What Improvements Would You Like To See In Free/Libre, Open Source Music Software?

Submitted ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨lofenyy@lemmy.ca⁩ to ⁨technology@lemmy.world⁩

Hey guys, forgive me if I’m posting in the wrong place, but I have a talent for understanding audio very well. I just finished implementing a sequencer and a synthesizer in C, just for fun. Now that I’m done, I feel pretty good about this project, and I feel like there’s no reason not to keep going, but I don’t know what to work on next. I love free software, so I’d love to fill in the gaps that may cause a person to prefer to buy a proprietary synthesizer over downloading a free one. Do you have any ideas?

Thanks.

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AstralPath@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
If you are a guitar enthusiast, TuxGuitar could use some features to help it catch up to where guitar pro was at version 4. Not sure how feasible that is.

Arobas has essentially rendered old .gp# tabs obsolete as their playback on new versions of GP is broken AF. Vibrato is weird, markers are bugged, its a bummer. I’ve been on GP5 since it was released and I refuse to update regardless of how “good” the new versions are.

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DevCat@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I would like to see a cross platform music library. One where I can maintain the library on my PC, and synchronize played versus unplayed to my mobile device. So far, it doesn’t seem to be one that can keep track of what was played on my mobile device and synchronize that information to my desktop.

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- InfiniWheel@lemmy.one ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Seconded. As it is I have to keep a local copy of everything or a text file. Even when it comes to yt music clients, there’s no way to sync them without logging into Google (which a lot don’t plan on ever implementing)
  
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mPony@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
well, as far as "proprietary vs free" software needs, there are very few free vocal tuning ("Auto-tune") VSTs out there. It turns out fixing vocals is pretty important to all kinds of production, it's not just for turning vocalists into robotic auditory paste.

Tuners are just super useful tools to begin with. The math behind recognizing pitch is, evidently, rather tricky. (I have more than one guitar tuner that will take about a half-second to decide that my E string is tuned a little bit low.) So the first step would be writing a pitch detector and getting it to work on a guitar, and a bass guitar, and then a voice.

Once you've got an algorithm for pitch detection working, then you'd need to get it to respond VERY quickly (which would take some next-level cleverness to do.) After that you'd have it analyze an input signal to graph what frequency the signal is at, and then choose which notes those frequencies correspond to. Those notes could probably be stored as MIDI data. By this point you've already achieved a "sing your own MIDI notes" VST, which I've already seen people asking for.

Lastly you'd need editable parameters for each note (or group of notes) to describe how to adjust the pitch from the detected frequency to the desired frequency. One parameter is how quickly it changes the note (which gives that characteristic "robotic" feel that is just pervasive in pop music these days.)

I think this could be a fantastically useful plug-in; it'd certainly be nice to have a useful free alternative for people who can't afford hundreds of dollars of software.

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- lofenyy@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  These are all excellent ideas! Thanks!
  
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troyunrau@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Just wanted to say: I hope you’re enjoying the project. Implementing something like you’ve done has always been a dream down-time programming project for me, but I’ve never had the time. I grew up with Impulse Tracker and similar in the MSDOS era, and later took a geophysics degree (which is much about waveforms and signal analysis when you get down to it – what is a seismic wave if not audio…). And I’ve always just wanted to play with programmable audio and effects. So you’re living my alter-ego’s life :)

I’m not going to make any feature requests. I’m too busy with work to even poke your software. I just wanted to throw some kudos towards you for doing something cool :)

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- lofenyy@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  You’re too nice! Thank you!
  
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AMillionMonkeys@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I love the spectral view in Adobe Audition and would be happy to leave it if Audacity (or whichever fork people like) would implement something similar.

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StrawberryPigtails@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
For my needs, the music creation side has been fine, at least on Linux. Playback side… Yea, I miss WinAmp. Haven’t found anything even remotely close in Linux or Windows. Wasn’t quite the answer you were looking for though.

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- southsamurai@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Gods, I would kill for a musicbee port.
  
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scytale@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Can’t think of anything right now, but thank you for doing what you’re doing! Please keep it up.

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- lofenyy@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Thank you, I really appreciate it!
  
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funkforager@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Is the synth going to support the other scales? C is great but you’re gonna want the black keys.

In terms of things that make you stand out: paying attention to the UI/UX of the interface. How do people use it? What do you like about the other interfaces they have?

Another feature is support for drivers. Something Linux and windows have less adoption/support compared with Macs. Obviously it’d be nice if your synth could take in sound from controllers and output to other gear. Or have your sequencer drive a midi clock for other devices.

Another direction is to look at what parts of audio you find interesting. Maybe it’s low latency fax processing, maybe it’s elaborate acoustic modeling or reverb, or control of harmonics. All those are good ways to stand out and specialize. Or tools to help analyze and visualize audio.

Look at some of the existing VST ecosystem and you might get inspired!

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- lofenyy@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  Is the synth going to support the other scales? C is great but you’re gonna want the black keys. :3
  
  I’m currently fantasizing about making an old-school tracker program that supports VST-like plugins, where you can plug different software devices into one another. It’ll be mostly based on the UI of fami-tracker, as that was my favourite. I’d like the tracker to support as many virtual devices as possible. Sadly though, no IRL device support except midi input devices, like USB keyboards.
  
  what parts of audio you find interesting I like it when the sawtooth wave goes brrr.
  
  The VST ecosystem on Linux isn’t thriving, is my understanding. I’m hoping to maybe create my own open format, that’ll do exactly the same thing that VST’s do, but in a more programming language agnostic manner.
  
  Again, this is all my fantasy right now. I wont feel encouraged to put in the work if no one’s interested in it.
  
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  - ianovic69@feddit.uk ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    I like it when the sawtooth wave goes brrr.
    
    Wait, is this r/synthesizercirclejerk ?
    
    Now I’m starting to really feel at home!
    
    Programming stuff is way over my head so if I missed it I’m sorry, but just in case I thought I’d mention Max4Live.
    
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Teon@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I want Musicolet for Linux Desktop.

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flyoverstate@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
soulseek but open source

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- finder@sopuli.xyz ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Have you tried Nicotine+?
  
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  - flyoverstate@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    that is a client for soulseek not an open source replacement for the network itself
    
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- lofenyy@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  This is a perplexing idea to me. What is soulseek that bittorrent isn’t?
  
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StorageB@lemmy.one ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I can’t seem to find a decent simple open source guitar tuner app

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- lofenyy@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Have you tried Tuner on FDroid? Sadly, I’m not an Android dev.
  
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