Rosegarden

by Seth Kenlon

Sometimes it surprises me just how many music applications there are for GNU/Linux. There are the obvious ones, like Ardour, the amazing digital audio workstation, and Audacity, the ubiquitous waveform editor and all-round swiss army knife. And then there are those lesser-known applications that hum away happily, being developed by a team of dedicated programmers and powering all manner of creative output. One such application is Rosegarden, a fine digital audio workstation with a great interface and surprisingly fluid integration with some very nice musical notation software.

Install

Rosegarden is available only for Linux and BSD, and it's installable from your software repository or ports collection.

On Fedora, for instance:

$ sudo dnf install rosegarden

On Slackware:

$ su -c 'sport install rosegarden'

And NetBSD:

$ cd /usr/pkgsrc/audio/rosegarden
$ su -c 'make install'

In addition to Rosegarden, you should also install

JACK

QJackCtl

. These are not strictly required, but they make audio production a lot more fun and flexible. Additionally, you probably want a robust effects and synths collection. There isn't a definitive collection, so if you don't have a favourite set already, here are some to try:

Tom's Audio Processing plugins

Steve Harris's plugins

These components require a host application to run. In this case, Rosegarden serves as that host.

Startup

Before starting Rosegarden, start JACK and QJackCtl. These route your MIDI controller (if you are using one) and other sound peripherals and plugins.

If you're not using a MIDI controller and you don't plan on using any plugin outside of Rosegarden, then you don't really need JACK, so you can just start Rosegarden.

Rosegarden startup [IMG]

Launch Rosegarden from your application menu or application launcher.

Interface

When Rosegarden opens, you're presented with an workspace containing empty tracks on the right side of the window and a control panel on the left.

The beauty of Rosegarden is the efficiency of its interface. Everything you need for quick synth selection and track parameters are always close at hand, and all the most common actions are always available in a right-click menu.

Assigning MIDI instruments

The first thing to do is to make some sound. There are three ways to do this:

use general MIDI
use a synth plugin
import an audio file

General MIDI is useful, but not very exciting. Synth plugins are more fun, so assign a synth to a track in the right panel.

First, in the **Track Parameters** panel on the left, select **Synth plugin** for **Device**. This tells the currently selected track, the topmost track by default, to accept a plugin such as DSSI or LADSPA or even VST (made possible through the DSSI-VST plugin and WINE).

In the **Instrument Parameters** panel at the bottom of the left panel, select what synth plugin you want to use by clicking the **<no synth>** button.

The special parameters window [IMG]

In the **Synth plugin** window that appears, choose the plugin you want to use. For this example, I'll use FluidSynth-DSSI because there are so many great premade patches for it. Some plugins have settings that are drawn directly into the plugin window. For example, the amsynth DSSI plugin:

Amsynth [IMG]

Others, like FluidSynth, require an external window, available with the **Editor** button in the lower right corner of the plugin window.

You can also add effect plugins, like reverb and echo, in the **Instrument Parameters** panel by clicking an available **<no plugin>** button.

Recording

Recording, strictly speaking, is achieved by clicking the red **record** button and playing notes as Rosegarden dutifully records the MIDI signals it receives.

Live recording in Rosegarden [IMG]

Of course, Rosegarden being a computerized sequencer, there are several alternative ways to "record" to it, in case you don't have a MIDI controller or the skills to play a perfect take.

Matrix editor

Rosegarden has a "piano roll" matrix editor built in. You can't edit an empty track, so to get to the matrix editor in a track you have not yet recorded notes to, click the **draw** tool (the pencil icon) in the top toolbar and then click and drag in the track you want to populate.

Draw tool [IMG]

To open your new empty segment, or any segment, in the matrix editor, right-click on the segment and select **Open in Matrix Editor**.

Using a matrix editor is pretty intuitive. Draw note blocks with the pencil, erase them with the eraser, and so on.

Matrix editor [IMG]

Notation editor

One of the things that makes Rosegarden unique among DAWs is that it also features a notation editor. This is especially useful for composers who need to have their music ready for musicians, or for anyone who happens to be more comfortable with traditional notation than a matrix of MIDI signals.

Notation editor [IMG]

Like the matrix editor, the notation editor is about as intuitive as any basic word processor or paint program. In draw mode, enter notes into an empty segment by selecting the note duration you want, and then clicking on the staff. In move mode (the arrow icon in the top tool bar), click and drag a note to a new position.

To replace a note with a new duration, click the duration you want, and then click the existing note you want to change. Rest durations are altered to suit.

This is a powerful feature of Rosegarden, as it lets composers who maybe aren't targeting the computer for their final production, but want to leverage the computer's ability to create an approximate demo of their music. Since the notation editor uses

GNU Lilypond

, you can always export your work as a Lilypond file, MusicXML file,

Working with audio

You can also record directly into Rosegarden using a microphone by setting a track to **Audio** instead of **Synth plugin** in the left **Parameters** panel.

You must route your microphone in JACK so that your capture device is wired to Rosegarden as an input. You must also have the microphone selected as a valid and *unmuted* (that's the part I always forget, but luckily someone wrote an

article all about audio on Linux

to help us all remember) input in your ALSA or Pulse Audio mixer.

Inputs in Pulse Audio [IMG]

Click the red **record** button in the tool bar or transport window and Rosegarden records whatever you play or sing into your microphone. To conserve CPU cycles, Rosegarden doesn't draw soundwaves while you record, so don't let the blank red audio segment in your timeline fool you. Once you stop recording, soundwaves are rendered to let you know there's content there.

Audio segment [IMG]

Importing audio

If you don't want to perform into a microphone but still need to import audio, then you can import existing audio files into your project. There's not much to this: just open a file manager, find your audio file, and drag it into a Rosegarden track.

Drag and drop [IMG]

Because the Rosegarden file format is not an archive, there's a handy **Manage Audio Files** window to let you get an overview of what audio files are linked to your project. This is useful when you're archiving your project and want to make sure that all of your audio files get collected along with the project file.

To access the audio file manager, click the **Manage audio file** button in the top tool bar.

Manage audio files button [IMG]

This presents all audio files contained within your project, including the file path.

Audio file manager [IMG]

Exporting audio

When you've finished your work, you'll want to export what you've created.

If you're a composer and you want to export sheet music, you can do this just by printing from the notation editor. If you need to do a little arrangement and clean-up work in a dedicated sheet music application like

Musescore

, then you can export to a variety of formats by selecting **Export** from the **File** menu.

If you're exporting a performance, then there are two ways to "bounce" your track. The first method is self-contained within Rosegarden itself, but it is, compared to the alternative, over-complex.

The easy alternative is an application called

Jack Capture

. It's a simple application that does just one thing: dumps any audio passing through JACK into a file.

Start Jack Capture, press record, and then press play in Rosegarden. Stop Jack Capture when finished.

It's easy, clean, and simple.

Jack Capture [IMG]

Learning more

Rosegarden excels at being an intuitive and efficient. It's easy to learn new tricks with it, so the more you use it, the better and faster at its interface you become.

It's a fun application, so give it a try if you're musically-inclined, and especially if you want a good production environment along with a robust notation editor.