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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: Guitar program
From:       Eric Laffoon <sequitur () easystreet ! com>
Date:       2001-06-09 1:01:34
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On Friday 08 June 2001 04:56 pm, Jay Oliveri wrote:
> I myself can be considered a professional musician (signed, gigs..) and
> I'm also a programmer; glad to see a thread of this kind.

Join the crowd. I've heard there area  lot of musicians in the KDE fold. I 
have been playing 30 years and though I opted not to go pro the rest of my 
high school band did and my wife is a former professional musician. 
Unfortunately you can starve all to quickly as a pro. ;-) I know that Rich 
Moore is a guitarist and Shawn Gordon is into truly radical Warr guitars. 
ARTS is also an intriguing sound system for a desktop with unusual 
capabilities. It's actually kind of amazing there are not mondo digital 
recording apps for KDE.
>
> On Wednesday 06 June 2001 05:49 pm, Jono Bacon wrote:
> > I think the aim should be for a program that can create generic
> > notation but for many types of instruments, and variations such as
> > tab and drum scores.
>
> The most popular tool in the industry right now is ProTools
> (www.digidesign.com).  Most recording studios run it; some on the
> PC/Win platform as well.  Of course it's very expensive.  AFAIK you
> need to purchase hardware along with the software as a bundle.

All of this is pretty high end and expensive. To make matters worse you have 
choices like the usual where you must run the cursed windoze or perhaps 
Mackie where you get the whole thing stand alone. Frankly even a professional 
offering for Linux would be a happier solution than nothing at all. However 
beyond the obvious midi, A/D & D/A and standard hookups for striping and ADAT 
and such the software is mostly straight forward. A high quality OSS solution 
that connected to common hardware would be an interesting development. 
>
> > I am a guitarist, drummer, bassist and vocalist...and I am going to
> > be recording a solo project and I woluld love something that I can
> > create either one instruments score (eg guitar tab and notes) or a
> > whole band score with bass, drums, guitar and lyrical lines.
>
> Me too.  I'm ready to do some real development on this.
>
> > I dont think sequencing is important other than playing back the
> > notes you create. I think the whole idea of multitrack recording is
> > not so essential. It could be added later anyway.
>
> Not sure what you mean here.

Yeah? In my opinion transcription is nice and should be a component of a 
music software system... but production is where it's at. When buy a box to 
sequence and deal with a tiny interface. Perhaps on board keyboard sequencers 
are better now but it seems to me we need the following.

- Transcription (okay I have gravitated to a savant like playing by ear but 
I'll concede this and it sounds like there are several options already in 
work.)
- Sequencing, and I'm talking being able to handle large projects and archive 
them. It's got to be better on a large computer screen then a tiny LCD.
- Sync for the sequencer to connect with recording and video.
- Hard disk recording. Let's face it disks are cheap and if you go RAID you 
can even put a lot of bandwidth through IDEs.
- Striping (sync track) for video and MIDI syncronization.
- at least some start for video production tools.
>
> > To be honest what we need is a KDevelop equivilent for score
> > creation. A main interface with lots of plugins.
>
> Right.  And the Tab interface should be a plug-in, since it's guitar
> specific.  I would say, music-illiterate-guitar-specific ;)
>
> Every Good Boy Does Fine
in your FACE ;-)
>
> > I would *love* to help work on something like this but I am just to
> > busy with other KDE stuff at the moment.
>
> Well this has been an idea I've toyed around with most of my
> programming life (it's been 16 years of programming).  It's only now I
> see the proper platform for it (KDE of course).
>
> > I really hope this discussion can be the inspiration for the creation
> > of a really cool scoring program. Maybe the authors of KGuitar,
> > Noteedit, Brahms and Rosegarden could collaborate on a new scoring
> > editor.
>
> Personally, I think that a killer app should be started to fulfill the
> higher end niche.  Linux is currently doing it as a server in much of
> corporate America, whether the suits know it or not.
>
> I think something that does excellent editing, integration with ditital
> tracks, time-coding etc. could be a great thing for the Free Software
> Community at large.  Forget Sony, Time Warner, Universal, EMI, ...

Pardon my stepping on the soap box... the fulcrum on which the battle for the 
continued open freedoms of the internet and the construction of toll bridges 
is right here in open mediums. Producing a first rate tool that can produce 
albums, scores and eventually digitally enhanced music videos could have a 
huge impact. If you can produce a first rate studio for thousands of dollars 
less and open artists to the concepts of OSS you could move toward obsoleting 
the distribution channels that are attempting to legislate DMCA and such.

Once mainstream commercial acts market music directly on the internet for 1/3 
the price (and 3x-4x the profit) record companies of yore will go the way of 
vynil LPs. I say don't let the door hit them on the way out. ;-)
>
> I am of course volunteering to contribute in the areas of design and
> implementation (coding).  If nothing else I'll run with it myself, get
> a stable base design then accounce it when I think people can
> contribute in a meaningful way.

I'm another person who has this on my "someday" list. If you have similar 
goals and are starting something please let me know so I can see how 
"someday" is looking.
>
> Anyone (including you Jono) is free to contact me directly :)
>
> > 	Jono
>
> --
> Jay Locke                                    "In the land of the blind,
>                                               the one-eyed man is king."
> GnuPG ID: 0x2EC6780C
>
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-- 
Eric Laffoon                    sequitur@kde.org
A member of the Quanta+ Web development team
http://quanta.sourceforge.net
 
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