Have you looked at Hydrogen? Jan On Tue, 2004-05-11 at 01:38, Charles Goyard wrote: > Hi all, > > this is my first post on the list, so I'll introduce myself shortly. I > play (bass guitar) in a punk rock band with a drum machine (an old Boss > DR-5). We are kind of limited by the drumbox, because of the small > memory size (200 patterns, 20 songs), the non-extensible and boring drum > kits and the lack of certain features. As a system administrator with a > bits of programming knowledge (I know Perl, a bit of C and some other > useful things) and a free software fan, I said to myself : let's get a > software drum machine on a laptop, it should have unlimited features. > > So far I looked at a number of projects, but none is usable on stage. > > Here's what I need : > > 1/ A simple programming interface (Hydrogen is perfect). It can also be > something like a simple programming language editable in a text editor. > > 2/ For length-fixed songs, it's just a playback of a .wav, no problems. > > 3/ On some songs, we stop the drumbox, play a bit, and start it again. > When I hit the stop pedal, it stops immediately (and therefore I need to > hit "reset" to be sure to be at the beginning of the pattern when it > starts again). It would like it to stop at the end of the pattern if I > hit the stop button. > > 4/ It should "know" the song structure: > > "start" : plays part1 of song > "stop" : stops :) > "start" : again part1 > "stop" : still stops > "start" : plays part2 of song > > 5/ We need programmable tempo changes. > > 6/ Big display, playlist control, easy to load songs ! We're on stage, > it's dark,, there is smoke, and it's not very practical to > "file/open/click/click/click..." with a guitar in the hand and people > jumping over you. Song name should be displayed BIG (full screen), the > name of the next song should be already programmed, so I just have to > press space (or a pedal wired to the parallel or whatever port) to jump > to the next song. > > > I just spoke about a pedal. I can build a "stop/start, next song" pedal > and code something that reads events and make it to the audio app. > > > > For some songs, just chaining two or three .wav files works well enough. > But when it comes to things more elaborate, I have been unable to find > something appropriate. > > == The point is to have something simple to use on stage. == > > > I imagine a little program that feeds a software drumbox MIDI (or JACK?) > events for stop/start/jumpto/tempo changes. I just don't want to > reinvent the wheel. > > > If someone has something that does the job or some hints/useful > libraries/glue, I would be happy ! > > > Thanks for your reading, enjoy music ! > > > > -- > Charles > you can listen to some of my music on http://www.raia.info/ > (french web site, sorry for non-french-speaking people)
