Raspberry Jam Review

September 28, 2013 jeremyaudio, board, codec, controller, drumkv1, foot, grand, guitarix, i2s, linux, linuxsampler, midi, mikroelektronika, ordina, pi, piano, proto, raspberry, raspberrypi, realtime, rpi, salamander, wm8731, wolfson2 Comments

Last Thursday the first Dutch Raspberry Jam took place at the Ordina HQ in Nieuwegein. I offered to do a presentation slash demonstration about realtime audio and the the Raspberry Pi so I promised myself to be there at least an hour before the scheduled starting time of my demo. That way I could also join Gert van Loo‘s presentation. When I arrived at 19:15 there was no Gert van Loo though so that should’ve triggered some alarms. Also I didn’t look out for members of the organization as soon as I came in. Instead I chose to dot the i’s and cross the t’s with regards to my demo.

Wrong decision.

About half an hour later the event was closed.

WTF?

I approached the person who closed the event and introduced myself. He replied that they thought I wasn’t coming anymore. Apparently they misinterpreted my e-mail I sent earlier that day that I didn’t manage to produce something workable for the laser show guy. They took it for a cancellation. But immediately the event got kind of reopened and I set up my stuff. We had some audio issues but in the end everything went quite well actually. I showed off what is possible with a Raspberry Pi and realtime audio with the use of some of my favorite software. Guitarix featured of course. I grabbed my guitar, fired up guitarix on the RPi and played some stuff. Hooked up my MIDI foot controller and showed how to select different presets. I also demonstrated the use of the RPi as a piano with the help of LinuxSampler and the awesome Salamander Grand Piano samplepack and did some drumming by using drumkv1. Before the realtime audio demo I presented an overview of the Linux audio ecosystem and talked about the alternatives of how to get sound in and out of your Raspberry Pi. These alternatives are not bound to the onboard sound and USB, since recently it is also possible to hook up an external audio codec to the I2S bus of the Raspberry Pi. I got one in myself this week, a MikroElektronika Audio Codec PROTO board based on the WM8731 codec, so more on that soon. It’d be awesome if I can get that codec to work reliably at lower latencies.

So it all turned out well, I had a great time doing my presentation and judging by the interest shown by some attendants who came up to me after the presentation I hope I got some more people enthusiastic about doing realtime audio with the Raspberry Pi and Linux. So thanks Ordina for offering this opportunity and thanks everyone who stuck around!

Boss FC-50 en mididings

October 20, 2011 jeremyboss, change, control, controller, fc_50, foot, footkeyboard, footswitch, linux, midi, mididings, note, off, on, program, qmidiroute, studio, tango, ubuntuLeave a comment

De Boss FC-50 doet alleen aan MIDI Program Changes en wat Control Changes. Maar ik wil er noten mee kunnen spelen. Dat zou op zich kunnen met QMidiRoute maar het mooiste zou zijn als ik ook Note Off events zou kunnen genereren, of nog beter, als een volgende noot de vorige af zou kunnen kappen. mididings heeft deze functionaliteit en heb een scriptje gemaakt dat precies doet wat ik wil:

#!/usr/bin/python

from mididings import *
from mididings.extra import *

run(
    Filter(PROGRAM) >> 
    NoteOn(EVENT_VALUE,100) >>
    Transpose(36) >> 
    LatchNotes(),
)

Wat dit mididings scriptje doet is de Program Changes eruit filteren, deze omzetten naar Note On events, de gegenereerde noten 3 octaven omhoog gooien en met de LatchNotes Unit ‘latch’ je de noten (je laat ze aanhouden) en zet je elke vorige noot uit bij een nieuwe noot. Dit scriptje maakt van de FC-50 een mooi footkeyboardje.

mididings kun je vinden in de lucid-unstable repository van Tango Studio.

MIDI Foot Controller

October 19, 2011 jeremy10.04, boss, controller, fc_50, foot, footswitch, guitarix, linux, midi, mididings, pro, qmidiroute, rakarrack, saffire, ubuntuLeave a comment

Van de week heb ik een tweedehands Boss FC-50 MIDI Foot Controller op de kop weten te tikken. Gelijk aangesloten op mijn live set-up (HP Notebook met Focusrite Saffire Pro 10, Ubuntu 10.04) en getest met o.a. QMidiRoute. Werkt perfect. Ga in mididings duiken zodat ik deze controller kan gaan gebruiken als keyboard (dus om noten te produceren) en als MIDI footswitch voor Rakarrack en Guitarix. Hopelijk kan ik de controller de 29e al live gebruiken op het Rock de IJmond XL Festival.

autostatic.com

Linux Audio Ramblings

foot

Raspberry Jam Review

Boss FC-50 en mididings

MIDI Foot Controller