ABC notation Updated 2025-03-28 +Created 1970-01-01
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A decent way to write diatonic music as plaintext!
Conversion to MIDI with abcmidi.
No bend/vibratto/slides :-(
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Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Updated 2025-03-28 +Created 1970-01-01
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ALSA can be thought as analogous to physical wires linking up machines.
Except that instead of machines, you have separate programs. One such typical link is:
The advantage of this setup is that separate programs can collaborate to make complex sounds.
The disadvantage of this setup is that it makes it very hard to reproduce results, you basically need a Docker image with the exact same version of everything. And some script to launch and connect all programs correctly.
Some composition systems like LMMS reduce that problem by having synthesizers as plugins, so that you don't have to setup any connections yourself.
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Ardour (software) Updated 2025-03-28 +Created 1970-01-01
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Weight: heavy.
Video 1.
Ardour 6 Quickstart (recording, editing, mixing and exporting) by unfa (2020)
Source. unfa is a helpful Ardour master and open source software junkie at your YouTube service.
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Computer music file format Updated 2025-03-28 +Created 1970-01-01
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Looking for formats that:
  • are human readable plaintext files
  • can be converted/played as MIDI
  • can be converted to sheet music PDFs
  • supports basic guitar effects (bends and slides)
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Interesting AtomSea & EMBII uploads Updated 2025-03-28 +Created 1970-01-01
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tx e3e37ed5c1de2631c147bd39429e42ff634e95b7d72423bc32d6c6b9d8eef8ee (2014-07-01):
For my first official Journal entry I've decided to archive some old poetry. Here are a few of the computational poems I've created using cyphers.
Figure 1.
Shiemaa&Vincent.jpg
. Source.
Message:
"Even if we tried to do it on purpose, never would have we succeeded." My beloved Vincent.
TODO identify Shiemaa and Vincent.
Figure 2.
BikeLady.jpg
. Source.
This seems to be a novel work uploaded by its creator artist Allen Vandever according to EMBII.[ref].
Figure 3.
Arecibo_message.svg
. Source.
An "artificially" colored visualization of the Arecibo message ripped from Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Arecibo_message.svg (with attribution).
The cool thing about this image is that it highlights the striking parallels between the encoding of the Arecibo message with crypto graffiti, because in both cases people were creating undocumented new ways of communicating with strangers on a new medium in those early blockchain days.
The associated message contains the Arecibo message as ASCII 0's and 1's. When properly cut at the newlines, they draw the message as ASCII art, as the original Arecibo encoding intends, here's a version with the 0's replaced by spaces to make it more readabale:
      1 1 1 1
  1 1     1 1       1
1   1   1   1  1 11  1
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1  1  1

            11
          11 1
          11 1
          1 1 1
          11111

11    111   11    11
1             11  1
11 1   11   11    11 1
11111 11111 11111 11111

    1                 1

    1                 1
11111             11111

11    11    111   11
1       1         1
11 1    11   111  11 1
11111 11111 11111 11111

    1      11         1
          11
    1     11          1
11111     11      11111
          11
  1        1        1
    1      11       1
    11    11      1
      11   1    11
          11  11
      11   1    11
    11    11      1
    1      1        1
  1       11        1
  1        11        1
  1         1       1
  1       1       1
    1            11
    11        11
  1   111 1 11
  1       1
  1     11111
  1    1 111 1  1 11 11
      1  111  1  111111
1 111    111     11 111
          1 1     111 11
  1      1 1     111111
  1      1 1     11
  1     11 11

