[BillingsLUG] A Linux presentation I'd like to see

[Shawn A. Wilson]

Whoa, déjà vu! Did you talk to Dan Denson? Because I was just talking to
him a few hours ago today about the Atari 520 ST I used to have and my
dad's Casio keyboard that I would hook up to it via MIDI ports. I didn't
do a whole lot with it but I did some basic MIDI programming in BASIC,
enough to at least record events from the Casio and play them back either
on the computer or through the keyboard.

I haven't done much with MIDI lately, but I do have a different Casio
keyboard now with MIDI ports. I also have a SoundBlaster Live that
includes MIDI ports and the right cables to hook it up. See where I'm
going? I think this would make a great future LUG topic.

Man, I do miss that old Atari, it was my favorite of the retro computers I
was exposed to (Commodore 64 and TRS-80 being the others). I was a little
sad when my grandpa made me give it back to go into his church's rummage
sale.

-shawn

On Mon, November 12, 2012 19:17, Scott Dowdle wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> As some of you may know, I owned and used an Atari ST (Motorola
> 68000-based) from 1985 - 1995.  One cool thing about the ST was that it
> came with midi ports by default.  I remember spending about $200 in 1986
> for a Casio synthesizer that was fairly capable, hooking it up to my ST
> and then controlling it with a commercial program from Activison named
> Music Studio.  Anyone who wants a glimpse back in time can watch  the
> following link:
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8lSMytqdEY
>
> That's a Computer Chronicles show from 1986 that covers midi and has the
> Atari with Music Studio. It was only a matter of time for some free (as in
> beer) programs to be released... as well as some high end, professional
> MIDI apps.
>
> I bring all of that up because even though I was doing that back in 1986,
> I haven't really seen any of that kind of thing done with Linux...
> although I know such programs exist and people are using them.
>
> Here are the types of apps I remember using or reading about:
>
> 1) Visual music player... download a .mid file, load it in, see the notes
> laid out on onscreen sheet music... being easily able to change the
> instruments used for each voice... and then being able to play it back
> using the internal sound chip of the computer... or using a MIDI device.
> You could also do simple composition but since I didn't know how to
> read/write music notation, I didn't do much of that.
>
> 2) Patch management... when I say patch, I mean the voices that your
> synthesizer has... being able to load and save them from a computer.
> Being able to load groups of sounds in.  Being able to download new
> patches and have new sounds / voices to work with.
>
> 3) Sequencers... applications that could have 16-64 tracks and allowed for
> advanced mixing of multiple instruments.
>
> Again, I know such apps exist on Linux but I don't know much about them
> and I don't know anyone using them.  It just so happens that I have a
> fairly nice synthesizer (consumer grade) that someone gave me about 10
> years ago.  It has midi ports on it.  I believe there are USB to midi
> adapters but I haven't looked into it.
>
> Anyone doing music on Linux?  Anyone using midi on Linux?  If so, would
> you be willing to show others?
>
> TYL,
> --
> Scott Dowdle
> 704 Church Street
> Belgrade, MT 59714
> (406)388-0827 [home]
> (406)994-3931 [work]
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