Home Studio Upgrade - mobile workstation

I recently made 2 purchases to allow a more flexible, complete, mobile solution to my DAW. I now have the ability to take my studio on the road and use my Sony Vaio.

First I have added a simple E-MU XMIDI 1x1 USB interface ($25) so I can use my midi keyboard with a USB port.

Secondly, I needed a USB audio interface / preamp. After some research I found an excellent solution that offers a substantial "bang-for-your-buck" using an ART USB Dual Pre ($80) which does not require any drivers. When you plug it in you will find "USB audio codec" added to your sound I/O hardware options. However, you don't have to select this for your system if you run most of your studio software on top of JACK. Instead, just change the input and output preferences in the JACK setup and you are good to go!

I also found software designed to be a guitar effects simulator called Rackarrack which also has an on-board tuner and can route your guitar notes to midi events. Although it has limited sensitivity, this may be a good way to score midi data for someone (like me) who plays guitar/bass better than keyboard.

I ALSA Don't know JACK about linux-rt kernel

Okay, I thought I would quickly document the exact procedure to get JACK (via QJackCtl GUI) to play nice with ALSA and the Real-Time kernel (linux-rt) on Ubuntu 9.10.

1. Install linux-rt from synaptic

2. Install QJackCtl from synaptic or Ubuntu Software Store

3. Go to System -> Administration -> Users & Groups and add your user to the following groups: audio, pulse, pulse-access

4. Enter the following into your command line

> sudo su -c 'echo @audio - rtprio 99 >> /etc/security/limits.conf'

5. Reboot

6. Start QJackCtl and edit the following prefs:

Setup -> Settings tab: check the boxes next to Realtime and No Memory Lock

Setup -> Misc. tab: check the box next to Start Jack Server on Application Start-up.

7. Restart QJackCtl and voila!

Reproducing My First Masterpiece

When I was in High School, I took a music theory class with Bruce McCormick.  He was an inspiration to every single student that had an appreciation of music and one of the hardest working teachers I've ever had the pleasure of knowing.  This class spurred me to compose a 111 measure 5-part piece for voice...but with no lyrics.  I spent many hours at a macintosh computer using software called Nightingale and entering notes with an attached MIDI keyboard.  Upon completion, I assembled a group of vocalists to perform the piece at the annual spring concert my senior year.  It was a significant highlight and achievement in my life.  There was a poor quality video recording of the event but I do not posses a copy and I never made a synth recording or even saved an electronic record of the piece (not that I would be able to find a computer that could access it today since I believe Nightingale is no longer in use anywhere).  For a decade now I have retained a single hard copy of the music and I am frankly amazed that it has survived the 5 times I have moved in 10 years.  Regardless, I've always wanted to reproduce the electronic copy so that I could at last hear the piece again.  Finally with my UbStu Linux distro I have that opportunity!

Of all the various sequencers and recorders and notation editors I have come across so far, I'm most impressed with the completeness of Rosegarden.  This software is incredible especially considering it is free!  I have vowed to contribute to the authors as soon as I make some significant advancement in utilizing it to its greater potential...and as soon as I graduate and get a job.

Rosegarden runs on top of the Jack Audio Connection Kit (JACK) which is still a bit mysterious to me.  The learning curve on Rosegarden has also been somewhat steep and I've spent close to 3 hours just in combing though the manual and Michael McIntyre's very useful on-line tutorial.  I'm nearly half way through inputting my 'masterpiece' (I've yet to give it an appropriate name but had originally named it "Fortune Cookie") using the notation editor and so far I've figured out how to assign each track a synth sound from pre-existing libraries so I need only my computer's sound-card (Sound Blaster Audigy).

At this point I've spent a couple-few hours trying to figure out how to record my piece without success.  I would like to be able to just use my computer's sound-card without any additional external components/keyboards/etc.  It seems from the tutorial that this should be possible but it is not carefully described here so I will need to start search for information elsewhere very soon.