linux diary

which OS is the future

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Speaking of the Expert Sleepers plugins and hardware, here's an amusing forum exchange about which computer operating system is "the future":

hems: Not having a linux version [of Expert Sleepers] is a real deal breaker. Product manufacturers like ES and cycling74 must start thinking about the future (linux), and not only the present (osx) and the past (windows).

A couple of responses to hems:

bsmith: I dunno, I'm still pretty nervous about the y2k bug around the corner. Just got back from seeing sixth sense at the movies - that M. Night Shyamalan and his clever plot twists, I tell ya...

And (a bit more substantively):

Waz: Windows is definitely not "the past". I would say apple's recent decisions both in design and software will cause it some major headaches and put it into that category. I've been running solely in a linux environment for 3 years and in dual boot for well over a decade. Recently, I had to install windows 10 to use Ableton. W10 is pretty solid, well designed, and stable. I easily have way less headaches than in the linux environment. Things just work when you plug them in. No editing config files and installing binaries/packages from all over the internet. With that said, I still use Linux for my day to day stuff, but it has a LOOOONG way to go if it wants to compete with W10, or OSX in the general population. For music people especially, JACK is a fucking nightmare to work with. For power-users, multi-desktop monitor support is just terrible. This is in an age when the general population is starting to use multi-monitor systems for work and play. For gamers, Linux is another nightmare. I have over 200 linux games in my steam library. I think 40 or 50 work properly. The other 150 need some pretty heavy editing of config files due to my multi-monitor setup. Not to mention the headaches that come from developers who abandon their linux ports. General end-users don't want to run scripts, edit configs, search for dependencies, and work in the command line.

digital residency at gazell.io in progress

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My residency at Gazell.io (the online component of London's Gazelli Art House gallery) began yesterday.

First post and intro/bio

Second post

Archive with artists who have participated so far (Laura Brothers, Philip Colbert, Hyo Myoung Kim, Giovanna Olmos)

The plan is to stick with a consistent style for a month even if it kills me. It will be a mix of things I've posted here and new work. My bio reads:

Tom Moody is an artist based in New York City, who makes low-tech art with simple imaging programs, scanners, and consumer printers. In his recent work he uses a Linux PC and open source software, “to see what kinds of results and effects I can achieve,” he says. “These are all ‘default’ Linux programs employed here, and drawings made with a tablet rather than the command line.”

I had some more stuff ranting about Apple and Windows but decided to give it a rest.

"Soundfonts"

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"Soundfonts" [mp3 removed -- please listen on Bandcamp]

This was done with Linux Ardour. Am having some issues with probably needing a faster processor to run this software, so I am sticking to relatively small "soundfont" files in Fluidsynth, a plugin sample player. The method of this track was to write a few bars of beats, record them, then use the MIDI with the beats to play organs and other pitched instruments, then make changes to the melodies of those, then use the MIDI to play new beats, etc. Eventually chunks of 2- and 4-bar audio begin to accumulate on four tracks of the timeline, which can be arranged into a tune. A final mix was done in Windows Cubase, where some reverb and compression was added.

"Half-Calf," "Two Themes"

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"Half-Calf" [mp3 removed -- please listen on Bandcamp]

"Two Themes" [mp3 removed -- please listen on Bandcamp]

Am sort of using Linux Ardour, with its plugins, as a loop generator, and then assembling the loops into songs in Windows Cubase. (Cubase is still faster and more reliable for me as a final editor.)
I am using Ardour's MIDI out to trigger a (hardware) modular synth, and then recording the output back into Ardour and combining it with softsynths. One of the softsynths is Calf Plugins' Fluidsynth, which plays "soundfont" samples. I found a collection of soundfont files based on the E-Mu Orbit 9090 synth module, from the '90s, which is where the rave nostalgia in "Half-Calf" is coming from.

"No Windows"

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"No Windows" [mp3 removed -- please listen on Bandcamp]

My first track produced on my PC running the Linux Mint OS. Ardour is the software used -- a DAW (digital audio workstation) that handles similarly to Cubase.
The sound sources are

--the Moog Concertmate keyboard, played live and recorded into Ardour
--some found old school synth beats
--Doepfer modular mini-synth, triggered by MIDI from Ardour and recorded simultaneously into the DAW
--Calf's Monosynth, a softsynth plugin for Ardour that can be played using an Ardour MIDI track and exported as audio
--"Reasonable," a default softsynth for Ardour MIDI tracks

For a soundcard I used Native Instruments' Komplete Audio 6 (hat tip Joel for suggesting this). The ALSA driver in the Linux "kernel" recognizes this class-compliant USB device; audio ins, outs and MIDI are ported to/from it using the JACK streaming & connection program. This took a few days of reading forums to set up (although Ardour installs JACK automatically, I had to add the NI hardware in a separate Jack control called QJACKCTL, and instructions on how to do this varied).

Am very happy to be able to make music pretty similar to what I've been doing on Windows and have a final mixdown without (unintentional) clicks or glitches.
MAJOR NEGATIVE: At present the only way I can run Ardour is with an unacceptable amount of latency (about a fifth of a second). When I reduce the sample buffer I get pops and the dreaded "XRUNS" -- dropouts in the audio. The next task is to try to optimize the PC (which has a fast-enough processor and lots of RAM) without interfering with other things I use the computer for. Ardour also has a tendency to crackle when moving windows and clicking graphics inside the interface while audio is playing. This is annoying but doesn't affect the final output.