We (my cousin and I) are currently working on a rather interesting experiment : the goal is to move my cousins setup from Garageband (on OSX) to Linux.
First some background on the current setup(s) and where we want to end up:
Currently I'm running AmSynth + Calf Monosynth on my Ubuntu laptop and Stijn (my cousin) is running Garageband on his Macbook 13". We both have a midi keyboard hooked up to our laptop and use the built-in sound card.
An important detail : we are using these laptops live on stage so whatever we run it needs to be rock solid and easy to set up.
The idea to switch to Linux is not new, in fact I already dual-booted Stijn's Macbook some time ago, but it was more of an experiment because it wasn't clear what we really wanted to do with these laptops. Since that time we started using the laptops for some songs we play with the band so now we have a better understanding of 'who-will-do-what' and also what sounds we need.
Being guitarist with 0 piano playing skills we use an _absolute_ maximum of 3 fingers to play the keyboard, so you can probably guess that we mainly use the laptops for a couple of monophonic electro/dance riffs and also some more old-school sounds like Hammond or piano as backing to create a richer sound.
Sounds pretty simple, but in fact that covers almost the complete spectrum of existing synth types : soundfont player, modular analog synth emulators, sound modeling synths ...
This should be interesting to see how/if we will move from Garageband to Linux.
To be continued ...
- read Part 2 here -
