Musicbook workflow

[Len Ovens]

I just thought of this today so it is still purculating. My thought is of
musician on a bus, in a hotel room... doesn't have a music system to tote
around but maybe a netbook.

 The mic is no good... the pre-amp either. But, usb can be carried easy
enough... for that matter even a small pre-amp before the internal card
works pretty good. While Ardour seems to work just fine on my netbook,
even with ubuntu classic up to 4 tracks or so. Still it might be overly
complex for musical note taking though if thats what one is used to...
Anyway, something to record sound. A sound to midi app. a midi to
notation app? That is beyond me unless there is a midi to cord chart  ;-)
I don't read music so well.

I don't know what a key player generally carries... a usb keyboard? A usb
sound card and a small midi kb is more likely, but both or either would
need the same stuff. A midi recorder and a genmidi sound app. The midi
recorder might be a notation editor as well? hydrogen might be useful as a
beat box.

I have tried using my notebook to do do guitar efx... with a good usb
sound box it might sound better but the speed of things seemed to hold it
back... the effect is too far behind the guitar. Anyone else had better
luck?

If jack is already in there (no problems running jack) then with netjack
and qjackctl we can remote control ardour from far enough away that the
mic doesn't pick up the fan from my desktop. I've looked for a midi
controller...nothing in the packages I can find... three bits of software
I could find. Xphat looks nice but from 1998 and uses xforms... not sure I
need to try keeping that up to date. Rat could do the job with several
instances, but not really what I want. there is one called midi controller
that would work. Can set up both sliders and rotary knobs. Uses glade for
the gui... is that worth my time learning? Still ALSA and not jack though.

Anyway, those are 4 uses that might be unique to a laptop/netbook. Quite
honestly, the netbooks are great little computers... this is my new
"desktop". The desktop is the music computer. I think they cross over
enough to be one workflow. Next to put together a list of applications. My
last laptop was a 1997 NEC 366... this atom netbook seems like a
powerhouse and I think the apps don't have to be barebones. The processing
power is not as important as gui use and real estate. Think ease of use on
a small screen.

I did also think of adding public display stuff like presenter or lyricue
for displaying lyrics or something for displaying music/charts for
performance. But I think there are already distros (things made for the
church end of things) that cater to that and I don't know how mainstream
that would be otherwise. Sing along is not as popular as it should be
except at Christmas...

Anyone think I should keep working on this?

Len


-- 
Len Ovens
www.OvenWerks.net