Category Archives: Music

fingerplay: a midi controller for android

Posted on August 21, 2010 by lsd

I’ve been slack in updating ye olde blog, but I have an excuse — I got a new phone! It’s a HTC Desire, running Android of course, and I’ve been having great fun trying different apps and discovering what I can do with it. I started a lengthy post covering my thoughts on both the Desire and Android, but in lieu of finishing that, I present you instead with an introduction to FingerPlay MIDI, a very cool MIDI controller app for Android.

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new track: phase transition

Posted on July 26, 2010 by lsd

It’s been about six weeks since I posted my little SooperLooper jam, and here it is in its final form, or at least what became of it. This was a difficult one to pull together — I initially just polished my sketch version of it, but that didn’t give me the results I was after, so I ended up ditching that effort and re-arranging it from scratch, finally getting an inspiration for the central progression and ending last week. Once I had that idea, it didn’t take long on the weekend to flesh it out.

This is another Seq24/Hydrogen/Ardour recording, with Blofeld synths, though I also created my own drum sounds (mostly on the Blofeld again) for this one. I also used PHASEX as the synth for the lead arpeggio — it’s a simple patch, but I really liked how it sounded, so it stayed in the final version.

EDIT: Turns out that the download links were broken! I’ve fixed them now, so if you had trouble downloading, please try again now.


mp3 | ogg | flac | 5 minutes 4 seconds

Posted in Music, Releases | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

roasting bacon

Posted on July 17, 2010 by lsd

I don’t often listen to the TLLTS podcast, but I caught a recent episode (number 361) featuring Jono Bacon, and I was not impressed. I wish Bacon would stop commenting about the state of Linux audio, because it’s clear to me — but probably not clear to the larger community — that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

He explained on the show that he doesn’t use Linux for his music production, and I should say up-front that I don’t have a problem with this. Linux certainly isn’t ideal for everyone, and if Bacon has a solid, working Windows-based setup, there’s nothing wrong with him sticking with that and focusing on making music.

However, it’s very clear to me that he has no idea about the current state of Linux audio production, spreading the usual outdated nonsense about JACK being overly complex to set up, ignoring the existence of quite usable MIDI sequencers like Qtractor and Rosegarden, and giving very short shrift to Hydrogen’s abilities as a drum synth. These tools, with a suitable velocity-layered drumkit, might not give the same results as quickly as Bacon’s proprietary setup can, but they’d certainly do the job, especially once you run each drum in to Ardour for separate processing.

Why do I have such a problem with this? Well, it’s because Bacon is widely known and respected as an open-source evangelist, and also as a musician, so his words carry weight. I and my fellow Linux musicians know he’s mistaken, but a casual listener would assume that he knows what he’s talking about, given his background, and would probably write off Linux as a music production platform because of it.

Again, to be clear, I’m not saying Bacon should use Linux. I’m not even saying that he should spend the time to learn about making music on Linux. I just wish he’d stop talking about it as if he does know what he’s talking about.

Posted in Linux, Music, Rants | Tagged , , , , | 7 Comments

sketchbook: psindustralizer drums

Posted on July 6, 2010 by lsd

I’ve been playing with percussion lately, and wanted some metallic sounds, and I remembered a little app that I played with a while ago called Power Station Industralizer, a physically modeled percussion synth. It’s a little unwieldy — it’s non-realtime, so you have to “render” the sound after tweaking parameters before you can play it, and it has some annoying issues — but it can certainly make some nice clangy, smashy, metallic drum sounds. I came up with a few and threw them in to Hydrogen; the results are below.

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Posted in Music, Sketchbook | Tagged , | 1 Comment

ascap vs creative commons? seriously?

Posted on June 27, 2010 by lsd

It seems like that last post of mine detailing my selfish reasons for making my music available for free couldn’t have been better timed. ASCAP has launched an attack on Creative Commons, the EFF, and Public Knowledge, asking its members to donate to a fund that will be used to campaign against copyleft licencing in the US Congress. The letter it sent to its members reads like the kind of FUD you’d expect from 90s Microsoft:

“They say they are advocates of consumer rights, but the truth is these groups simply do not want to pay for the use of our music. Their mission is to spread the word that our music should be free.”

