been a few months since the last album i put out. so here’s the new one. recorded and produced entirely with gentoo linux, using JACK timemachine, audacity, renoise, and the flac commandline encoder. with the exception of renoise, it’s all free software available in portage.
released 3/20/12. free download. solo acoustic piano improvisations. four tracks (plus bonus track and wallpaper), fourteen minutes. thanks for listening.
on monday, december 12, i’ll be performing at the downtown independent for a musical showcase of monome-wielding artists, along with hardware and software presentations. live visuals all night long by OICHO.
i’ll be doing just a short set (as ioflow); the rest of the lineup are the real heavyweights. the inventors of the monome will be there, along with a stellar group of super-talented world-touring artists. these folks rock. if there’s any chance you can make it, you should totally be there! come hear some tunes and learn about the open-source software and hardware we use. i’ll be running an all-linux software stack, powered by gentoo linux.
i guarantee there will be some seriously fun beats, so get your tickets!
i wrote an ebuild for ardour 3 and added it to my overlay. it’s a live ebuild for the latest SVN, so there are a few warnings:
1. ardour3 is is still in alpha status. things may not work.
2. upstream hates the thought of distributors packaging ardour to begin with (even though gentoo ebuilds just fetch and compile the source), but they especially do not want to see the alphas and betas officially packaged. this is an unofficial ebuild, in an unofficial overlay. so please, don’t even think that this will make it into portage until ardour3 has had a stable release. i don’t maintain the official versions in portage, anyway.
3. upstream requests that you do not bug them about problems building ardour, running it, etc. do not hit their forums asking for help. instead, if you need to troubleshoot issues or offer patches and workarounds, visit #ardour on irc.freenode.net, or visit their mailing lists. this same warning is repeated in my ebuild, just to make sure you know that you’re agreeing to play by these rules while you try out ardour.
4. a much friendlier community of folks willing to help can be found at #opensourcemusicians on irc.freenode.net. many of ‘em have been using ardour3 for awhile, and are familiar with the latest code diffs and how things work compared to ardour2.
5. as with any ebuild in any overlay, if you have issues, first contact the maintainer of the overlay (me), rather than risk wasting anyone else’s time. that being said, i’ve been making music with ardour3 for almost a month now, and aside from UI quirks, find it pretty stable. support for linux VSTs is definitely a plus, as is the inclusion of basic MIDI sequencing.
if you want to try it out, you know where to find it.
i added an ebuild for nano basket to my overlay.
nano basket lets you change the MIDI data sent by the korg nanokontrol. this makes it easy to create templates/presets that can be dumped to the nanokontrol. which, in turn, makes it easy to create a template for my microkorg XL, where the nanokontrol can be used to manipulate all the parameters normally hidden beneath several layers on menus on the MK XL. makes it much nicer for realtime changes, as well as exploring synthesis in a much more hands-on way than going through the software editor or using the three knobs on the keyboard itself. the nanokontrol presents 9 knobs, 9 faders, and 18 push-buttons on each “scene.” so with four scenes to switch between, that’s a lot of extra hands-on control of the keyboard.
as soon as i finish reading through the arcane MIDI channel info in the korg manual, i’ll put up a sample template for the nanokontrol+MK XL.
released 9/10/11. free download. solo acoustic piano, nine tracks, thirty minutes.
