Qtractor in the Top 10

Congratulations! I imagine things like this justify the work you have put on this project and brings motivation to keep going forward. I'm sure there's a lot more people using qtractor, it's just that not everyone is making videos about it or participating in the forums (perhaps they're too busy making music :) ).

On the article, they mention the lack of a key signature map and a score notation editor in qtractor. I would like to say a few things about this, if you don't mind.

To put on some context; I studied contemporary music and I'm currently making jazz, funk, R&B tunes to play live with a band.

When I'm done with a composition, the next thing I do is write the sheet music for all the instruments for the musicians. This is a tedious and time consuming task. So, I thought, if I found a midi sequencer with a built-in score editor, it would alleviate my situation. So, I tried rosegarden.

Problem was, when I'm composing, I use the midi keyboard to play all the parts and I experienced some inconsistencies in the way rosegarden recorded my parts (sometimes it put a very short note at the end of a long one) and the interface didn't help much either. Also, the fact that is has a score editor didn't make much of a difference because there was still work to do on the score and the interface is not the best for that.

To make a long story short, I ended up using musescore to work on the score. musescore's midi file import, facilitates the process a lot, as long as the midi file is storing relevant data regarding the performance, key signatures, time signatures, tempo (and changes), etc. and following the midi standards.

I made a test to see which sequencer had a better midi file export. That is, the one that musescore would render better (more legible), leaving the user with less work to do. I tested rosegarden, muse, ardour and qtractor. The two that did a better job for this test were; qtractor and ardour. I put ardour in second place because musescore didn't recognized the key signature, but that is easily done, and after that, the results where almost identical.

Creating a score notation is a monumental task, there are so many things to consider and different ways to score music. So, thanks to musescore, having a score editor embedded in a sequencer is no longer needed. All we need is a good implementation of the midi standards in sequencers and the inclusion of relevant data in the midi file that can help musescore do most of the job for us.

On the other hand, I have recently started to get into orchestral composition, film scoring. I'm using soundfonts, and so, linuxsampler is needed.

There are two approaches one can use for this; 1) composing in Musescore (wich lets you use the soundfonts without linuxsampler, or with linuxsampler through jack). 2) Composing in a sequencer and linuxsampler. I use the latter.

For this, I started trying the different linux midi sequencers to see which one would give me the best workflow. Let me quickly say that qtractor is still the best option at the moment, but it doesn't have the best workflow for this task. In fact, rosegarden would be more appropriate for this (if it wasn't for the issues I had recording live and the way the interface works)

After putting more thoughts on it, I recalled a sequencer that was being developed almost ten years ago, but couldn't remember its name. After some extensive research, I found it; Open Midi Octave!

Unfortunately it didn't compile for me. So, I got the binary (.deb) file (either from falktx or debian archive) and put the folders in there respective places ( I'm not using a debian based distro).

Let me quickly say that I've read the threads on the Linuxmusicians forum about this software, and it is unfortunate what happened. I also think that this sequencer was not well understood at the time (I certainly didn't). But it was specifically designed for orchestral midi composition and I think not many linux musicians were into that.

The software looks a bit intimidating to the beginner, but that is a reflection of the complexity of orchestral composition. It covers all the essentials; A similar time-line and divisions used in music notation, selection and organization of soundfonts ( no need for a linuxsampler interface), different views for tracks management, many midi editing operations, jack midi, etc. Everything is done within a single application (linuxsampler backend and jack server are started by the app). This is a welcoming workflow as we, as musicians, have to deal with so many things to make music. I tried the non-daw suit in the pass. The concept of having everything separated was interesting, but not practical, and also lacked some features.

The awareness of film scoring and orchestral composition has been increasing in recent years, thanks to the videos on the internet. A few months ago, just as I was looking more seriously into this subject, I came across a few recent videos on youtube by the user "cfirwin3" who is making film scores on linux. He started with LMMS and ended up with qtractor, right about the same time I had been testing applications for this purpose.

Open Midi is no doubt the most appropriate for orchestral midi composition, but the project is death, and although the app is functional and still working, it will stop at some point.

Sorry I went off on a tangent :p