Category: Music

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Make Music For Free With a Linux Audio Workstation

Linux isn’t the easiest platform to use when it comes to music production. But it is one of the most flexible, and there’s no argument against it being the cheapest. This is particularly important if you have a musical bent, because few musicians are lucky enough to be able to freely spend money on their passion, making Linux the perfect choice. And regardless of price, if you don’t mind a little GUI graft and a slightly steeper learning curve, audio software on Linux can compete with the best commercial developments. PureData can replace Max/MSP, for example. Audacity can replace Wavelab. Either Muse or Rosegarden can take a fair crack at Logic or Cubase’s crown.Tux, eh? He gets everywhere. In this case he\’s made his way inside our collection of valuable music equipment. Pesky penguin. But the most mature and capable application in the Linux canon is Ardour. It’s the free software equivalent to the industry standard ProTools. It doesn’t have MIDI, nor ProTools’ hardware lock-in, but it’s just as flexible and stable when it comes to audio recording, editing, mixing and mastering. Which means, if you’re into making music, there’s no better option on a budget.

via Make Music For Free | PC Plus.

Finally an article that does a reasonable job explaining how Jack, Ardour, Hydrogen and more work together to create a pretty cool digital audio workstation.

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Using XML, PHP and Festival to Produce a “Radio” Play

You play the play with two files: an XML data file that contains the play itself and a producer script in PHP. The XML data contains the cast list, the title and credits, a list of files to use for effects, and each character’s lines (the dialogue). The producer renders the play to an audio device according to the instructions in the XML data, which makes it easy to create a different play or edit the current one and play it with the same producer.

IBM Developerworks::Produce 60-second radio theatre with XML, PHP and Festival.

This is pretty crazy. An XML version of a script is feed to the Festival TTS engine resulting in a an audio file of the play. Some interesting ideas come to mind like automated newscasts, not to mention the revival of the radio drama as a techno art form.