hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr2661.txt

Episode: 2661
Title: HPR2661: My Music Production Setup
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2661/hpr2661.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 07:09:46

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This is HPR Episode 2661 entitled My Music Production Setup.
It is hosted by Claudio Miranda and in about 11 minutes long and Karina Cleenflag.
The summary is Claudio M. Shell's Music Production Setup.
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Hey hacker public radio this is Claudio Miranda, also known as Claudio M.
I just wanted to do a recording this time around describing what's in my music production setup.
I guess it's not the best title but I just wanted to talk about that.
I just wanted to talk about how I use Linux to compose and arrange and produce the music that I do.
I'm going to go into a little bit of my own history.
I studied sound engineering many years ago.
I took piano lessons since I was a little kid.
I worked with a lot of different programs as a matter of fact.
Back in the days of the classic macOS, I used to use a program called MetroTrucksPro
which is a MIDI sequencing software.
I also used that on Windows when I moved to the Windows platform some years after
when I had a computer home because I couldn't afford a Mac at the time.
That helped me a lot with composing.
I had a Kauai K4 synth which I still own.
That was my main keyboard synthesizer at the time.
I kind of shoot forward to early to mid-2000s.
I managed to get myself an iMac G5 since I was still preferring the Apple platform.
I had moved on to OS X and even though I could run master tracks using the classic mode
I eventually got to the point where I couldn't.
I started doing stuff on Garage Band that liked how it functioned
plus I could also work with digital audio.
That worked for me for a good while.
I was still using Linux on the side just for my everyday stuff.
It really was my secondary platform at the time.
Then my primary was Mac OS X.
I started with dual booting the power PC port of Ubuntu back in the day.
On that iMac and as a matter of fact it ran much better than Mac OS X did.
So I said let me try some of these music apps that I know about
because I had used Ubuntu Studio on the X86 side.
But I don't know if there was a port for the power PC so what I did is I just loaded
and installed the meta packages for Ubuntu Studio from the power PC port of Ubuntu
and I had all the applications.
So I would think around with stuff like LMS, Linux multimedia studio,
QTractor, Muse, a few other things, Jack of course,
which was the underlying software that I used for the audio routing.
If you're not familiar with Jack, it's a recursive acronym that stands for Jack Audio Connection Kit
and allows for real time audio processing.
It's not perfect but it does a job.
It does a very good job if you pretty much know what you're doing.
So I used that there was a tool called QJackCTL
that put a graphical, acute, graphical, acute nut as in CUTE
but CUTE as in the CUTE library graphical interface to Jack.
It made it a lot easier to make the necessary connections for the audio or for the MIDI signals.
And that was working for me for a while until that IMAC started giving me hardware problems
and eventually it just was no more.
So at that point I realized that I need to get myself out of this Apple ecosystem
and so I eventually moved to the PC running Linux primarily.
And I did work with some music stuff but I was still having issues with a lot of what they call X-Runs
which is dropouts on the signal processing or audio processing using Jack,
which can cause some problems as you're recording and doing stuff.
It may even cause some music apps to crash.
So I kind of did some stuff with it but I found myself spending more time trying to troubleshoot the problems
and actually working on music so it would get a little frustrating.
So time would pass and let's talk about present day.
I now have my fedora laptop running on a Core i3 CPU.
It runs very well. The apps I use are pretty much the same.
I've kind of boiled it down to a few applications for now,
even though I have install almost the kitchen sink.
But I also have kind of throwing back a bit to the past.
I recently acquired a Power Macintosh G5 with dual processors,
dual 1.8 gigahertz G5 processors.
So I have a PPC port of Debian installed at PPC 64 actually,
64 bit installation of Debian on it.
And I've installed all the apps and it works pretty well. I can't complain.
I have to say that in the time that I've used all this stuff and Jack specifically,
it's gotten a lot better at handling and even the Linux kernel has gotten a lot better at handling
almost real time audio processing.
So I was very happy to see that.
I noticed improvements on my laptop and on this machine on this Power Mac.
So what do I use on both of these? Very simple.
I use QJack CTL again, which is what controls Jack. It's a front end for Jack.
I also use QTractor, which is a, if you're familiar with ARDER,
it's something like that, though not as beefy as ARDER I would say.
But it's good. It's very much like GarageBand.
I would consider the GarageBand even sort of looks like GarageBand.
And it does digital audio, does MIDI.
You can load a bunch of different software synths and software plugins.
There's LV2 plugins. I think it also supports VST and various other DSSI plugins,
so like different software synths.
So I use QJack CTL, which controls Jack.
QTractor for my sequencing and audio recording.
And for the sounds, I use Hydrogen, which is a drum machine.
I use that obviously for the drums, and it has different sound libraries, different drum libraries,
which is pretty neat. Very nice piece of software.
I also use various software synths.
The main one I use is Yoshimi, which is a fork of Zenad sub-effects.
It works very well. It works also as a plugin for adding through QTractor.
I also use FluidSynth, which is an engine for loading sound fonts,
which you can get on the internet.
Just do a search for sound fonts on Google or whatever your preferred search engine is,
and you'll find a ton of them.
There's a lot of them that are also open source and free to use.
So I highly recommend that.
I use Hexter, which is an FM synth, similar to the Yamaha DX7, back in the day.
A bunch of effects, the CA-LF. Those are very good.
I pretty much just load the kitchen sink when it comes to the plugins.
And then just pick and choose and test.
But that's pretty much it. Those are the apps I use.
You know, how I go about composing or producing the music that I do,
it depends just how I feel, really just based on my mood and my feeling.
I may start with a drum pattern, or I may start with a keyboard riff,
or I may start with a particular pattern, which another piece of software was just reminded.
Since I mentioned patterns, is Q MIDI ARP, which is a MIDI sequencer slash arpeggiator.
So if you're familiar with the sequencers from back in the analog days,
it would just play a sequence depending on how you would turn the knobs on them
for the pitch and the sound.
And they would play a pattern over and over and over.
So that's one that I also use.
I used it recently for a song that I'm working on that takes the Bumble,
which is a drum, a type of percussion that's...
that they use a lot in Argentine folk music.
And I started working with that, and I used the Q MIDI ARP to play a loop of a pattern.
And I would actually take my keyboard during different parts of the song,
and trigger different keys, and it would change the key, the actual key signature of the pattern,
which is good because then I can actually vary it a little bit,
so the pattern would be so repetitive.
So that's pretty much what I use.
Can't think of anything else.
So we have Jack, QJack CTL, to control Jack, Q Tractor, Hydrogen, Yoshimi, Q MIDI ARP,
a bunch of software synths like Hexter, FluidSynth, Y-Synth is another one, AM-Synth is another one.
I think that's pretty much it. I can't think of any other ones.
Audacity, of course, I've used to mix down, which actually I'm using that to record this episode right now.
So that's pretty much it.
I'll have a list of the applications in the links in the show notes if you want to check them out,
plus some other information, and so feel free to check them out.
All right, well that's it for this episode, and be sure to record your own for Hacker Public Radio,
because we always need shows.
So looking forward to hearing one from all of you out there.
Bye-bye.
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