Music on Debian GNU/Linux

I’ve just got a new (reconditioned) machine to play with and I want to configure it to record music. I’ve used Debian since about 2003, and contributed to the aGNUla/DeMuDi and 64 Studio projects, testing, documenting and helping other users along the way, so I’m not particularly new to this sport. Long enough to be bored with recompiling my kernel and wanting a system that Just Works.  I thought I’d have a look and see if the documentation on making music using Linux (and particularly Debian) had improved any. A quick search turned up little user-friendly documentation on this subject; http://debian-multimedia.org/
is very developer-oriented (no change there). http://www.linuxmusicproduction.com/ looked like a useful resource and I might add a few more links here as I find them. I have always found Dave Phillips worth reading in the past.
There does seem to be room for more information about how to set up Linux to make music, so I’m going to write-up my progress as I go, in the hope that it might prove useful to someone else.

I’m not using 64 Studio any longer. The last release of 64studio_3.0-beta3; was 04-Mar-2009 and I don’t like the reliance on Ubuntu LTS releases, there are lots of things about Ubuntu that don’t float my boat, but I won’t go into that here. I had a look at Mint – very nice, I particularly like the idea of the Debian version, tempting, but Julia just wouldn’t install on the machine I’m using, so I’ve put Debian squeeze on it for now. I’m aware that most people who are serious about music go for Sid, so I’m considering upgrading at some point.

I’m starting with a few music applications, based around Ardour and Jamin. I have also installed Jackd, Hydrogen, Rezound, Rosegarden and Yoshimi to start with. A brief scan of my tech specs shows that I’m going to need to invest in a new soundcard, along with a mixer /preamp and microphone. I might get a better video card while I’m at it, a dual monitor set-up might be useful, not to mention the desire to satisfy a small Sauerbraten obsession.

Choice of software is all about itch-scratching.  First I want to write some drum tracks, so I check Hydrogen works. Very nicely, and I see that Comix has made lead and lag editing possible on each beat in the pattern. This allows further ‘humanisation’ and makes it possible to create authentic half-swing feels. I like Hydrogen a lot.

Yoshimi works a treat, it doesn’t sound as good as it might on this tinny sound-card, but it means I can start working on synth parts. I couldn’t immediately get Rosegarden to drive Yoshimi via Jackd, so I thought I might take a look at some simpler options. I’ve installed seq24 and an app called Composite, which looks for all the world like Hydrogen, but the developers promise greater things to come. I guess the intention is for it to become a general purpose sequencer. If they can make it as good as, and compatible with Hydrogen, I look forward to developments.

Configuring 64 Studio 3.0

Just to complete this installation blog, I have made some notes about some of the bits that will need updating in the Manual. Gone from the Desktop are the Computer, Home folder and Wastebasket icons. I’ll have to change the picture under Selections and Icons then. Need to add ‘Education - Ear training’ to the Applications menu and ‘Other‘ – not quite sure how to describe those applications, Sound recorder is fairly obvious I suppose. ‘Desktop‘ is now called ‘System‘ and ‘Lock Screen‘. ‘Logout‘ and ‘Lock Screen‘ are all rolled into ‘Quit‘. System > Administration: add Authorizations (are my language settings correct – that’s the American spelling) and Hardware drivers. Shared Folders has gone, Software Properties has been renamed to Software Sources. Add Synaptic Package Manager.

I’ll have to reword all the bits that say: ‘You will be prompted for the root password’. My network worked immediately, so I don’t need to bother with the network configuration.

Services: why is alsa-utils disabled by default? I’m turning it on and turning off the printer OK?
I’m not going to install too much new software yet. I’m ony using this box for music, so I may not need much else.

Gnome Desktop Preferences

This lot need [new] screenshots:
About Me
Appearance (was Theme) [new]
Accessibility has changed to Assistive technologies. [new]
Keyboard [new]
Keyboard Shortcuts
Mouse [new]
Network Proxy
Power Management [new]
Preferred Applications [new]
Remote Desktop [new]
Removable Drives and media [new]
Screen Resolution [new]
Screensaver [new]
Sessions [new]
Sound [new]
Windows

As svenoxtoby commented, some information about changing file associations would be useful.
Email & Web – we’re using Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird now. [new screenshots].

I’ll want to edit my menus so I did
# apt-get install alacarte
And now when I right-click on the foot icon and select ‘Edit Menus’ I get Alacarte, with the full range of options. Oh goody, I can enable the Debian menu now. Or at least I could if it had anything in it. Curious.
Multimedia codecs: Hmm, does this section need to be in here anymore? Certainly shouldn’t be advising users to addhttp://www.debian-multimedia.org/ to the repositories.

