Follow-up - Midi controllers!

Of course, I didn't quite do what I planned to do. This is what I have done, though:

• I've recorded song ideas using Hydrogen, Ardour and Qsynth. Nothing new or exciting here, except maybe for some LV2 plugins that I've tried. I might get back to them in another blog post.
  
• I've tried Rakarrack a bit. There are some horrid presets on there, but there are also some nice ones and I think this app might come in handy later on.
  
• I have bought an AKAI MPK mini!
• I've learned how to map MIDI control signals to seq24, to toggle loops (with the help of this thread and this chart of MIDI status codes). I've also learned how to map midi signals in Sooperlooper, which is considerably easier.
  
• I've learned how to route my "vintage" Nobels MF-2 midi foot controller to seq24 and Sooperlooper using a2jmidid and Patchage (see this page). One step closer to using my PC as a loop station!
• I have finally donated some money to the Ardour project. I'll donate to Hydrogen as well.
  

I might write in more detail later about my midi controllers and how to map them to seq24, Sooperlooper and so on.

I am also trying out Ableton Live again (in Windows, although it reportedly works with Wine). At this point, I need to figure out a workflow that works for me, no matter what platform - and although I think Live is fantastic, perhaps Linux will still be my primary choice. After all effort I've put into it, I feel quite at home with it and I know my preferred applications quite well. Setting things up is happily no longer such an issue. We'll see where it goes...

P.S. One thing I'd like to investigate is how Zynaddsubfx actually works (ie. how to customize instruments in detail) and why it makes noise that sounds like xruns when there are none (it was discussed in this old thread, also here with what looks like a possible solution - OK, so maybe there are still things that need to be tinkered with).

Krater - an album-a-day

So, that supposedly useful post I promised you will just have to wait. I will post it some time during the next decade or so...

Irony aside, I have recently recorded an album-a-day. It's called Krater and can be downloaded here. Most of it was done within 12 hours, with a minimal amount of mixing done the next day. I don't really know what to tell you about the music itself, there's some pop music with shaky vocals in Swedish and some instrumental tracks of different genres. I still love the sounds of the Roland TR-808 drum machine.

Stuff used:

Hardware
* Edirol FA-66
* Boss ME-50
* ADK A-51
* Fender Telecaster (thanks Caspar!)
* Peavey Cirrus 4

Software
* Ubuntu Studio (Hardy)
* Ardour
* Hydrogen
* seq24
* ZynAddSubFX
* Qsynth (with Fluid R3 sound font)

Jack crashed a couple of times during recording, but otherwise there were no issues from what I can remember.

What's next then? I still haven't installed Jaunty, but I will do it soon. Apparently there are still problems with the realtime kernel, but there is help!