CLAMP: project last words

It is with great sadness that I post my last entry regarding CLAMP. It has been a terrific few months, and I have learned so much in such a small amount of time. But all good things must end sometime, right?

At this point in time, I am done with all academic requirements. I have written my paper, finished all my music, and have presented my project to a panel judges.

All that is left for me to do is organizing and improving my project. I want to finish up my CASE pages, adding more screenshots and stuff. I still need to add descriptions to the later Demos. I also may add some additional things like an offline copy of this blog.

After all this is done, my entire project file will be put in a zip file and then posted online somehow for download. My hope is that I will be able to use archive.org for my project needs. Then, I will go to work on developing a general portfolio website for myself, which will include CLAMP.

Thank you to all who supported and helped to contribute to CLAMP. A special shoutout to Mr.Chinosi, Brendan Hathaway, and Mr.Carpenter. Without them, my project would not have existed.

Long Live Linux,

Paul Batchelor (aka Ralph Bluecoat)

CLAMP: completion of software evals, and beyond

I just finished writing a software evaluation for Reaper running under Wine, which marks the last review I shall be writing for CLAMP.

With this last eval done, I have to start thinking about my final stages of this project.

This includes:

1. Finishing my research paper on Linux Music
2. Completing software evals, adding scores and screenshots to make them true CASEs
3. Compiling a presentation on CLAMP
4. Getting my project organized for opensource public distribution
5. working on ExCLAMP: The Extended Concise Linux Audio Music Project. More to come on this later.

It feels great seeing the end of the tunnel, and I hope to see you all there when I make it!

Paul

CLAMP: wrapping up demos

There has been a huge amount of progress since my last post. Actually, I was quite disappointed with myself when my last post was only the news of "demo 6"

Yesterday, I was working on Demo 9, and it should be done in a few days.

Yup. Demo 9. That means there was a 7 and 8 preceding it. They have been made, but I still have to write a description of them still.

Demo 9 will mark the end of the end of the musical demos created. When Demo 9 is finnished, I will have researched 26 pieces of software and used 23 of them. This number is not including the 4 pieces of software that I abandoned early on.

I am truly excited to be seeing an end to this wonderful project and seeing things wrapped up.

But it's not over until its over. I still have a paper to finish up, CASEs to write, and oh so little time.

Demo 6

Demo 6 just finnished rendering to an mp3.

It'll be up in a while on the demo page.

Its here:

http://c-l-a-m-p.wikispaces.com/demos

I've decided to hold back on the written evaluations, and finish up my demos. I've used most of the software, and you can see my status with my checklist I made in googledocs.

http://docs.google.com/View?id=dcbdsd28_199gq8jv4d8

Basically, its a list of all the software I plan to use (much different than the rough draft list I put up, with a coded status for each one.

Demo 5

Demo 5 produced.

check it out on my webpage:

c-l-a-m-p.wikispaces.org

CLAMP: audio interface up and running

Hello all!

Its been a few weeks since my last post, and I apologize for my lag. Fieldwork has left me with not a lot of time for little updates like these. Its been alot of experimenting, outlining, screenshotting, praying, and writing on my part. But its (mostly) been a blast to do!

In under 36 hours I have to finish a rough draft of my research paper, so things can be a little crunched for time. It looks like a majority will be CLAMP condensed into one paper, but we'll see what happens.

I write this post to praise my reader, Mr. Adam Carpenter, who shares my love of making music and seems to genuinely support my efforts for this project. He has lent me his Tascam US-122 firmware audio/midi interface. You may be saying "Paul, you have the US-144 audio interface, why would you want something below?" In a word: compatibility. Linux drivers don't support the US-144 well enough yet, and they support the US-122 beautifully. Today I got it hooked up and running in under half an hour. The US-122 will make it possible for me to hook up things like quality microphones and ukuleles and basses to my computer. This is a very exciting moment for me, and its all possible thanks to my man Mr.Carpenter!

Don't worry Mr.C, I'll be taking good care of it.

-Paul

PS: here is the article I used to get the interface working:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/TASCAM_US-122

CLAMP: working rubric

Tonight I worked on around 7 CASEs, or CLAMP Audio Software Evaluation's. These basically consist of a rubric and a written review of each one.

I posted this for two reasons:

1. To exclaim that my rubric is done! and that the guidelines (WIP) can be viewed here

2. To post a sample, which is here

Reviews definitely will take longer to do, and will give the audience a much better sense of what the software is about. I will work on those in the weeks to come.

peace out!

