetect=n=-60dB:d=0.3[outa]" -map [outa] -f s16le -y /dev/null |& F='-aq 70 -v warning' perl -ne 'INIT { $ss=0; $se=0; } if (/silence_start: (\S+)/) { $ss=$1; $ctr+=1; printf "ffmpeg -nostdin -i $ENV{INPUT} -ss %f -t %f $ENV{F} -y %03d.wav\n", $se, ($ss-$se), $ctr; } if (/silence_end: (\S+)/) { $se=$1; } END { printf "ffmpeg -nostdin -i $ENV{INPUT} -ss %f $ENV{F} -y %03d.wav\n", $se, $ctr+1; }' | bash -x

Edit: Here's another trick I like: Most often, I name my session main.bsk, which I overwrite with Ctrl+s whenever I make changes. However, when I want to create a snapshot as a separate file (like a 'hard save'), I name it <current-date-and-time>.bsk. For that, I bring up the terminal and use this (under Wayland/wl-roots):

Code: Select all

echo -n $(date +"%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M-%S")".bsk" | wl-copy # Date for BespokeSynth filenames

Then I press Ctrl+v for the session file name, and 2024-03-08_17-25-37.bsk is pasted. (The save dialogue actually used to fill the name in automatically with the date and extension, but this functionality broke about 2 months ago and I couldn't figure out why, so now I do it my way. )

[LAM]

Then I press Ctrl+v for the session file name, and 2024-03-08_17-25-37.bsk is pasted. (The save dialogue actually used to fill the name in automatically with the date and extension, but this functionality broke about 2 months ago and I couldn't figure out why, so now I do it my way. )

If you are using Zenity it could be linked to this bug: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/zenity/-/issues/80

Bespoke Synth can use also kdialog or the JUCE native file chooser dialog (very minimal), depending on what is found on the system.

[mcord]

If you are using Zenity it could be linked to this bug: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/zenity/-/issues/80

Bespoke Synth can use also kdialog or the JUCE native file chooser dialog (very minimal), depending on what is found on the system.

Oh, you're right. I have Zenity installed, indeed. And if I run zenity --file-selection --filename="Screenshot.png" --save, I believe it should put in Screenshot.png as the name, but it doesn't.

So, that explains why I saw JUCE's file chooser in a VM for Bespoke. There's no way to override Bespoke's preference, is there?

[LAM]

So, that explains why I saw JUCE's file chooser in a VM for Bespoke. There's no way to override Bespoke's preference, is there?

No