[BozemanLUG] A Linux presentation I'd like to see

[Scott Dowdle]

Greetings,

As some of you may know, I owned and used an Atari ST (Motorola 68000-based) from 1985 - 1995.  One cool thing about the ST was that it came with midi ports by default.  I remember spending about $200 in 1986 for a Casio synthesizer that was fairly capable, hooking it up to my ST and then controlling it with a commercial program from Activison named Music Studio.  Anyone who wants a glimpse back in time can watch  the following link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8lSMytqdEY

That's a Computer Chronicles show from 1986 that covers midi and has the Atari with Music Studio. It was only a matter of time for some free (as in beer) programs to be released... as well as some high end, professional MIDI apps.

I bring all of that up because even though I was doing that back in 1986, I haven't really seen any of that kind of thing done with Linux... although I know such programs exist and people are using them.

Here are the types of apps I remember using or reading about:

1) Visual music player... download a .mid file, load it in, see the notes laid out on onscreen sheet music... being easily able to change the instruments used for each voice... and then being able to play it back using the internal sound chip of the computer... or using a MIDI device.  You could also do simple composition but since I didn't know how to read/write music notation, I didn't do much of that.

2) Patch management... when I say patch, I mean the voices that your synthesizer has... being able to load and save them from a computer.  Being able to load groups of sounds in.  Being able to download new patches and have new sounds / voices to work with.

3) Sequencers... applications that could have 16-64 tracks and allowed for advanced mixing of multiple instruments.

Again, I know such apps exist on Linux but I don't know much about them and I don't know anyone using them.  It just so happens that I have a fairly nice synthesizer (consumer grade) that someone gave me about 10 years ago.  It has midi ports on it.  I believe there are USB to midi adapters but I haven't looked into it.

Anyone doing music on Linux?  Anyone using midi on Linux?  If so, would you be willing to show others?

TYL,
-- 
Scott Dowdle
704 Church Street
Belgrade, MT 59714
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