[LAU] Off-topic but related Opensource MIDI sequencer for Windows?

[Tomas Valusek]

Hello,

I'm a blind music teacher and I'm looking for accessible MIDI sequencer.
There are quite a few OSS sequencers on Linux, but AFAIK none for
Windows. That'S why I'm writing this here - is anybody considering to
port any MIDI sequencer to Windows? Both Qt and Gtk+ are present on
Windows, so the only problem could be an underlying audio/midi
infrastructure. I hope one day an accessible solution usable both by
visually impaired AND people with good vision users. I'd like to use
such a sequencer as an educational tool, and it should work both on
Linux and Windows.

Best regards.

Tomas Valusek

[Julien Claassen]

Hi Thomas!
There is cuse:
http://www.informatik.uni-mannheim.de/pi4.data/content/projects/cuse/index_en.html
This is a curses based linux sequencer, which - if I remember correctly - is
useable under windows as well.
It's probably not so showy as a typical GTK or QT sequencer, but it has a
few nice features, especially thought for blind people.
Kindest regads
Julien


--------
Music was my first love and it will be my last (John Miles)

======== FIND MY WEB-PROJECT AT: ========
http://ltsb.sourceforge.net
the Linux TextBased Studio guide
======= AND MY PERSONAL PAGES AT: =======
http://www.juliencoder.de

[Grammostola Rosea]

Post by Julien Claassen
Hi Thomas!
http://www.informatik.uni-mannheim.de/pi4.data/content/projects/cuse/index_en.html
This is a curses based linux sequencer, which - if I remember correctly - is
useable under windows as well.
It's probably not so showy as a typical GTK or QT sequencer, but it has a
few nice features, especially thought for blind people.
Kindest regads
Julien

Interesting, is there more music/audio software on linux for visual
impaired musicians?

[Julien Claassen]

Hi!
Of course there is! That's mainly, why I'm VERY FOND of my Linux. :-)
As for MIDI-sequencing: midish, cuse and mondrian (programming language
only). Deficits of midish and cuse: no ALSA or JACK MIDI backends. Only
rawmidi.
For audio: ecasound (recording, processing, mixing, LADSPA support).
As for softsynths and samplers: ZynAddSubFX has a very small commandline
interface (Loading only), fluidsynth (shell-like), LinuxSampler (via simple
telnet, working on something nicer shell-like myself), csound and clm (both
with programming language), I think also supercollider can be used via simple
text-files, though I'm not sure. Oh and I'm sorry: aeolus OF COURSE, with it's
shell-interface. Beatrix has an interactive curses-interface (no JACK and ALSA
at all, you'll have to patch it up yorself with bio2jack and even then it may
be problematic...). Tapeutape is an XML-based sampler in the making. Nice
start, promising, but still lacking a bit.
there's the sndfile-suite for small conversion tasks. There's sox for other
simple tasks.
You can use TiMidity live for playing. There's tranches a looping software
(MIDI pattern player).
Last but not least there's jconv (former jace) for realtime IR-based reverb
effects (convolution).
All these can make u-p a very formidable environment.
Real drawback is in fact only the MIDI angle. Midish has a lot of good
features and is - as far as I've seen - very cleanly programmed, cuse has a
nice interface and a few very cunning features (use special key-combinations
on your midi-keyboard to perform some function). But they all don't have ALSA
MIDI sequencer and no way to have real JACK transport. I tried hacking midish
to have VERY BASIC JACK transport control support. But the result is not
satisfactory. I hope I'll get back to it and then do a few tests. I guess I
should first do a few more experiments with JACK though.
Sorry for the long winded answer.
Kindest regards
Julien

--------
Music was my first love and it will be my last (John Miles)

======== FIND MY WEB-PROJECT AT: ========
http://ltsb.sourceforge.net
the Linux TextBased Studio guide
======= AND MY PERSONAL PAGES AT: =======
http://www.juliencoder.de

[Julien Claassen]

Hi agan!
I missed one angle entirely: the GNOME desktop has a few helpers for the
visually impaired. Magnifiers and orca (mixed results for braille display or
speech) are there to assist and the GTK itself has a few good hooks for those
things. I believe they thought about it quite a while. So GTK-based software,
at least some of it, could probably called "software for visually impaired
people" as well.
Kindest regards
Julien

--------
Music was my first love and it will be my last (John Miles)

======== FIND MY WEB-PROJECT AT: ========
http://ltsb.sourceforge.net
the Linux TextBased Studio guide
======= AND MY PERSONAL PAGES AT: =======
http://www.juliencoder.de

[Grammostola Rosea]

Post by Julien Claassen
Hi agan!
I missed one angle entirely: the GNOME desktop has a few helpers for
the visually impaired. Magnifiers and orca (mixed results for braille
display or speech) are there to assist and the GTK itself has a few
good hooks for those things. I believe they thought about it quite a
while. So GTK-based software, at least some of it, could probably
called "software for visually impaired people" as well.
Kindest regards
Julien

thanks.
There is also some info for Blind Audacity Users:

http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php?title=Audacity_for_blind_users
http://users.northlc.com/sberry/

[Joel Roth]

Post by Grammostola Rosea
Interesting, is there more music/audio software on linux for visual
impaired musicians?

I think any command-driven software would be suitable.

Nama (formerly Ecmd) represents my own work in this
application space, providing a track-oriented user interface
for Ecasound. Nama has a text-only mode; the default is
a Tk based GUI with a command prompt in the terminal window.

It installs directly from CPAN:

cpan Audio::Ecasound::Multitrack

Regards,

[Bob van der Poel]

Post by Grammostola Rosea
Interesting, is there more music/audio software on linux for visual
impaired musicians?

I've had a few users of MMA reporting the fact that they are visually
impaired. Far as I know, they've had success.

http://www.mellowood.ca/mma