[school-discuss] On music making software: A voice of dissent or reason?

[David Bucknell <david@members.iteachnet.org>]

Quote and unquote from a friend: Please comment if you know of alternatives and
use them:
"Since Windows PC's have the wide user base it's natural the free music
programs abound there. The hard choice for newbies is knowing what works
best. The safest operating system for Midi is Win98 since W2K and XP may
need some fairly intricate compatibility mode settings. And Macs running
Windows emulation modes are non-starters for multimedia, I guess it's the
same story with Lindows etc. Since few people are going to learn to use more
than one application they often stick with the one that gets bundled with
the sound card. In the USA Cakewalk still has the widest market though it's
an ageing program (it certainly put white hairs on my head). Since I
discovered the free version of Logic Fun I've concentrated on making that
the school's 'official' sequencer, and Vanbasco the midi file player because
the latter has the better real-time control. Lots of kids now use the system
from home so I can post files on the web for them to access or download.
[URL deleted] is the nearly-ready songset for Vanbasco I'll be
using for the fourth grade musical - some of the ASCII characters need
find/replace in Karakan, an excellent application for making karaoke files.
But you'll get a good idea of what karaoke can do in school.
http://www.geocities.com/takawadanl/
For a preschool situation you can sequence songs like the Alphabet (tune of
Twinkle) or Bingo. One day I'll get around to putting them all together as a
karaoke songbook. ....[deleted section on where to find his personal music files]

That's why I have some personal resistance to an all-linux solution.
Likewise Mac is fine for industry standard work but just lacks the
soundblaster generation of kids who grew up writing stuff themselves (in
cleaner code than Microsoft I should add). I don't know of anything both
serious and free for Linux that does multi-media (though in March I'll be
listening out!).

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