The Frantic Dame
Season greetings. As (almost) everybody knows already, or ought to, Qtractor is an Audio/MIDI multi-track sequencer application, written in C++ on the Qt4 framework and Linux is about its native platform. Thus, JACK and ALSA are the main infrastructures that fit to purpose, respectively for audio and MIDI.
Also a known fact is that this is nothing more than my pet, hobby, spare-time-burner, whatever project, but... it's actually my own dogfood where digital music making and (re)creation matters. Yep. I still have this sublime hope to make it evolve as a fairly featured Desktop Audio/MIDI Workstation, one special and dedicated to the personal homestudio. As joked many times before, it's perfectly tagged for the techno-boy bedroom home-studio, but techno-girls can also apply ;). You tell me.
Qtractor 0.1.2 (frantic dame) is out!
As obvious as in any respectable easter egg ;)
This time, some important fixes have sneaked in and other are surely popping and will be lurking out. Main ones go down like this:
- You can finally create new clips from scratch.
- Track record monitoring with audio effects applied.
- New Track/View menu items, all shortcut configurable.
- Overlapped clips rendering hopefully fixed.
- Improved MIDI editor selection.
- New clip-split command.
- VST plug-in parameters are now undo/redo-able (mostly).
You can grab the new stuff from the usual project site:
http://qtractor.sourceforge.net
http://sourceforge.net/projects/qtractor
Direct download links:
Now the plain change-log follows, since she was just a futile duchess:
- Session length fixed (yet again) while extend recording; also improved follow-playhead switching while playback/recording.
- Whitespace sanitization gets leaner for all recorded filenames.
- Run-time SSE optimization detection has been improved while on configure; additionally, IEEE 32bit float specific optimizations have also sneaked in.
- SSE optimization is now featured over all audio monitoring, and most specially on audio bus buffering, lowering the CPU burden a bit while doing track and bus gain, pan, metering and mix-down.
- Fixed MIDI clip move into new track, preserving the original channel, bank and program whenever possible.
- Fixed session cursor seeking, specially regarding overlapped clips, once gain.
- The MIDI editor gets new menu access to current MIDI clip track (see File/Track/Inputs, Outputs, Properties); selection of MIDI events has also been improved, specially regarding overlapped note events.
- Clip split command enters the stage (see Edit/Clip/Split) about splitting the current (selected) clip at the current playhead position (red cursor line).
- Creating new clips from scratch is now finally permitted (see Edit/Clip/New...); additionally, the clip properties dialog is now also allowing for changing the filename (and track/channel as special to MIDI clips).
- Record armed tracks are now properly monitored and fed through their own output audio bus on mix-down, which includes plug-in effects processing.
- The files widget get alternating coloured rows.
- VST plug-in preset values are now being restored properly; individual parameter changes are now being queued for the also convenient undo/redo command pattern.
- Some audio clip buffer-sync tweaks have sneaked in, improving and fixing the rendering of full-overlapped, integrally cached and/or offset clips altogether.
- Stuffed one primordial shot on XInitThreads() at the main head, and let native VST plug-ins start behaving as they should, or not; this might be in fact problematic and dangerous for people who won't ever try the JUCE based plugins as from JUCETICE (http://www.anticore.org/jucetice), due to some broken locking mechanism in xcb; thanks anyway to mighty kRAkEn/gORe@JUCETICE for this precious hint and from who knows best.
- True deterministic session length update has due fixed.
- Track menu has new accessible actions:
- Track/Inputs - show current track input bus connections;
- Track/Outputs - show current track output bus connections;
- Track/State/Record - arm current track for recording;
- Track/State/Mute - mute current track;
- Track/State/Solo - solo current track;
- Track/Navigate/First - make current the first track;
- Track/Navigate/Previous - make current the previous track;
- Track/Navigate/Next - make current the next track;
- Track/Navigate/Last - make current the last track;
- Track/Move/Top - move current track to top;
- Track/Move/Up - move current track up;
- Track/Move/Down - move current track down;
- Track/Move/Bottom - move current track to bottom;
- View menus have new accessible actions:
- View/Zoom/In - horizontal and vertical zoom-in (Ctrl +);
- View/Zoom/Out - horizontal and vertical zoom-out (Ctrl -);
- View/Zoom/Reset - reset both zoom levels to default;
- View/Snap - select current snap-per-beat setting;
- Plug-in forms don't auto-open on session reload anymore.
- Keyboard shortcuts icon item (Help/Shortcuts...) sneaks in.
That's all folks. For the time being... :)
Cheers && Enjoy
--
rncbc aka Rui Nuno Capela
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| qtractor-0.1.2.tar.gz | 504.37 KB |
| qtractor-0.1.2-user-manual.pdf | 1.24 MB |
Comments
Congratulations on the new release
Hi Rui,
Congratulations on the v0.1.2 release! Just did get a chance to cvs it. Very nice. You are certainly a very dedicated (and excellent) programmer. :)
So what is next on the todo list? Aux Buses and/or Clip plugins would sure be really nice. ;) Then again, I can also think of.....oh, never mind :D
Lexridge
Re: next on the todo list?
Thanks lexridge. I thinks it is time to have a little spring-cleaning first... eheh.
OK. I still have DSSI/VSTi MIDI instruments in the drawer, but not sure it will be ready for the next minor dot release. OTOH clip plugins is one good candidate, as it's fairly easy to get it integrated. Not sure about the aux buses.
One thing that I'm considering is audio pitch-shifting support, by adding yet another (optional) dependency: Chris Cannam's Rubber Band Audio Time Stretcher. This one should be integrated in addition to the current time-stretcher, which is pretty faster but artifact prone. The main feature addition is indeed pitch-shifting at the audio clip (buffer) level, being this a basics one for loop-based music making :)
But I still have many things to do... and so little time ;)
Cheers
--
rncbc aka Rui Nuno Capela
Rubber Band Audio Time Stretcher
This library looks very intriguing. It would certainly be a welcome addition to Qtractor.
Lexridge
Congratulation and much more!
Lexridge...NEVER dubit of the RUI capacity becuse Rui is one King developer!
You just ask some nice features and then after some night.....surprise...the feature is available on the CVS and ready to testing!
Rui have impressed me the last ( and ONLY ONE) night ,HOW fast have upgrade my Qranger to version 0.1.2 too!
Anyway, about the next features:
Pitch shift is the most important feature, this because we use TON of the Loopmasters library and just some instruments loops are recorded in "C" chords. If you start a new session song, then you have to use the same wav tonality for the whole session.
Second: IF ( I say IF...) in the audio winget loader OPEN, you add the key PLAY for listen first the wav file to load, where much better, because right now, untill the audio file will not imported on the Qtractor, you can never Pre listen it. I load sometime 30-100 wav files on Qranger, then Preliten on qranger and select just some nice. the work then is to DELETE the all audio files not used. One Prelisten key on the audio loader will help a lot. ( we can survive without..don't worry..lol)
My last dream is the giga files instruments loader...but I can wait....
again.. Rui you are the best!
cheers
Domenik
Re: Play on Open File dialog
Many thanks domenik
I'm not that sure I deserve all the praise, I'm doing it on the shoulders of giants. ;)
About your second suggestion, regarding the open file dialog having a playback pre-listening/preview function. I confess it was my first thought when implementing the pre-listening feature you find in the Files widget. However I stared in schock when Qt4 dropped the preview extendability in the QFileDialog::getOpenFileName() method, which now maps to the native file-open dialog where available. I'm sure it was an option on the older Qt3 framework, but now it's gone. Pity.
I guess one has to build his own custom file-open dialog for that now; unfortunately I find the task way too distracting and far from (my) core business ;) let's just hope someone out there has already been there and done that and willing to pass the source... let's google around ;)
Byee
--
rncbc aka Rui Nuno Capela
Qtractor 1.2 (The Frantic Dame)
What a great version, works very well here on Mandriva 2008.0. Thank you very much.
I'm really drawn by the midi tools menu; one question: If I just wanted to randomize the pitches of a midi file
or 'explode' the pitch element of the file can this be done leaving other elements in place? It would be good if
the percentage of pitch randomness could be adjusted. Except for the old 'jazz' sequencer I can't think what else
randomizes in this way. Anyway, well done! :)
Nev.
Re: MIDI Note Randomize
The Randomize tool in the MIDI clip editor does not have this option to affect the pitch of the selected MIDI note events.
As you can verify from the Tools\Randomize dialog tab, you can only randomize the onset (time), duration and velocity (value) of the selected events, being that randomization expressed in a certain percentage amount from their current value.
There's no note (pitch) randomize option, that's a fact. Truth is, I didn't have the need for it, until now :) Is it really a must have one? Sure it should be easy to implement but, how useful would it be?
Cheers and thanks for the compliments.
--
rncbc aka Rui Nuno Capela
Re: MIDI Note Randomize
I think it would be very much appreciated by a lot of people. Dave Phillips, for example, is still having to use Sequencer Plus (Dos)
because we're looking for the facilities that Cubase (for Atari!) midi provided. Midi composition on Linux is not a very sophisticated
affair. As a composer, both using sound and midi files, I'd like to see a lot more similar implementation. ;-)
Cheers,
Nev
Re: MIDI Note Randomize
And what are those facilities you're missing, besides of course note/pitch randomization?
Notice that there are just a few in the plan: swing/groove quantize and scale transpose. Another facility that should address the issue is scripting, but that is not in the sandbox yet but rather in the long-term plan :(
Please, let me know which actual MIDI tools are you missing the most, and please do detail how each one is supposed to work, because what's probably obvious to you might not be to me (eg. i never used cubase:)
Cheers
--
rncbc aka Rui Nuno Capela
Midi Plugins
why then not value to use in the mixer plugins the midi plugins too?
Maybe there will be more easy develope midi tools plugins for the realtime editing.
1) Midi Velocity/compressor: will automatically increase/decrease in % the whole midi track midi note velocity, instead to edit under the midi clip.
2) Midi transpose: will transpose the whole midi tracks in semitone scale.
3) Midi randomize: can make the features request before.
4) Midi swing/groove
5) Midi CC filters: here you can filter in realtime CC controllers
6) Midi Note filter: here you can filter the desidered notes
and how much more you want, without broken the qtractor code.
can be more interesting?
cheers
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