  111     1
  111 1 1   1 1 1 1 1 1
  111         1 1 1 1
              1 1
        11111
      111111111
    111       111
    11           11
  11 1         1 11
  11  11       11  11
  1   1 1     1 1   1
  1   1  1   1  1   1
      1   1 1   1
      1    1    1
      1         1
        1  1 1
  1111  11111 1  1111
Figure 4.
He sleeps in a temple.jpg
. tx 460ed23bea89176cdfe18e13fce51ad5386ad8e3e1f7d6f5b4711b3be97b0502 block 360565 (2015-06-12). EMBII claimed on Twitter that he took this photo in Auckland, New Zealand. The shop on the right corner has a sign that starts with "Bo" and searching for "Auckland Bo" gave us the "The body shop" on the corner of Queen Street and Darby Street. Some things changed between 2015 and 2024, notably the bench is gone and the shop on the left corner changed, but we can go back in time in Google Street View to 2015 which further confirms the location.
Figure 5.
PIA17563.jpg
. Source.
Associated message:
NASA: A purple nebula, in honor of #Prince, who passed away today. Image: Crab #Nebula, as Seen by Herschel and #Hubble Image credit: ESA/Herschel/PACS/MESS Key Programme Supernova Remnant Team; #NASA, ESA and Allison Loll/Jeff Hester (Arizona State University) #PIA17563
Figure 6.
Dr_Craig_Wright.jpg
. Source.
The image is present e.g. at: www.kitguru.net/channel/jon-martindale/australian-man-claims-he-is-satoshi-nakamoto-bitcoin-creator/ It was inscribed about two months after Craig publicly claimed that he is Satoshi.
This is a relatively unusual AtomSea & EMBII upload as it does not have the common toplevel transaction, everything, text + image fits into a single transaction. This is perhaps why the image is relatively low resolution to have a smaller size.
Figure 7.
YellowRobot.jpg
. Source.
Photography by EMBII, original art by TODO.
The associated message reads:
Chiharu and I found this little yellow robot while exploring Chicago. It will be covered by tar or eventually removed but this tribute will remain. N 41.880778 E -87.629210
This is one of Ciro's favorite AtomSea & EMBII uploads. This is the cutest thing ever, and perfectly encapsules the "medium as an artform" approach to blockchain art. More Chiharu stalking at: ILoveYouMore.jpg.
At twitter.com/EMBII4U/status/1615389973343268871 EMBII announced that he would be giving off shares of that image on a Bitcoin-based NFT sale system he's making called Sup!?, and in December 2023 gave some shares to Ciro Santilli. Amen.
Other possibly novel EMBII street photography:
Audio:
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LMMS Updated 2025-03-28 +Created 1970-01-01
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Very easy to use and pretty powerful MIDI creator!!!
One of the rare audio applications actually works with PulseAudio on Ubuntu 20.04 out-of-the-box, so you don't have to turn off every other audio application!!!
Has lot's of plugins built-in just working out of the box, e.g. ZynAddSubFX out-of-the-box without doing a gazillion complex setup connections.
Most plugins are just simple toys however, ZynAddSubFX is the only super powerful one. The others are more LMMS integrate however, and seem to use a more dedicated LMMS GUI style.
If you open vmpk, you can then right click on a piano track, and go MIDI, Input and it just shows up there, and it does produce sound as shown at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpeP2th08ak
TODO: what about recording the input MIDI? Yes, there is a record button on the piano roll!
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MuseScore Updated 2025-03-28 +Created 1970-01-01
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This software feels amazing. You can really start composing very quickly, lots of features, good keyboard shortcuts.
GPL, and there's a backing company that makes money with an online and mobile version of it.
Can export to:
Ubuntu 20.04: sound preview worked, first hat that trailing Contra-like sound artifacts (like spd-say), but then it went away?
Feels like a lot of effort was put into usability, including keyboard shortcuts by default, seems like a powerful and easy to start using software to compose music!
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Rosegarden Updated 2025-03-28 +Created 1970-01-01
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Weight: medium.
Can import from: MIDI.
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TuxGuitar Updated 2025-03-28 +Created 1970-01-01
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Just use MuseScore instead.
Weight: light.
Can import from: MIDI.
Can export to:
Ubuntu 20.04:
sudo apt install tuxguitar tuxguitar-alsa tuxguitar-jsa tuxguitar-oss
tuxguitar-jsa was needed, otherwise no sound: askubuntu.com/questions/457321/tuxguitar-no-sound-in-14-04
Has OK step sequencer non-realtime up/down/left/right guitar based composition interface.
Has chord insertion.
Has bend editor.
Could be more amazing, but it is OK.
A bit limited by being very "guitar oriented". Shows you guitar strings, and you enter offset to each string. So to enter two adjacent notes you need to use two seprate strings and thing about the offsets. If only it had a more piano based interface.
Drum notation is also atrocious, you have to go to the top chord, and use high numbers starting at 36.
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vmpk Updated 2025-03-28 +Created 1970-01-01
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VMPK is a virtual device that replicates what you would get by connecting a physical MIDI keyboard to your computer. It is not a software synthesizer on its own. But it does connect to a working synthesizer by default (Sonivox EAS) which makes it produce sounds out-of-the box.
TODO: then I messed with my sound settings, and then it stopped working by default on the default "MIDI Connection" > "MIDI Out Driver" > "Network". But it still works on "SonivoxEAS".
A hello world of actually connecting it to a specific software synthesizer manually on Advanced Linux Sound Architecture with aconnect can be found at: askubuntu.com/questions/34391/virtual-midi-piano-keyboard-setup/1298026#1298026
Reasonable default key mappings to keyboard covering 2 octaves.
3 multiple simultaneous keys did not work (tested "ZQI"). This might just be a limitation of my keyboard however.
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