Re: [seul-edu] Music Software

[Ben Armstrong <synrg@sanctuary.nslug.ns.ca>]

On Wed, 31 May 2000, Bill Tihen -- TECHNOLOGY wrote:
> He also wants to know about Midi software -- which may
> be included above I don't know.  In anycase, if any of
> you are familiar with the music software on Linux I
> would appreciate your help finding some solution for the
> new teacher.  (He came on board too late to be a part of
> the next year's technology budget -- but it would be a
> shame to make him wait a whole year.)

Recently, my wife and I have looked at lots of midi/audio
sequencer/recorders and players, both freeware and shareware, and also
some Linux open source programs (Rosegarden, kmid, Jazz++, timidity) and
while some of the Linux stuff looks like a good start, we find Linux midi
software to be still quite behind Windows, and driver support for the SB
Live! is still rather poor (alsa, at least, supports the wavetable synth
features of the card, but it's still not working quite to my
satisfaction).  So it's Windows for now for midi.  (Although the
professional musicians I know all swear by the Macintosh.  But I don't
have a Mac.) 
 
I'd love to be able to run the Windows midi stuff under VMWare, but the
vmware web page tells me that they haven't virtualized midi sound support
yet.  In the mean time, we're rebooting our "music system" to Windows and
using Powertracks Pro Audio 6, available from www.pgmusic.com rather
cheaply ($25 US, I think ... we got our copy for $45 Canadian locally
which is about equivalent to ordering from the US considering the exchange
rate and shipping).  Powertracks is definitely a beginner's program, but
it's something good to get started with (no sense in shelling out for a
more expensive program when we barely use a fraction of the functionality
of Powertracks so far).  A free download demo is available so you can
check it out beforehand.

Ben
-- 
    nSLUG       http://www.nslug.ns.ca      synrg@sanctuary.nslug.ns.ca
    Debian      http://www.debian.org       synrg@debian.org
[ pgp key fingerprint = 7F DA 09 4B BA 2C 0D E0  1B B1 31 ED C6 A9 39 4F ]
[ gpg key fingerprint = 395C F3A4 35D3 D247 1387  2D9E 5A94 F3CA 0B27 13C8 ]