From: Christian M. <uf...@uf...> - 2010-01-26 10:00:11
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Hi, I'm a happy rosegarden user (used 2.1 & 4 for some years) and recently tested 10.02 beta -> I really appreciated it, for what I want it has great improvements since previous releases, for instance I find the Lilypond converter much better than in previous versions. Congrats! So well, I'm still using the software without taking the time to *really* learn how to use it and I feel, among other things, that I would certainly gain to have some sort of midi input such as a keyboard with real white & black piano-style keys. As I understand it, RG is compatible with any such input device which is MIDI/ALSA compliant, so I guess a low-end standard USB-midi keayboard should fit. But... I also noticed Timidity (I "hear" my music through the "timidity -iAD" trick) eats up lots of CPU. In a general manner I end up with big scores, lots of notes, and a slow-slow-slow computer, in part because midi generation (from midi to wav and then to my ears) is greedy. So, AFAIK, it's not technically so hard to have (bad!) hardware midi generation, I remember the old days of adlib compatible cards, old SB16, which was capable of doing that. Curiously, I never ever managed to have any working hardware midi generation on a recent computer. Since last 10 years, I never ever heard a hardware generated midi sound on my various GNU/Linux boxes :( I always ended up either using Timidity on GNU/Linux platforms and/or a proprietary driver under proprietary OSes, which is I suspect because the modern way to do it is just to not use a hardware midi to wav converter. So I was wondering if anyone on this list had an idea of some *hardware* device (or any solution that requires zero CPU cycles to transform midi into something I can hear, external or internal, I don't mind) that would be rosegarden friendly. I really do not need great quality, my usage of Rosegarden is just to listen an MP3 and imagine (and write!) arrangements for my brass band, so I just need to *check* it does not sound too horrible, the final rendering is out of scope, we do it with real instruments. The quality of an old SB back from the eighties is enough for me. My first idea was to buy some "all-in-one" midi keyboard which could act as a midi input *and* output device as well. In one way it would tell RG the notes to play, RG would record, I would post-edit, tune, etc, and then I would resend midi messages to the keyboard/"magic-box" which sould play them. I really do not know if such a device exist. From what I see they are mostly *input* devices which send midi messages, but AFAIK the *output* device always ends up, more or less, being a computer. Thanks for creating Rosegarden, and have a nice day, Christian. PS: sorry for being slightly off-topic, I acknowledge this is not directly Rosegarden related, since it certainly concerns the ALSA/MIDI/USB subject but my "midi adventures" are so tightly linked with RG that well, if anyone has a working solution that I'm sure is RG compliant, I'll go for that. -- Christian Mauduit <uf...@uf...> - http://deca.ufoot.org ___ __/\__ Liquid War 6 - http://www.gnu.org/software/liquidwar6 / _")\~ \~/ "Les amis de la vérité sont ceux qui la cherchent et non _/ / /_ o_\ ceux qui se vantent de l'avoir trouvée" - Condorcet (__/ \/ |
From: Julie S <msj...@ya...> - 2010-01-26 14:32:37
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Hello Christian, Concerning your needs as listed. The biggest trick is to get your MIDI rendered to audio. The rest seems straight forward. Let hit the basics (I'll try to keep it brief). Sound like you could benefit most from buying a keyboard that is touch sensitive and some prepackaged sounds (A low end Yamaha PSR may do the trick.) The biggest thing is to look before you buy. The keyboard will provide an outboard MIDI device tone generator which will free your "slow computer" from doing the synthesis. Nothing is zero CPU though -- sorry. You can use it to record with as well as get playback. Since something like the PSR has built in speakers, that is one less thing to purchase as well. Now the trickier part getting your MIDI rendered to audio: The easiest thing to do is to plug the keyboard's audio out -- in this case of a low end PSR that would be the headphone out--into your computer's soundcard line-in. But since your computer is "slow," it is hard to recommend running jack and RG to get your audio into RG. RG is a heavy weight application -- sorry. Turning the follow playback off helps a lot. Maybe just run audacity and RG and press record in audacity and play in RG. It won't me synchronized, but that isn't what you are looking for. ... I typically just have RG play my keyboard, and I record to an old digital 8 track. Then I close RG and use audacity to rerecord from the 8 track recorder. It is a very low tech (for this day and age), but I get pretty good results and my typical audience never seems to complain. It is by no means professional grade (by todays standards), but it works for me. ... I hope this helps you. Sincerely, Julie S. |
