I waited around to see if there are other interesting topics, but since nobody has posted one, here is my proposal:
On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 4:15 PM, Shrinivasan T <[email protected]>wrote: > Topic > Description > Duration > About the speaker > Links to read > If there is sufficient interest, I'd like to talk about "Producing and recording music with Jack" in the _next_ meeting (not the Dec 10th one). Description: Jack is a Virtual Studio framework for GNU/Linux. It fits nicely with the Unix philosophy of "Do one thing and do it right", allowing stand alone applications to model and perform the role of real-world equivalent instruments and devices while providing a robust platform to allow them to work together in real time. Jack models a real studio - so people familiar with studio technology will find it easy to relate to Jack. The Corollary is that to get accustomed to producing / recording music wih Jack, it is important to understand studio terminology. There are patchbays and it is possible to 'connect' the output of one virtual instrument / device to one or more. It is even possible to patch the output of one application to itself to produce interesting end results. There is even a global clock that controls all these instruments and let them all start / stop / synchronize in tandem. You can pipeline audio streams through effects processors, mix them, master them even over multiple computers over netJack. Jack is cool and above all, it is Free Software. Jack supports most high-end audio hardware out of the box and copes with low end hardware pretty well. An interesting tidbit: Jack project contributed to the Linux kernel's real-time abilities significantly. This talk will be a hands-on demo of Jack running the Hydrogen Drum Machine, ZynAddSubFX Synthesizer (based on the many revolutionary hardware synths), Qsynth (real-world sound samples based synth), RoseGarden (MIDI recorder / sequencer), Seq24 (pattern based MIDI sequencer that can be used as an Arpeggiator) and Ardour2 (Digital Audio Workstation with inbuilt mixer and effects processor pipeline). There would be no feeling of a "finished" sound without the many LADSPA plugins that make producing music with GNU/Linux real and fun. However, setting up jack can be a bit tricky. Though, in the recent months, atleast the latest and greatest of Ubuntu makes jack work "almost" out of the box. This talk will mostly cover 1. the primitives of electronic music 2. how jack models the same. 3. setting up jack 4. a little jamming with jack! What's needed? - I will bring my laptop and a USB-MIDI cable - need one of you to kindly find a keyboard with MIDI out (preferably not a complex high-end MIDI controller that requires reading a 150 page manual :) ) - need one of you to kindly find some sort of decent speakers (my laptop's speakers don't work) Duration: 60 minutes About the speaker: I'm a self taught music student for the past 7 years. I'm also a self-taught student of computers and depend on computers to make a living. I used to learn music (mostly carnatic and a bit of western) and had always been looking for a means to use my GNU/Linux based computer to record and learn. I'd always wanted a home-studio setup for the purpose of learning and recording what I learn. Jack made it possible to finally make my dream of setting up a home-studio come true. I expected to have "real" hardware in my studio and I thought, what an expensive hobby that would be! but I now have a "real" powerful desktop that costed me about 5-7 times lesser than a "decent" entry-level hardware-based full studio setup. I run AVLinux 5.0 on my studio desktop where I only use it for the purpose of producing and listening to music. Though there are a couple of other alternatives, including Ubuntu Studio (which I tried a while ago and found it not as out-of-the-box as AVLinux), Studio64 (tried, didn't even work well), etc., that all bundle jack and the plethora of music software that work with jack. Links to read: http://jackaudio.org/ Regards, -Suraj -- Career Gear - Industry Driven Talent Factory http://careergear.in/ _______________________________________________ ILUGC Mailing List: http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc
