Hey guys, I've been working on a lot of non-Pd stuff lately. I'm currently in a metal band and want to add some orchestral sounds to the tracks (mainly strings, but I do loves me some French horn as well). But I'm not really sure where to start for that in Linux. The distro I use is KXStudio (a variant of Ubuntu). We've been recording most of our stuff in Ardour. Mixing raw audio has been going really great so far, but I'm not sure what the best way to handle MIDI/synths should be.

So, for those of you who have some experience, what are your suggestions here? Are there any good orchestral sample packs for a solid sampler in Linux that you can suggest? And has anyone experimented with the MIDI implementation in Ardour 3? I know I could slave another sequencer with Jack transport if I want, but I prefer to keep my setups as simple as possible, so if Ardour's MIDI and/or softsynth implementation is usable, I'd prefer it. But if it isn't worth it, I'm down with messing around, if any of you think it's a better solution to do so. And I want to get a demo out quickly, so I'd rather get your advice before I waste time on needless experiments (which is something I have a tendency to do).

I've built decent samplers in Pd, but my current laptop is a bit of a suckfest, and Pd overloads it too easily. Otherwise, I'd totally go that route.

Hi Maelstorm,
I never used Ardour with midi and it hasn't midi tracks afaik. I think MIDI can be used just to control parameters via a hardware interface.
As Midi Sequencer I've tried QTractor with Qsynth (fluidsynth) as midi engine. I've an old bunch of EMU soundfonts, they sound pretty good and there are strings and hopefully some french horn.
I use Qsynth with pd as well with a vibraphone soundfont here.
So if you need some sf2 I can send you a download link privately. I doubt it can be done here.
Cheers

as of Ardour 3, Ardour has midi tracks.

wow, I'm very far from 3, where did you get it? are you on linux too?
about soundfonts I've just found that calf jack host has fluidsynt as well.

yes, i'm on ubuntu 13.10 64bit.
Go to ardour.org !

I got it! thank you, I thought Ardour had automatic updates...
I'm trying it now with midi but it has some issues... error messages and it isn't working properly I cannot set it with jack and calf or qsynth... I'll find a way.
cheers

@alistair_blunt said:

I got it! thank you, I thought Ardour had automatic updates...
I'm trying it now with midi but it has some issues... error messages and it isn't working properly I cannot set it with jack and calf or qsynth... I'll find a way.
cheers

Yeah, I tried Ardour 3 the other day and realized that its MIDI editing function is still basically unusable.

From a thread on the Ardour forum:

@paul said:

there are many issues with MIDI editing. after the next "major" release of ardour, there will be a heavy duty focus period on this stuff.

I've also tried Rosegarden for sending MIDI to Pd, ZynAddSubFX, etc., and it worked for my purposes, but I found it a bit primitive in some ways. Haven't experimented with Qtractor yet.

Hi Maelstorm,

I generally do my stuff on Linux using REAPER (it runs flawlessly via WINE), which I prefer to Ardour3. I also enjoyed playing around with LMMS, but they lack some features that are important to me. What is nice about REAPER via WINE and also LMMS is that they can load Windows VST, and there are some decent free ones around the web, such as these: http://www.dskmusic.com/

You can also use SFZ libraries, such as the Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra, a free sfz sound library: http://sso.mattiaswestlund.net/download.html

For that, you will need a program to load the SFZ (I use one called Sforzando, a free SFZ player that can be loaded as a VST into both REAPER and LMMS via WINE): http://www.plogue.com/products/sforzando/

And if you are looking for some free samples, have a look on this page: http://bigcatlists.blogspot.com/ This guy listed tons of free sf2, sfz, VSTs and Kontakt samples. It's the holy grail of free samples

Take care and good luck,
Gilberto