This could not be further from the truth — Creative Commons gives artists tools to control what they wish to allow other people to do with their own work. It’s not aimed at tearing down traditional copyright, and it’s certainly not aimed at providing free access to existing copyrighted works. I’ve talked about the fact that I use CC because it’s in my best interest, but I wouldn’t claim that it’s the best option for all artists.

I can only think that ASCAP is targeting Creative Commons because it’s becoming a credible alternative to the old performance royalty model. If a cafe owner wants some background music for their customers, they can play any appropriately-licenced CC music; that is, any work not using the “Non-Commercial” clause. As more music becomes available under these licences, and awareness of its existence grows, it will be increasingly practical to work with CC music rather than pay ASCAP fees.

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my selfish reasons for making free music with free software

Posted on June 25, 2010 by lsd

People sometimes ask me why use free and open-source tools for my music production, when there’s such an incredible wealth of commercial options out there. More often, the subject of selling music comes up, and people ask why I give mine away for free. I’d like to say that it’s a selfless promotion of free culture, but the reality is far more pragmatic, and perhaps a little selfish. Using free tools and releasing my music for free is simply what works best for me.

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Posted in Music | Tagged , | 3 Comments

sketchbook: a sooperlooper jam

Posted on June 19, 2010 by lsd

SooperLooper is proving to be a lot of fun! Last weekend I fired it up and did some impromptu jamming, following this basic formula:

  • Slap together a basic four-bar drum pattern in Hydrogen
  • Export that pattern as a loop and import it in to SooperLooper as loop 1
  • Play a bunch of random crap over the top, and if it sounds okay, grab a loop of it
  • Lather, rinse, repeat

I saved those sessions, and had a quick stab at turning one of them in to a proper track, which I call “sl3″, by importing the loops in to Ardour and moving/coping them in to an arrangement. I also threw in some effects for good measure: EQ, a couple of delays (can’t help myself with those!), and an insert out to Rakarrack to add some guts to my fairly limp bass loop. I’m sure I could make it more interesting by re-recording a few parts — replacing the drum loop with a properly programmed part with a bit of variety, for instance — but hey, for an hour-and-a-half’s work, I think it sounds okay!


mp3 | vorbis | 2:27

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live brainstorming with sooperlooper

Posted on May 31, 2010 by lsd

One thing that’s always a challenge as a solo music-maker is being able to just goof around and try new ideas quickly. With just one keyboard and a single pair of hands, I can’t play a bunch of parts at the same time like the members of a band could. I’ve wondered if software could come to my rescue, and indeed I have used seq24 quite a bit now, but it’s really designed more for live arrangement of pre-written patterns rather than true live improvisation and performance. I think I’ve found a solution now, but I took quite a round-about path to find it.

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thinking inside the box

Posted on May 27, 2010 by lsd

The computer has revolutionised the way we make music, but it also begs a question: how much work do you do “in the box”, using software sequencers, effects, and instruments, and how much do you do with hardware and traditional instruments? When I started making music again last year, having a powerful hardware synth was a huge enabler for me — I really do believe that it, as much as anything, is the reason I’m still making music with Linux now after so many abortive attempts over the years. Now that I have a few tracks under my belt, though, I’m as surprised as anyone to realise that I seem to be working “in the box” more and more.

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Posted in Music | Tagged , , , , , | 6 Comments

some quick podcasty updates

Posted on May 26, 2010 by lsd

Three podcast releases, all involving me in some way, that I feel compelled to draw attention to:

  • A new Partners in Lag — in this ep, we talk about Red Dead Redemption, all things Halo, Steam on the Mac, and the potential future for Linux gaming
  • Episode 39 of the Open Source Musician Podcast — another community call-in show, where a bunch of us chat about a whole heap of things
  • Episode 41 is out, too — this one features all of the entries for the Tunestorm02 challenge. Even though they were all recorded with household item sounds, in line with the theme of the challenge, there’s huge variety in the results, so it’s well worth checking out.
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