Perfectly accessible Audio production solution for Linux

[Mario Lang]

Hi.

I just wanted to let you know that thee is actually one fully
accessible audio production envorinment for Linux available now.  It
is called SuperCollider3 (supercollider.sourceforge.net), the
third generation of James MacCarthy's audio synthesis programming environment.
Versions one and two were only available for Macintosh, but
James released version three uneer the GPL and did some
rearchitecturing.  This version is now fully client/server
based, consisting of scsynth, the real-time audio synthesis
server which is controlled via a network connection by some client(s)
which use the OSC protocol.  sclang is one client  for the scsynth
server which implements the SuperCollider Programming language.
This client does not require any GUI, in fact it can be used directly
from within Emacs.  One only needs to learn the SuperCollider
programming language to be able to do whatever one can imagine.

The sclang client for Linux can also talk to the ALSA MIDI sequencer API,
therefore allowing you to do MIDI sequencing at a programming level.

It does present a quite steep learning curve, but it is useable
by us after all.  If you got some MIDI fader box or any other MIDI
hardware with knobs, you should actually be able to build your own
synthesizer with interactive realtime controls.  I'm missing some vital
pieces of hardware to interconnect my MIDI equipment with my SBLive
right now, but as soon as this is cleared up, I can let you know
of results in this direction.

Quickstart for Debian users:
* Install package supercollider and supercollider-doc.
* Create directories ~/synthdefs and ~/SuperCollider.
* Copy the directory /usr/share/doc/supercollider-doc/Help to directory
  ~/SuperColider so that you have a directory ~/SuperColider/Help.
* Unpack all help files so that Emacs can read them:
  find ~/SuperCollider/Help -name \*.gz -exec gunzip {} \;
* Add (require 'sclang) to your .emacs.
* Launch Emacs with command-line argument -sclang: emacs -sclang
* Hit C-c C-h, enter "Help" as help topic, and start reading.

-- 
CYa,
  Mario | Debian Developer <URL:http://debian.org/>
        | Get my public key via finger mlang at db.debian.org
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