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!

Apologies They'll Never Hear

The internet is a marvelous place. One can say things behind a wall. The direction connection between speaker and audience is chopped. While most have a problem with this, I find this an incredible technological breakthrough. So finally without anymore introduction, I give you an anonymous confession which everyone will hear:

A list of apologies that they won't ever hear:

1. Im sorry for constantly staring at you. I know you noticed which makes things worse. I find you attractive, and I tend to be very unsubtle about those things.
2. Im sorry for leading you on and giving you that one shred of hope. It will never happen. And if anything does happen, it will be for the wrong reasons.
3. I shouldn't have said no. I should have had more courage to say yes. I'm sorry I couldn't have been more open with you.
4. Im sorry being a bad son. I know you cry every night because I can hear you, and I know its my fault. I wish I could be better.
5. Im sorry I acted like a know-it-all. The truth is, I know very little, and that scares me. Now we barely talk, which saddens me.
6. Im sorry I put you through hell in 8th grade. While I still don't like you, I know you were feeling really bad about yourself, and still I kicked you down. The worse part is that I still talk trash about you behind your back. It truely is nauseating.
7. Im sorry for being a douchebag to you. I do this thing where I defensively say hurtful things, and apologize very quickly. Its pathetic, but I really wanted to be friends. You are alot of fun to be around, and it kills me that I didn't get to know you.
8. Im sorry for ever bothering to pursue you. Whether or not you even think or care about me I don't know. I just feel like it was a mistake to try anything.

See you all later,

Paul

more late night

its late, and I need to write something here. its been a while.

http://www.youtube.com/ralphbluecoat

not much in that vid... but its the start of a project im starting. Basically, i recently discovered the wonders of using fused plastic bags as a material. I am basically going to see what weaving the stuff does. This vid basically says why and how I am making it. its really bad. Im not going to lie.

maille buisness is getting some customers. i got my rings in the process ofbeing made, and I should be up in no time.

new website is being made @ www.zebraproject.tk. its painstakingly slow, but thats only cuz I can't seem to find enough time to put into it. i sorta have to go to college. :/

alright, goodnight

wandering in cambridge

as of today i have been in cambridge england for a week. my purpose: assist my aunt in the creation of a double bass. the week dedicated to the workshop is over; now I must find myself some things to do. This should be a relativly easy task, considering how everything around here seems to be in walking distance. I have pictures on the progress of my doublebass on facebook if you are interested at all.

various projects:

I did mention a bit about the ABC notation system and lilypond. Its been working great. I can brnig my alphasmart and my ukulele anywhere and digitize music playing in my head. Im still using vim, and I've made a bit of progress in learning c++. while I was over here, I began dabbling in latex, a typesetting application that is used often amongst the acadamia crowd. it was no huge suprise when I found out that my aunt uses this application often, and offered to show me a thing or two about how it all works. Through trial and error, I found myself quite used to the markup language style.

projects to come:

Recently, I aquired an asus eee model netbook. The thing is absolutly tiny and absolutly perfect. so what do i do? i clear it of its memory and load puppy linux on it. Because the use of the mouse is rather difficult, I have decided to attempt to learn how to use the awesome window manager to minimize mouse usage and to increase work efficiency. Wish me luck!

A cool image I made
#define stamp1_width 30\n
#define stamp1_height 30\n
static unsigned char stamp1_bits[] = {\n
 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0x3f, 0x01, 0x00, 0x00, 0x20, 0x7d, 0x3e, 0x9f, 0x2f,
 0x45, 0x3e, 0x91, 0x2f, 0xc5, 0xff, 0xf1, 0x2f, 0x45, 0x3e, 0x91, 0x2f,
 0x7d, 0x3e, 0x9f, 0x2f, 0x11, 0x08, 0x04, 0x22, 0x11, 0x08, 0x04, 0x22,
 0x7d, 0x3e, 0x9f, 0x2f, 0x7d, 0x22, 0x9f, 0x28, 0xfd, 0xe3, 0xff, 0x28,
 0x7d, 0x22, 0x9f, 0x28, 0x7d, 0x3e, 0x9f, 0x2f, 0x11, 0x08, 0x04, 0x22,
 0x11, 0x08, 0x04, 0x22, 0x7d, 0x3e, 0x9f, 0x2f, 0x45, 0x3e, 0x91, 0x2f,
 0xc5, 0xff, 0xf1, 0x2f, 0x45, 0x3e, 0x91, 0x2f, 0x7d, 0x3e, 0x9f, 0x2f,
 0x11, 0x08, 0x04, 0x22, 0x11, 0x08, 0x04, 0x22, 0x7d, 0x3e, 0x9f, 0x2f,
 0x7d, 0x22, 0x9f, 0x28, 0xfd, 0xe3, 0xff, 0x28, 0x7d, 0x22, 0x9f, 0x28,
 0x7d, 0x3e, 0x9f, 0x2f, 0x01, 0x00, 0x00, 0x20, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0x3f };

Ok, so, I didn't want to upload this to any host website... so i just converted it to xbm format. Simply copy the text, paste it in an editor of your choice and save it as "stamp1.xbm" and viewing should be possible. Unfortunatly, firefox has seemed to disable embeded xbm image support so just bear with me. if you don't know how to do this, just google it. its not that important, just geeky :D

on a geek note, my slackware computer is working nicely. I have gotten essentially all the applications I want right now, and internet is working fine. SCORE! This new distribution has rekindled my love of linux. Its so great how elegant this operating system is. I just feel so good using it.

projects? of course!
So I've recently fallen in love with the application known as VIM, a powerful text editor that runs without x-windows. The automatic syntax highlighting is a joy to work with, and I hope to use it in my journey to learn some programing. I also downloaded some plugins that would make csound work with Vim, which is quite exciting. Recently, I've also stumbled across the ABC music notation system that uses only text files. Learning it was amazingly easy, and I was able to type music out on my alphasmart in less than an hour! Did i mention VIM had syntax highlighting support for ABC? the app abc2ps allows me to turn all abc notation into musical score: way too cool for school. My hope is to learn the abc language with lilypond; two scripts that combine ease of use and good quality music scores.

alright... I prolly should sleep now. another beautiful day awaits. I lOVE SUMMER!