I just set a music room at home and my wife has an Akai midi controller. I know of some options for multitrack software, but don't know much about midi on Linux. Also, looking for a decent drum machine program. Any suggestions from my Linux friends?

cakes wrote: Sun Jun 13, 2021 3:45 pm I just set a music room at home and my wife has an Akai midi controller. I know of some options for multitrack software, but don't know much about midi on Linux. Also, looking for a decent drum machine program. Any suggestions from my Linux friends?

I don't use linux for audio, but I hear from a friend who does that Ardour is a solid DAW. The only linux drum machine I know of is Hydrogen.

Since you like extra work, you could install the Diodow synth. It sounds great but looks like a spreadsheet, and a 1990s spreadsheet at that. If you want it to make a square wave, you alter its sawtooth generator by assigning it a different decimal value. And there are many other ways in which it fits with the linux philosophy of assigning work to the human operator that should really be done by a computer.

Edit: I hope I'm not coming off too much of a jerk here, I meant that to be mostly humorous.

A lot of plugins I like in Windows are available for linux, like Dexed and OB-Xd. You can get the very fancy (paid) U-he synths for Linux as well. The Xhip and Dragonfly effects are supposed to be decent, if you don't have DAW ones you like..

Thanks for the reply. I enjoy the humor, so don't worry. I have used Ardour and Reaper, both are pretty good for multi-tracking. I'll check out Hydrogen. Wondering if there was an equivalent of something like Ableton or Reason. I read that Reason can work with wine, and came across something called Bitwig. Guess I'll be playing around a bit!

(In all seriousness, not to get off the subject of music making on Linux, but the old stereotypes about it don't hold up anymore. There's plenty of great distros that I think are as good, if not better than OSX (and any distro is going to beat Windows almost always). You'd be surprised about Linux if you dipped your toe in with something like Ubuntu, Mint or pop_os!.)

cakes wrote: Mon Jun 14, 2021 1:15 pm Thanks for the reply. I enjoy the humor, so don't worry. I have used Ardour and Reaper, both are pretty good for multi-tracking. I'll check out Hydrogen. Wondering if there was an equivalent of something like Ableton or Reason. I read that Reason can work with wine, and came across something called Bitwig. Guess I'll be playing around a bit!

(In all seriousness, not to get off the subject of music making on Linux, but the old stereotypes about it don't hold up anymore. There's plenty of great distros that I think are as good, if not better than OSX (and any distro is going to beat Windows almost always). You'd be surprised about Linux if you dipped your toe in with something like Ubuntu, Mint or pop_os!.)

I have kubuntu on an old laptop that's just used for couchbound web browsing, and have some experience with mint and the awful CentOS, the latter for work.

I generally find that there's always an extra step or two when doing anything with linux.

Bitwig is really well regarded. If you get into the more expensive versions, it has a Reaktor or MSP type modular environment built in, or so I'm told.

Damn, I looked up Bitwig and it's got a pretty heavy price tag for the studio. Looks like it's priced competitively with Reason and Abelton, though. I'm digging through open-source MIDI. This is gonna be a wild ride!

cakes wrote: Mon Jun 14, 2021 2:51 pm Damn, I looked up Bitwig and it's got a pretty heavy price tag for the studio. Looks like it's priced competitively with Reason and Abelton, though. I'm digging through open-source MIDI. This is gonna be a wild ride!

Oh, did you just want MIDI without a full DAW?

biscuitdough wrote: Mon Jun 14, 2021 6:42 pm Oh, did you just want MIDI without a full DAW?

I just want to fuck around with MIDI and see where it goes.

cakes wrote: Sun Jun 13, 2021 3:45 pm I just set a music room at home and my wife has an Akai midi controller. I know of some options for multitrack software, but don't know much about midi on Linux. Also, looking for a decent drum machine program. Any suggestions from my Linux friends?

Check out https://ubuntustudio.org/ . It's a ubuntu based distro with lots of "creativity" stuff rolled in, which includes a lot of audio tools.

Ardour has solid development behind it and does require a license purchase, but it's not expensive.

thecr4ne wrote: Tue Jun 15, 2021 9:13 am Check out https://ubuntustudio.org/ . It's a ubuntu based distro with lots of "creativity" stuff rolled in, which includes a lot of audio tools.

Ardour has solid development behind it and does require a license purchase, but it's not expensive.

Thank you!

Edit: wow, a whole OS dedicated to multimedia. Looks cool, but definitely not doing that. It's a bit heavy-handed for my intended purpose.

All airwindows plugins are linux-compatible, as VSTs - https://www.airwindows.com/airwindows-linux/

Don't know if this is up your alley, but just in case!