Should be asleep. But all hail the opensource movement!

I should be asleep but I just thought I'd share two things:

1. This ad promoting the Linux operating system always pumps me up. I remember watching it years ago. I just watched it a few minutes ago, and I could pick up all the connections to the open-source revolution. It was a very satisfying rewatch for me and I hope you enjoy.

2. Project Durian, the opensource movie project is doing its part in being a completely opensource movie. Not only will the project files for the movie be available once it is done, but it is relying on much user support to contribute to the movie. I don't know if they went to this extent in the previous open movies, but it truley makes me excited seeing stuff like this.

Off to bed maybe.

-P

CLAMP rant

Sometimes, ignorance displeases me.

Since no one reads this and I know my teacher likes transparency, I thought I'd go ahead and rant.

I got a concise message about my project page. one of the two lines said this:
"calendar is good, but the weekend only work was curious."

I was called out on it in class, and I thought he was kidding. Apparently he was not.

Ok. Let this be known: just because I begin stuff on weekends doesn't mean they'll end on weekends. I fixed the problem so even morons can understand what I mean when I say "begin demo x" on friday.

I am insulted that anyone would think that I am doing weekend only work. The entire electronic music community should be insulted as well. Any person worth mentioning knows it can take weeks to create a worth while track. And thats using familiar software. I'm using over 20 different kinds of software. Most of these I have to learn how to use in a weeks time. On top of that, I have to make something musical out of it. You tell me again that that is weekend only work. I respect this dude alot, but if this man only went to my page describing what Demos were, I think it would be obvious to see that these take time.

As I said before, I've tailored my calender so that an audience failing to read and interpret my cryptic calenders can instead visually see that it takes time. But world, Id like to let you know that this was for you and not me.

My calenders and action plan can be seen at this address

The good news is that I got another bit of advice:
"also add some more details on interviews and such things"
I'll agree with that one. More details on my interviews will be publicly available as soon as possible.

CLAMP Calender

CLAMP calender available publicly at this link:

http://sites.google.com/site/conciselinuxaudiomusicproject/

CLAMP: Rougly Draft

My rougly draft has been made:
http://docs.google.com/View?id=dcbdsd28_184hk6m33c7

Its basically just an intro, and more is obviously to come. Stay tuned for more!

CLAMP: FST working

FST basically is a program that enables the use of VST plugins on the linux platform using wine.

After much fuss, I finally got it compiled on my system with the help of a website found here. It was a top-hit when I googled for help compiling.


I tried it out. Synth1 seems to work fine except when you try to select presets, and Superwave P8 doesn't seem to have audio (it doesn't show up in the audio connectoin ports when I connect it to jack)

I'll see if I can do anything with this...

-P

CLAMP: Two new books

Ms.Johns is amazing. Let me tell you why.

A week ago, I had asked her if she happened to know any good books on the history of linux. Sure enough, she comes back to me two days later telling me she just bought two new books for the libary. Today, I have them in my hands:

The Cathedral and the Bazaar by Eric S. Raymond

Rebel Code by Glyn Moody

I read the prefaces and forwards to both of these books, and skimmed the table of contents. I am looking forward to reading these two new sources!

I wonder if the library can help me find any books on specifically computer generated music... hmmm...

CLAMP: online mp3 players

tonight I just finnished creating the first CLAMP audio demo. Under 2 minutes long, the demo utilizes the following applications:

Renoise
Jack
Hydrogen
Aeolus
Zynnsubaddfx
Hexter
Nekobee
Audacity

currently, Im trying to figure out how to get an online mp3 player up and running to play demos. so far, this player seem sot eb my best bet, but there are a few others that I'm going to ry. I have no idea how to use this, but it seems fairly well documented. I'll be uploading the player to my wikispaces account, and I just hope that I will have enough space to hold all the files I need to hold.

Also, stay tuned for some screenshots I took while making the demo. We love screenshots.

CLAMP: lit review rough draft

Working on my lit review right now in class. A second draft to be more specific. The literature review is a brief overview of the sources I've read so far. The rough draft can be viewed publically via google docs at this link.

Draft 2 will be coming soon! I gotta go!

The CLAMPtree v 1.0

Bibliography is up!

Thank goodness for bibme.org

I'm able to keep a database of my entire bibliography, which will be organized and formatted automatically. And its all online.

On another note, I've been invited to a place called dropbox, which seems to be a free online FTP tool which can sync really well to your computer.

A new possible direction: I want to be able to distribute not only my project, but the research for that project. All phone conversations, emails, websites, files, and maybe even hard copys of books all will be easily downloaded in one large zip file.

