Hi everybody,
I haven't posted in too long! Well my leg is better, I can play piano now, I just can't use that foot to pedal, which is fine I will just get used to using my left. I have been working on Giant Steps using rootless left hand voicings and pentatonics to help simplify the key changes. Since I got that idea from "The Jazz Piano Book" by Mark Levine, I think it would be fitting to work in a review for it sometime after I record it and stick it on the internet.
Another reason for my delay in posting is that I want to record a song, which has a bass line and maybe some basic percussions. Which I started on. But the bass line sound didn't wow me, so I've been trying to get some nicer synthesizers, and nothing would work right on my Linux box--AlsaModularSynth kept crashing, couldn't get any good sounds out of ZynSubAddFX and though it might be a fidelity problem, Ingen looked too immature to even try, and there aren't enough LV2 plugins to get by on just that anyway, just yet, I think (but if you like the bleeding edge it's maybe worth a try). But long story short I started using Pd (short for pure data), and have been quite wowed by it. It feels stable, though I have yet to stress test it. It's free, open source. The open source community is generally pretty capable of producing good programming languages (php, perl, python, pd, maybe one that doesn't start with 'p' but not too sure about that, etc.), so in this case you might, possibly, get more than you pay for with it. Also, since Pd is a graphical programming language, you more or less get a graphical interface for your program for free, though there are ways to tidy it up so you aren't looking at the program guts while you are using it.
But there is a learning curve, and it takes a while to get it to make any noise at all, unfortunately, and it also takes a while to polish up stuff so it's tidier to look at, but there is definitely a zone in there where you can just kind of let the ideas flow into the program. And that's from someone with almost no experience in synth programming, no knowledge of it that you can't get from wikipedia, and who has only been using it for 2 days!
So I do recommend pure data for Linux users, without question. It can also host LADSPA and DSSI plugins, it is extensible with a C API (which probably has wrapper for any language you'd want to use), and it's a good audio programming environment. And Linux seems to be its preferred target. So basically, your choices on Linux are either to enjoy a very good audio synthesis environment at its best, or else deal with some rather mediocre alternatives. I didn't try supercollider however, that might be better, but I am worried that the learning curve would be steeper in a text based approach for someone like me that doesn't have any experience with audio programming. I do have enough experience with audio though to know there is often a sweet spot for settings, so if you do go that route try to find a way to manipulate variables using sliders or knobs, maybe on a MIDI controller? I don't know, I guess I'm rambling a bit. Also, I don't think it supports plugins, so if you went that way you still might want to look into pd as a patchbay between supercollider and plugins.
If you've got any comments about pd, or any of its linux alternatives, or even VST alternatives (since there is a dssi-vst plugin that uses wine, though I haven't used it), or just anything at all feel free to comment. I'm kind of curious as to which would have the most instrument patch files available.
Anyhow, keep practicing,
Malcolm
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