Installing 64studio 3.0

Right, so I rebooted my computer with the 64 Studio installer in the DVD drive.

The Ubuntu splash screen came up immediately. So we are using the Ubuntu installer. It all runs very fast off the DVD, so I was ready to start partitioning in no time at all.

I decided to do manual partitioning as my partitions need sorting out.
First I blew away the eight redundant partitions.
I notice as I’m doing this that the numbers of the partitions are changing. I’d better remember to make a note of their new values as I change them. Great, I now have 72.5GB free space. That should be enough, in fact I probably won’t use it all as it can be very useful to have a bit of free space if I want to reorganise my partitions later. I put my new /home partition at the end of the free space as I have decided that all my personal data should go at the end of the drive and the operating system at the beginning. I’m hoping this will make upgrades easier in future. I know I already have a 2GB swap partition, so there probably isn’t much point creating another, so I mounted that as well.

Now I have to do the really scary bit and write the changes out to the disk. I hope I’m not going to regret this …
Oh hang on, must write down the changes first …

/dev/hda (aka /dev/sda) now looks like this …

#1   ext3 B  1GB    /
#9   ext3     1GB    /tmp
#10 ext3     3GB    /var
#11 ext3 12.5GB   /usr
#12 ext3    40GB   /home
#5   ext3    20GB  ~/music
#6   ext3    20GB  ~/masters
#7   ext3    10GB  ~/bak
#8   ext3    41GB  ~/audio

I got a weird error about informing the kernel about changes to /dev/sdb16, which is strange because I didn’t touch that partition, changes in nomenclature notwithstanding. Good, now I get lots of time to type up my notes on the laptop, while the system gets installed.

The option to configure Language support is a nice new touch. It hasn’t asked for a root password. So you lied about having got rid of all the nasty Ubuntu customisations then. Note to self: do $ sudo passwd as soon as the installation is done. Anyway, we’re now into Select and install software, so far so good. After a moment of saying ‘Please wait’, the system is now ripping through the pile of packages at an alarming velocity, it’s at 25% already and I haven’t even managed to make a cup of tea yet, hang on!

Well, just enough time to make a cuppa, but only just and the installer is Installing GRUB, let’s hope it recognises my old install, so I can boot into that if I need to. And now it’s finishing the installation. That took an hour all told.

All the kernels on /dev/hdb were correctly recognised, good.
I notice some error about kernel maps protect … too fast to read all of it as usual. And we’re into GDM at some horrible resolution, probably because I’m using an extremely old video card. Have to do some tweaking. The new kernel boots fast that’s for sure. The great thing about having my whole old install on the other drive is that I can just copy & paste the configuration over in most cases.

This install has a weird hostname. Hmm that’ll have to be corrected. First I’ll do:

$ sudo passwd

And give root a proper password.
then:

# nano /etc/hostname

Next I need to edit /etc/fstab to mount all my old partitions on /mnt/. Good job I made notes eh? Oh, hang on. Whose idea was it to make this approach user-unfriendly? What are all these UUIDs about? Let’s see if I can get away with ignoring them. Also, trying to edit this in nano is too annoying. I have to install nedit and lastfm. Lastfm is vital for configuration, you understand? I would just like to confirm for those doubters, it is the correct version of the lastfm player and it worked without any messing about! cool! OK, it looks like the UUIDs are for the special devices /dev/sda* etc. It is possible to use /dev/hda* as usual. Good now I can access my data and get some music playing. Hooray!

Next, I’ll move the old xorg conf out of the way:

# mv /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.270709

then copy over my old one:

# cp /mnt/etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf

So now it’s time to visit 64studio.com and see how this compares to what the manual says. I’ll copy over my bookmarks to save trying to remember web addresses. This involves importing my old bookmarks.html into Firefox (real Firefox, yay!) and then copying the contents of the ‘Personal Toolbar’ folder into ‘Bookmarks Toolbar’. This is the point where you see how many passwords you can remember. What do you mean you didn’t write them down? No, neither did I. I call it natural selection.

Before I do that I want to make these changes stick. I know I should be able to do this without rebooting but sometimes it’s so much easier. All that configuring took me another hour and a half. OK, I’ll see you in the next posting. Probably time for some dinner first. Hmm, the log out and shutdown functions are all in one one now, that’s sensible.

UK election results

Results in so far show predictable losses for the LibDems, and gains for the SNP in Scotland and the Labour Party in the North and Wales. Interestingly, the Greens have done well here in the South-West. Unfortunately this means our local councils will probably be Conservative controlled as the Greens have commandeered a huge chunk of the anti-Tory vote, pushing the Labour Party into fourth place obscurity in many wards.

As predictions of the AV vote are overwhelmingly in favour of ‘No’ this evening, I think the LibDems and Greens should think seriously about co-operating in future elections. Local politics work differently from National politics, as candidates  are often people you know, at least by reputation, so for voters it is a much more personal choice – If I know a particular candidate is a Good Person, I’ll consider voting for them. While it’s easy to discount Tories and other right-wingers if I’m faced with the choice between a Good LibDem and a strong Green candidate, I’m going to have to go for Green in future.

The trouble is, that national politics does strongly affect local voting patterns, so today’s vote seems to reflect a national lack of confidence in Nick Clegg’s leadership of the LibDems. Getting into bed with David Cameron was a Bad Move. My lack of confidence in Clegg isn’t due to him reneging on promises, which he has no mandate to carry out, as Cameron would like us to believe, but that he has not stood up to Cameron and gone along with Osborne’s detested budget. It’s time for Clegg to kick Cameron where it hurts or stand down. We need to see some strong statesperson-like behaviour from people like Clegg, Ashdown and our own MP Tessa Munt or we can forget about the LibDems as a political force for the next generation.

A Pagan Christmas???

No, of course not. It’s a contradiction in terms … isn’t it?

I’m ever so pleased that I actually managed to completely avoid Christmas this year; in an ostensibly Christian country, that’s no mean feat! I’m now on day 5 of my Winter Solstice celebration, which conveniently extends to Jan 2nd. Most of my friends don’t really understand why I want to avoid celebrating Christmas – Pagans justify their participation, claiming that Christmas is ‘Pagan really’, atheists celebrate it, even Jewish friends of mine celebrate it for Christ’s sake! Why not me?

Firstly, I think some disambiguation is necessary. What does Christmas mean for Pagans? Christmas as such is the celebration of the birth of one Yeshua ben Yusef from the royal line of Jesse and King David (aka. Gk: ‘Christ’ Heb: Messiah’) somewhere around 1 AD/BC – here is one of the places where I will agree with the fundamentalist Christians – if you aren’t thinking about ‘Little Baby Jesus’, you aren’t really celebrating Christmas … are you? The proper Christian tradition involves attending Midnight Mass to sing Christmas Hymns and the giving and receiving of presents following the example of the Three Wise Men. That’s about it, most of the rest of the trappings come from older, more pagan traditions and some are modern commercialistic interpretations like Santa Claus – I’ll deal with the old ‘imposter’ later.

The older, more pagan traditions include the Anglo-Saxon Yule, Roman Saturnalia and celebration of the birth of Mithras and Celtic Winter Solstice. Out of these come the traditions of decking houses with holly, ivy and other evergreens, Carolling, Wassailing, Mumming, Morris dancing, Feasting, Father Christmas and Yule logs. The holly, ivy, mistletoe, yew and pine are all Celtic sacred trees associated with the dark of the year because of their evergreen foliage. On Winter Solstice, the sun dies, stands still for three days and is then reborn (on the 25th!). Carols were originally sung dances, which like the Anglo-Saxon Wassails, were performed with the intention of promoting fertility and abundance for the forthcoming year. The Mummers play out the ancient death and rebirth story involving the dark and light twins – George and the Eastern Prince, The red and the white dragons. Although all these traditions have been overlaid with Christian sentiment and interpolated with pious doxologies over several centuries, none of them originate in the Bible.

And as for Santa … ‘The Old Impostor’ I calls him. I believe Santa originates in Saturnalia, whose presiding deity is Old Father Time, with his big bushy white beard and reaping hook. The colours of his dress come from the colours of winter; red for the berries, green for the evergreen branches and white for the snow. Under Christianity he became known as Father Christmas, or Saint Nicholas (who wears blue by the way). The business with the reindeer and coming down the chimney appears to have been borrowed from Lappish shamanic customs. Now, what’s in a name? Saint Nick == Old Nick? Santa, as we all know is an anagram of Satan, which in turn sounds an awful lot like Saturn. Santa Claus in his familiar red and white livery appears to have been an invention of Coca-Cola in the 1920s as part of their advertising campaign. How double edged are Satan’s Claws? Suffice it to say, I don’t remember any mention of Saint Nicholas in the Gospels.

