Produce an original piece of music using open source software (e.g. Ardour5, Hydrogen, Calf Plugins, etc.)
a project by jctmichel
Updated over 3 years ago. 8 hacker ♥️. 9 followers.

Project Description

Since it has been near impossible to collaborate with other musicians at SUSE during the pandemic, I was considering an alternative music project for this Hackweek with any musicians at SUSE who might be willing to join.

The purpose would be to combine musical talent with technology by collaborating with other musicians, composing and recording an original piece of music, and finally producing it on Linux. This would give us the opportunity to experiment with open source music production software and learn something new.

Goal for this Hackweek

  1. Collaborate some musical ideas with other SUSE musicians
  2. Compose a song from scratch
  3. Record all instrument parts remotely using a common open source DAW (digital audio workstation) on Linux.
  4. Produce and mix the final track using a variety of open source plugins on Linux.
  5. BONUS If I manage to get more than one person involved and that there is enough time, put together a video of us all playing each part. (Record and edit using a video editing software on Linux)

Resources

Requirements:

  1. You would need to be a musician (or musical)
  2. Since you would be required to record from your home, you would need:
    • a laptop/PC (preferably with a Linux distro installed)
    • your own instrument
    • appropriate microphone and/or cabling to connect your instrument to a laptop/PC
    • a USB or Firewire audio interface would be ideal

It would be cool, if we could do this over several timezones :-)

One important point, which I would like to raise, on the subject of music composition whatever we decide to compose cannot be subject to copyright. So we should have a discussion prior to starting to make sure we are all clear about this.

Current status

WE DID IT !!!

8 people across 3 different countries managed to compose and record an original song with open source tools on Linux in under 4 days.

Do you want to see the outcome?

Join us today (Fri 26th March) at 16:00 for the lightning talks where we will reveal what we have recorded and also show you a video of us making the it.

Details about what we did can be seen here in our Confluence Page. Unfortunately it's only available for SUSE employees right now.

Blog post about the project on one.suse.com (SUSE internal)

James' presentation (29:35 - 33:25) in Hackweek Lightning talks (SUSE internal)

Here's the video (SUSE internal): House of Mystery

MP3 Download available here (SUSE internal): House of Mystery MP3 download

Video available for everyone on Youtube

Join this project

Looking for hackers with the skills:

music recording musicproduction escapism

This project is part of:

Hack Week 20

Activity

  • almost 4 years ago: nicoladm liked this project.
  • almost 4 years ago: kstreitova liked this project.
  • almost 4 years ago: PSuarezHernandez liked this project.
  • almost 4 years ago: dabatianni joined this project.
  • almost 4 years ago: ivoermejo joined this project.
  • almost 4 years ago: ralfflaxa liked this project.
  • almost 4 years ago: simotek joined this project.
  • almost 4 years ago: ancorgs liked this project.
  • almost 4 years ago: bmwiedemann joined this project.
  • almost 4 years ago: rsimai liked this project.
  • almost 4 years ago: bmwiedemann liked this project.
  • almost 4 years ago: ories liked this project.
  • almost 4 years ago: ta-ro joined this project.
  • almost 4 years ago: jctmichel added keyword "escapism" to this project.
  • almost 4 years ago: sndirsch started this project.
  • almost 4 years ago: jctmichel added keyword "musicproduction" to this project.
  • almost 4 years ago: jctmichel added keyword "recording" to this project.
  • almost 4 years ago: jctmichel added keyword "music" to this project.
  • almost 4 years ago: jctmichel originated this project.


    • Comments

    • sndirsch
      almost 4 years ago by sndirsch | Reply

      I was thinking about creating a scratch track before recording the real instruments. I use to make use of ireal Pro for this, but since it's the goal to use OpenSource Software here, I looked for alternatives. Found an interesting one since I'm always using musescore a lot: BandInMuseScore. It's a plugin for musescore and uses MMA as "backend" https://berteh.github.io/BandInMuseScore/

    • sndirsch
      almost 4 years ago by sndirsch | Reply

      I was thinking about creating a scratch track before recording the real instruments. I use to make use of ireal Pro for this, but since it's the goal to use OpenSource Software here, I looked for alternatives. Found an interesting one since I'm always using musescore a lot: BandInMuseScore. It's a plugin for musescore and uses MMA as "backend".

    • ancorgs
      almost 4 years ago by ancorgs | Reply

      Nice opportunity to try GeekosDaw and provide feedback.

    • dabatianni
      almost 4 years ago by dabatianni | Reply

      I would love to be part of that! I can offer vocals and drums (if the drum part is not too complex). I have good microphones and camera equipment to record things with.

      I also do video editing in Blender, which could be useful if needed.

    • ivoermejo
      almost 4 years ago by ivoermejo | Reply

      I have a little song created with openSUSE Leap 15.2 and GeekosDaw repository Dorayaki

      • sndirsch
        almost 4 years ago by sndirsch | Reply

        Very nice and well done! May I ask which tools you exactly used? Any real instruments or "just" MIDI? Which MIDI soundfonts for which instruments or are you using VST-Plugins? How? I'm asking since my biggest issue is still to get good sound out of the generated MIDI files. :-(

    • jctmichel
      almost 4 years ago by jctmichel | Reply

      I've organised a get-together at 10:00 on Monday and sent an invitation to everyone who has shown a bit of interest in this project. Come and join me if you can and then we can plan out how we do this during the week.

      I created a confluence page to capture ideas: https://confluence.suse.com/x/N4EBKg

      • sndirsch
        almost 4 years ago by sndirsch | Reply

        Thanks a lot for doing this, James! I added a few things, which hopefully are helpful

    • jctmichel
      almost 4 years ago by jctmichel | Reply

      A big thank you to all that helped make this project happen. It was a blast. Not sure how we can top this next year :-)

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