From: david <gn...@ha...> - 2010-01-27 05:28:31
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Julie S wrote: > Sound like you could benefit most from buying a keyboard that is > touch sensitive and some prepackaged sounds (A low end Yamaha PSR may > do the trick.) I use a Yamaha PSR225GM for both MIDI in and out. Works fine for me. I have no idea how good or bad its brass voices might be. -- David gn...@ha... authenticity, honesty, community |
From: D. M. M. <mic...@ro...> - 2010-01-27 03:58:11
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On Tuesday 26 January 2010, Christian Mauduit wrote: > hardware midi generation on a recent computer. Since last 10 years, I > never ever heard a hardware generated midi sound on my various GNU/Linux > boxes :( That's about right. The last popular chipset to be capable of doing this under Linux was new in '97, and has become increasingly rare. These days, MIDI sound generation is something everybody does in software. The last time I looked for something like the tried and true Roland Sound Canvas, the only thing I could find was some software from Edirol (Edirol is to Roland as Squier is to Fender or Epiphone is to Gibson) to simulate a Sound Canvas. > Rosegarden is just to listen an MP3 and imagine (and write!) arrangements > for my brass band, so I just need to *check* it does not sound too How are you getting on with that sort of thing overall? I've done a lot of work over the last few years that was all aimed at exactly that sort of use (since I'm a brass player) and I'd be interested in success and failure stories from trying to use Rosegarden in the real world to write for this stuff. > horrible, the final rendering is out of scope, we do it with real > instruments. The quality of an old SB back from the eighties is enough for > me. Given the current availability of any other way to go, I echo Julie's suggestion that a consumer grade Yamaha PSR keyboard might fit the bill quite well. They sound like crap, but then even the highest end stuff is going to sound like crap trying to fake the unique and incredibly fantastic sound of brass. Some things in life just can't be simulated with a computer. It takes real people and real metal. -- D. Michael McIntyre |
From: Christian M. <uf...@uf...> - 2010-01-27 11:45:59
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Hi, On Wed, January 27, 2010 4:58 am, D. Michael McIntyre wrote: > That's about right. The last popular chipset to be capable of doing this > under Linux was new in '97, and has become increasingly rare. These days, The confusing point (and I'm only starting to realize) is that all the software chain (this is not linked to RG) tells you "hey man, your midi is up and running!" but the average stupid end user like me does not hear sound so he concludes "this is all lies!". In fact it does work and midi messages are sent to pure void and *should* there be a midi device to play stuff, it would work. Point is there's no midi device ;) >> Rosegarden is just to listen an MP3 and imagine (and write!) >> arrangements >> for my brass band, so I just need to *check* it does not sound too > > How are you getting on with that sort of thing overall? I've done a lot > of > work over the last few years that was all aimed at exactly that sort of > use > (since I'm a brass player) and I'd be interested in success and failure > stories from trying to use Rosegarden in the real world to write for this > stuff. Well, to sum it up, I've tried many softwares, including proprietary ones, and RG came out as being the best compromise. What I do is this: - take out my trumpet from its box, get it at hand. I'm playing sousaphone but trumpet is fine to just check a tune or feasibility of something, it's a must have to be able to check with a real instrument. Note that if I had a synth keyboard I might not need the trumpet that much. - launch audacious or any MP3 player to play the song - launch rosegarden (doing it the other way doesn't work on some computers, RG "stealing" the audio device to the mp3 player) Then I just hear the tune, try to find the notes with my trumpet, and then write it down on RG with the mouse. I must admit I'm too lazy to *really* RTFM enough and learn clever keyboard shortcuts so I end up spending minutes and hours clicking here and there. I also suspect the matrix view would help me a lot and save time. But well... In fact, RG is just a "super typesster", an interface on Lilypond, as far as this stage is concerned. I do that for 4 scores, I try and extract 4 scores from any song, one for sousaphone, one for trombones, one for little tuba (saxhorn), one for trumpet (generally, this is the singer's voice but not always). Then... and this is where RG rocks and beats any other GNU/Linux software I met I just playback bits of the song, just to check if all thoses scores get well together. I appreciate the way "transport" is done, and in this phase the software is of great help. Indeed, individual parts might sound all right alone but wrong alltogether. I put absolutely no loudness hints, no nothing, I take it from granted that it must sound OK just played mechanically, this way the "real" band with people playing instruments has a chance to get something correct from the scores ;) The whole process takes 5 or 6 hours for a complete 3 minutes song, if I'm lucky. If I'm unlucky, it takes much more. FYI I'm currently writing something that happens to take *more* than 199 measures so I have to split in several segments and I'm not really enjoying it, but that's another story, I guess I should seriously start to think writing proper bug reports about the problems I encounter - you know, lazy users just complain, they don't systematically report all bugs, I know that as both a user and developper ;) Then, once this is done, I have 4 scores, which I must print. The whole point of the process is to have printed copies. Musicians never access the .rg files, in fact I'm pretty much the only GNU/Linux user of the band, other arrangements are done with the proprietary software NoteWorthy which BTW runs very fine under Wine but 1) I really do not want to go that way and 2) I just can't handle its GUI, it's supposed to be intuitive but I just don't get it... So well, to print, I just export to lilypond and then... I post-process scores with VI. I noticed in the beta there are now Segno and Coda, and also repeating segments does make "repeat bars" appear on the screen, but I haven't seen it in the lilypond but maybe I didn't look well. Anyway, at this stage, I took the habit to systematically re-edit files, to annotate with repeat structs, wether 10.02 fits my need needs to be investigated but 4.X certainly didn't. It's not that bad I can afford the 1/2 hour it needs. Under 4.X I also had to clean up beam messes and various things, but 10.02 does solve everything, or almost ;) The most boring part is to extract trumpet/sahorn/trombone/sousaphone from the score, I'm always thinking of writing a clever Python script to do that, but was too lazy again. Now, latest part, I run lilypond several times and keep on increasing/decreasing the font size to the the right size that makes the score fit on one page without being written too small, the I archive the obtained PDF. I must admit the post-processing of .ly is boring enough so that when it happens I have made a mistake, mistake gets corrected on paper with a pen ;) So well, this was about my using RG ;) Oh, yeah, one more thing -> the other players of the band regularly complain that my "midi files" (export as mid under RG) are crappy because all the structure is wrong (repeats and stuff). This is pretty right, in fact I sometimes end up using the Lilypond "Volta" commands to have the (very convenient!) "first time you are here play this and second time you are here play that" feature, but this obviously does not appear in the midi, which was generated before. As I'm writing these lines I realize maybe an option would be to generate the midi from the .ly file... I dunno, midi export form lilypond is also reported to be somewhat broken and well, my position is that generations of brass bands have played without having a midi demo, so well, I just let them complain (sarcastic grin). > sound like crap trying to fake the unique and incredibly fantastic sound > of > brass. I have in my library a book about generating brass sounds with CSound, it's a deep subject indeed, but I didn't take the time to digg yet. Timidity does not do such a bad job, I've heared much worse. Thanks for your feedback, and have a nice day, Christian. -- Christian Mauduit <uf...@uf...> - http://deca.ufoot.org ___ __/\__ Liquid War 6 - http://www.gnu.org/software/liquidwar6 / _")\~ \~/ "Les amis de la vérité sont ceux qui la cherchent et non _/ / /_ o_\ ceux qui se vantent de l'avoir trouvée" - Condorcet (__/ \/ |