13 May, 2005
Music
I've finally got around to finishing and polishing a new track. When I finished last night, I was too tired to bother posting it, so it had to wait until this morning.
Have a listen to it - it's the first track (Letsee) on my music page.
I'm sorry that the recording is a little glitchy, but I'm a little restricted by the way I work.
I use cheesetracker, because I'm so used to the interface. Before Windows was popular, I used to play with trackers like scream tracker. Later, I moved onto impulse tracker and then started to get into Cubase, like the professionals use.
Changing from a tracker to a sequencer was a little strange. The control was different, and I couldn't do things in the same way, but on the plus side, I had plenty of scope for new sounds because I was no longer constrained to sample mashing.
When I switched permanently to Linux, I started looking around for audio software and came up with Jack, a brilliant system for connecting audio software. There are great softsynths out there, like Zynaddsubfx, that rival the very expensive Windows versions, and sequencers like the very good Muse.
The trouble was, I still couldn't get as much out of them as I did with a simple tracker interface.
There would always be something I couldn't do - some parameter I couldn't record or automate, some bug that crashed one of the apps at the wrong time.
Then I found Cheesetracker - a Jack compatible tracker. I love it. It has instruments with pitch, volume and filter envelopes, multiple layers and effect sends to 16 effects buffers, plus more scope to route buffers through other, global, ones.
And this is how I've been working. I still make use of Zynaddsubfx for creating sounds, but they all end up back in cheesetracker.
The only problem is, Cheesecake doesn't (yet?) allow you to write a "perfect" audio file - you have to record the output, like you would with a sequencer. This is annoying, because if everything is done in the tracker, there's no reason why it can't be asked to slip out of sync with the jack server and write a glitchless audio file straight to disk.
I also can't bounce tracks, like I would with a sequencer. When a track is finished, or at least finished for now, I want to be able to "fix" it - record with all the notes and effects into a single sample. This would free up my processor for working on the un-fixed tracks.
Because I can't do any of this, there are the odd glitches, caused by a spike in the CPU load or disk access while I'm recording.
I think the author of cheesetracker intends to add these kinds of features, but unfortunately, like most open source coders, he doesn't have huge amounts of time to devote to the project. If I had time myself, I'd help out, but I don't.
So, I either work with the problems or go back to windows, Cubase and a more stable audio environment. I chose to stick with this, work with it, help when I can and be part of something more than just a user-base.
Have a listen to it - it's the first track (Letsee) on my music page.
I'm sorry that the recording is a little glitchy, but I'm a little restricted by the way I work.
I use cheesetracker, because I'm so used to the interface. Before Windows was popular, I used to play with trackers like scream tracker. Later, I moved onto impulse tracker and then started to get into Cubase, like the professionals use.
Changing from a tracker to a sequencer was a little strange. The control was different, and I couldn't do things in the same way, but on the plus side, I had plenty of scope for new sounds because I was no longer constrained to sample mashing.
When I switched permanently to Linux, I started looking around for audio software and came up with Jack, a brilliant system for connecting audio software. There are great softsynths out there, like Zynaddsubfx, that rival the very expensive Windows versions, and sequencers like the very good Muse.
The trouble was, I still couldn't get as much out of them as I did with a simple tracker interface.
There would always be something I couldn't do - some parameter I couldn't record or automate, some bug that crashed one of the apps at the wrong time.
Then I found Cheesetracker - a Jack compatible tracker. I love it. It has instruments with pitch, volume and filter envelopes, multiple layers and effect sends to 16 effects buffers, plus more scope to route buffers through other, global, ones.
And this is how I've been working. I still make use of Zynaddsubfx for creating sounds, but they all end up back in cheesetracker.
The only problem is, Cheesecake doesn't (yet?) allow you to write a "perfect" audio file - you have to record the output, like you would with a sequencer. This is annoying, because if everything is done in the tracker, there's no reason why it can't be asked to slip out of sync with the jack server and write a glitchless audio file straight to disk.
I also can't bounce tracks, like I would with a sequencer. When a track is finished, or at least finished for now, I want to be able to "fix" it - record with all the notes and effects into a single sample. This would free up my processor for working on the un-fixed tracks.
Because I can't do any of this, there are the odd glitches, caused by a spike in the CPU load or disk access while I'm recording.
I think the author of cheesetracker intends to add these kinds of features, but unfortunately, like most open source coders, he doesn't have huge amounts of time to devote to the project. If I had time myself, I'd help out, but I don't.
So, I either work with the problems or go back to windows, Cubase and a more stable audio environment. I chose to stick with this, work with it, help when I can and be part of something more than just a user-base.
# posted by Digehode @ 12:46 pm 
