i haven’t been making much music in the last week. mostly been coding, hacking, and working on things that will allow me to create music and strange new sounds.

for example, i got madrona labs’ aalto software synthesizer working in linux. they just released the windows port a few days ago, and have already expressed interest in creating a linux port, so i pointed them to the cross-platform, open-source juce framework. meanwhile, i set out to get the windows version running in linux.

i put together an ebuild for dssi-vst, then loaded up the 32-bit version of aalto. dssi-vst doesn’t support running 64-bit dlls on 64-bit hosts. for that, i would probably have to run a windows 64-bit host, such as vsthost or savihost, inside a 64-bit version of wine, with aalto loaded into one of those hosts.

in brief, here’s how to run aalto:

1. add the overnight overlay, then install the vst host:
# echo media-plugins/dssi-vst >> /etc/portage/package.accept_keywords
# emerge dssi-vst

2. download, unzip, and install the windows version. i used the demo; the full version almost certainly works just as well.
$ unzip AaltoWinDemo1.2.zip
$ wine AaltoWinDemo1.2.exe

3. next, copy the dlls to your shared vst/plugin directory. on my multilib 32/64-bit system, /usr/lib32/vst and /usr/lib64/vst.
$ cp ~/.wine/drive_c/VSTPlugIns/Aalto.dll /usr/lib32/vst
$ cp ~/.wine/drive_c/VSTPlugIns/Aalto_x64.dll /usr/lib64/vst

4. run the 32-bit aalto plugin. note that dssi-vst can’t load 64-bit plugins, so you’ll have to use some other host. but it should be doable.
$ vsthost /usr/lib32/vst/Aalto.dll

i’ve also managed to semi-successfully get ableton live running in wine. however, it’s kinda slow on my lowly 2.3ghz dual-core amd system, so i can’t recommend it as your sole audio tool. wineasio is required to really do anything with it, but you should still be prepared for significant slowdowns, freezes, and other bugs. there are a fair amount of issues and workarounds on the wine wiki page for live.

besides getting windows software running on linux, i’ve been creating ebuilds for linux-native vsts, such as the mda and tal plugins. ebuilds are in my overlay. both sets of plugins are capable of some really intriguing sounds, and i’ve barely started digging into what they can do.

i submitted my sample for mcrp 10, the next monome community remix project album. number 10′s concept is to choose a 15-second sample from previous mcrp releases, toss them in a pool, then the participants pull from the samples to create their own works. it’s gonna be a lot of fun! i learned a lot about what renoise can do when preparing samples.