On 3/11/06, Rob <lau@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Sat March 11 2006 03:45, Frank Barknecht wrote: > > With Common Music, Lilypond, Pd, Csound, Supercollider, every > > programming languange you want, and with the ability, to run > > the occasional foreign software through Wine, Linux is a very > > good platform for Composers IMO. > > And by "composers", of course, you mean "composers who are also > computer programmers". None of the people I know in real life > who compose music are going to be writing Csound, CM or > Supercollider code to do what they want. The programs they do > use, like Live, Fruityloops and Cakewalk, are still way beyond > any compositional tools we have available to us under Linux, > with all apologies to the Pd, SSM and Rosegarden guys. > > I might use code-based compositional tools (well, the ones that > can be programmed without using Lisp-like languages, which are > evil and must be destroyed), but then, I'm a composer who's also > a computer programmer. > > My advice to the parent poster is to get an Intel Mac (either a > Macbook or one of the new Mac Minis) unless one of your specific > goals as a musician is to create your music using free software. > That's one of my own goals, or I'd already have a Mac myself. > > Even then, some popular compositional tools (like Fruityloops) > are Windows-only at this point. The musicians I know who work > professionally are about a 50/50 split between OSX and Windows. > I'm the only fool I know who's trying to do everything under > Linux. > > Rob > Rob, Just chiming in to say I agree. No composer I ever met is interested in actually language-based programming to get sound. I think that's the purview of subset of folks, such as university oriented people, etc. I'm sure it's rewarding for some but it doesn't even approach being mildly interesting to a guitar player like me. I can use Linux successfully for very specific things - audio recording using Ardour and a few soft synths. Wine is mostly a curiosity. It works OK for Quicken but beyond that it's more of a frustration than it's worth to me. I understand that VSTs under Wine are a relal plus for Linux only folks, but for those with multiple platforms why bother is my general decision. I'm not intersted (personally) in being that much of a trail blazer. Mostly I still compose in Windows and more on the Mac since I bought my first machine a few months ago. I'm an Acid Pro guy vs. FL/Ableton, but they all allow me to put ideas together far faster and more accurately than I can with any of the tools on Linux. I enjoy audio recording using Ardour. It works as well or better than Pro Tools did for that. I'm not much of a MIDI guy, really, but I do miss having a real audio/MIDI platform in Linux like I had in Windows and do have on the Mac. Loop recording would be my biggest miss in the Ardour area, and somethign to replace ALL of Acid Pro is only a dream after 4 years and no developer interest. Anyway, I write to you from my Linux machine where I'm playing around with VMware type solutions. Maybe one day, right? ;-) Cheers, Mark