Zebra Project is coming out with a soon in a few weeks called "what could be." It will be available for download at my reverbnation website: www.reverbnation.com/thezebraproject.

Also made the first few seconds of my first CLAMP audio snippet, which so far features Renoise and Zynnaddsubfx, two pieces of software Im familiar with. You gotta start somewhere right?

Banana

So I realize that some people may find this blog a little hard to understand. CLAMP hopes to be understandable by everyone at some level, but you won't find that here in this blog. Instead, check out my glossary page at this link.


So what exactly is the point of this post? Well, consider this a break from the techy talk. Instead of boring geeky rants, I give you this banana:



Enjoy, Kate.

-P

Aeolus

Aeolus is a pipe-organ emulator for GNU linux. I had rediscovered today, and installed it problem free through synaptic. The trouble I had always had with Aeolus was the fact that could not get it to produce any sound. However, today I really messed with some controls and did some total experimentation, and whatdyaknow I got some really nifty sounds! Is this going on the list? It sure is.


PS: Random idea at 3pm: remember to make screenshots. Lots of screenshots. And remember to take notes on how hard it was to install software.

PPS: Ingen and Galan will be officially taken off the list.

Didn't install audacity

Of all the software to forget to install, I missed audacity, one of the first pieces of software to come to mind for me when I think of Linux audio software... DUH!

COOL IDEA AT 1 AM: make a folder with little clips of cool sounds i want to emulate. :D

CLAMP: qtractor, nekobee, AMS

Hey all!

Yesterday was a brief investigation into two applications, and a discovery of another promising one.

Alsa Modular Synthesizer:

Boy, its programs like these that make me doubt my project. It attempts to emulate voltage controlled modular synthesis like those developed by Robert Moog. Why does it it worry me? I doubt I'll be able to learn the software and use it to its full extent. Based on the some what open-ended documentation I read, I came to the conclusion that users of the synthesizer we're expected to have a previous experience with modular synthesizers. My experience with modular synthesizers is quite small, so I got lost a little bit reading this. However, AMS has many example files, and by the end of the night I was able to produce a basic sawtooth patch which could be midi controlled.

Nekobee:

This was a TB303 emulator I had heard about a year ago or so. Its a very simple synth, with a single oscillator, ADSR envelope, and a filter, but it can produce some really neat bass sounds. I could not find much information on this synth online, but this synth is easy enough to figure out.

Qtractor:

I literally just opened this application just to see if it works. I found this application on this website, and the screenshots I saw of this looked very promising. I found it on the ubuntu package manager, and installed it. Qtractor will be added to my Software List, which ofcourse is still in constant flux.

Thinking outloud, that software list is getting awfully big. It needs some organization.

Finally, I made a new page on my CLAMP page: Check it out!

Alright, I think thats about it.

-P

CLAMP: top 3 major accomplishments

Its febuary break, and CLAMP is trudging along now! Much software that I hoped to install has been installed already, and I've made some personal breakthroughs.

To name 3:

1. The realtime Linux Kernel: used to optimize and prioritize programs the computer executes, the Linux kernel has always been a bit of a mystery for me and something far off in the distance. Thanks to a few easy to follow tutorials and references, getting the realtime kernel to work with my audio programs was surprisingly problem-free. Well, EnergyXT had some issues, but we'll fix that issue when we get there.

2. WineASIO: Still not entirely sure what the full use of this is, or what ASIO is, but it was needed to hook up reaper to jack. smells like a point of research for me! Reaper is so far golden for me under the Linux-RT kernel and WineASIO and I hope to be making some music with it soon!

3. Bristol: I haven't used it too much, but this software appears to be too good to be true. Its an emulation of many major vintage synths including the Juno-6 and the minimoog. It even has SID-chip inspired synth. I believe I compiled this one from source because it wasn't working right when I installed via synaptic (suprise suprise.) More to come on this bit of software.

Alright, theres my little tidbit for you today.

Til next time,

Paul

Happy new year?

Hello World.
My life in bullets:
-Im at the school library. Thank goodness for C-block frees. I thought I'd write a little something here.

-Happy new year. Seriously. I don't think I've made a post since the new year. Very sad indeed.

-January. What a month. 5 concerts and 2 auditions in 4 weeks. Im glad this is over with.

-CLAMP, an investigation of Music on the Linux platform, can be seen here c-l-a-m-p.wikispaces.org. its my project and it will be my life soon. check it out.


more updates on CLAMP and life to come cya!