Eating turkey clearly isn’t traditional, as they would have had to have been imported, like Santa from the States. Christmas trees are a German custom introduced to Britain by Prince Albert. The only part of the seasonal celebration that appears to be based on observable phenomena and which doesn’t require the adoption of any particular set of beliefs is the observance of the longest night; the ending of one solar cycle and the start of another. The adoption of evergreens and berries to represent the Unconquered Sun seems a natural metaphor. I have a lot of respect for those that actually want to think about ‘Little Baby Jesus’ and perform charitable acts at this time of year. The problem for me is that those families are few and far between and the pressure of the consumer orgy that goes on combined with family obligations means that few people get time to experience any kind of spirituality or even the promised comfort and joy.

I spent Christmas day this year quietly, on my own, contemplating the return of the light, watching the winter birds squabble over titbits on the roof tops. To be one with my thoughts is the greatest present anyone could have given me. Thank you all for allowing me to get on with celebrating Winter Solstice my way. I hope you are all enjoying your seasonal celebrations as much as I am!

Hey You …

“You’re losing, you’re losing, you’re losing your vitamin C!!!”

This blogging business is fun! I now appear to have 3 simultaneously running blogs: this one, a technical one at  64studio and a music related one at last.fm. Four if you include my MySpace page (bleugh!) and also a presence on FaceBook. Currently I’m building an aggregator for the first three at least, which eventually will allow me to share selected postings on FaceBook. Well, that’s the theory. This will very much depend on how my Python-Fu is shaping up.

Since writing this book, I have actually learned how to do programming in some semblance of a ‘proper’ manner. So it’s time to put my skills to the test on my PyJAMA based web-site. I got rid of the stupid CMS (?Another Really Irritating Application?) because it worked out quicker to code my own minimal helper applications than get my head around someone elses rather complicated code-base. Yes, that’s a harsh appraisal of a system I couldn’t possible hope to write myself, but there you go. The internet is a totally short attention …

I <3 HATE <3 Linux

Let me immediately qualify that. I’m not about to install Windows™ or go buy a mac or anything stupid like that. OK, if I had a spare grand I’d go buy a mac right now. I’ll tell you what’s eating me today, because this is, after all a blog and all you want is my frothing opinion, right? – I appear to be in the bizarre position where my Linux box will now play .wma (Windows Media) files perfectly but glitches when playing Ogg Vorbis (patent unencumbered replacement for mp3) files. Now, as anyone with half a brain will know this isn’t an issue with Linux™ at all, it depends on which application you use to play your audio files. Furthermore the application you choose is merely the interface for some backend or other, so, roughly speaking I have only two choices – some frontend for GStreamer or VLC. The stated playback problems occur when using GStreamer. VLC plays Ogg Vorbis files perfectly, but all I get is ‘heavy air’ off .WMAs, which is, frankly what you’d expect off a Linux™ box.

Now, being a good OpenSource victim, I have gone and Googled for help on the subject and found myself bewildered and even more confused by the range of flaky forum postings by foresight-impared teenage boys.

Debian Bug #66483: Sound crackles & snaps when SDL volume not set at 100% might be related. Some Ubuntu users discovered that ‘After an upgrade from Dapper to Edgy, sound in certain applications and games starts to crackle. A few affected apps are Wesnoth, Neverball, and Neverputt. When playing the OGG files seperately, they sound fine.’ This problem only seems to affect integrated Intel sound cards and has something to do with the SDL mixer. This isn’t the same as my problem, although I could guess that it might be related. If I was using Ubuntu  / PulseAudio this would probably be useful advice: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=4928900. But I’m not. I get the impression this also happens with the Xine backend from what what I’ve read.

This thread: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=139927 gives me the impression that the problem might have something to do with sample rate negotiation. I’ll have to check that out. Another post mentions buffer size. Maybe worth checking too? Bitrate doesn’t seem to affect it. So this is something happening at the DAC stage from what I can make out.

It’s probably my own fault for mixin ma distros. The path I’m thinking of taking is to do a clean install of 64studio testing and see if that magically fixes the problem. I would hope so. Then I think I might investigate Aqualung as a music player. That and/or start hacking on Quod Libet. This will all involve putting my music box back online *sigh*, which I don’t really have time to do as I’m deadlined to get ‘Python3 For Absolute Beginners’ ready for publication in September.

All I want is an application that will alow me to listen to both .OGGs and .WMAs while I get on with writing. I don’t want to have to troubleshoot this right now and I really can’t be bothered to Read The Flipping Manual OK? Some of us have work to do. Don’t get me started on O.o – that’ll have to be the subject of another post!

How I love Open Source software!