compatibility with linux

[Patrick Gharios]

Hello,there

I am interested to know what are the prerequisites for wahjam to work on linux

Which audio capture card should i use to get it working?

Thank you

[Patrick Gharios]

i am also curious to know how the sound card connects to the wahjam

[Stefan Hajnoczi]

On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 2:09 AM, Patrick Gharios <pgha...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I am interested to know what are the prerequisites for wahjam to work on
> linux
>
> Which audio capture card should i use to get it working?

Hi Patrick,

How to build
-----------------
To build Wahjam from source on Linux you need development packages for
the following libraries installed:
Qt5, libogg, libvorbis, PortAudio, PortMIDI

Then you can run qmake && make and it will build the binary in qtclient/wahjam.

See https://github.com/wahjam/wahjam/blob/master/README for more details.

By the way, I develop an online jamming platform called jammr, which
is based on Wahjam. Ubuntu packages are available for download at
http://jammr.net/ if you want to skip compiling yourself.

Sound cards
------------------
Regarding the sound card, the internal sound cards in most computers
are poor quality. They often have a lot of interference and bad
recording quality. I find they are only acceptable if you are using
software instruments (synthesizer, sampler, etc) and don't record
audio. But you can try without internal sound card for testing.

It's best to get a sound card that is designed for recording and works
with Linux. These are usually USB 2.0 or PCI sound cards that have at
least one guitar input and a headphone output. Brands to look at are
Focusrite, m-audio, Presonus, motu, Tascam, and Behringer but be sure
to check for Linux driver support before buying.

I personally use the Line6 POD HD300 multi-effects pedal as a USB
sound card and have contributed to the Linux kernel driver to make it
work.

ALSA and JACK
------------------------
Modern Linux sound drivers are (usually) in the kernel and accessed
via the ALSA API from applications.

There is a sound server called JACK which you can run on top of ALSA
to add inter-app audio (routing). It lets you do cool stuff like
connecting a drum machine app (Hydrogen), a synthesizer app (yoshimi
or qsynth), effects plugins (zita-reverb), together with Wahjam.
There are even VST hosts available for running Windows VST plugins
with JACK (using Wine, not all plugins will work). For more info, see
http://jackaudio.org/.

I use JACK because I want to route audio between apps. If you just
want to send your instrument into Wahjam, you can stick to ALSA.
Wahjam supports both in the sound settings dialog.

Have fun and let me know if you have any questions!

Stefan

[Patrick Gharios]

nyone?

[Stefan Hajnoczi]

Hi Patrick,
I guess you are not subscribed to the list so you didn't see my reply?

See below or read online:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/wahjam/tc5djfFChOI

[Patrick Gharios]

Hi Stefan

Thank you for your answer.

I was thinking about the theory behind playing with the previous interval for each musician, doesnt it sound wrong? Since for example a drummer would usually make a fill on the 4th bar on a 4/4 and but it would be seen as a fill on count 3 for the other musicians?

How about playing a cover song or rehearsing between members ,that would be impossible right?

Best Regards,

Patrick

[Stefan Hajnoczi]

On Wed, May 14, 2014 at 8:15 AM, Patrick Gharios <pgha...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I was thinking about the theory behind playing with the previous interval
> for each musician, doesnt it sound wrong? Since for example a drummer would
> usually make a fill on the 4th bar on a 4/4 and but it would be seen as a
> fill on count 3 for the other musicians?

That fill isn't a problem since the interval should be set to the
length of the chord progression.

So imagine 4/4 time with a progression that lasts 4 bars (= 16 beats).
The interval length should be 16.

When you play the fill you will be playing it on the 4th bar, just to
what the other musicians played 16 beats ago (which doesn't matter as
long as they stay in the same basic pattern).

> How about playing a cover song or rehearsing between members ,that would be
> impossible right?

Yes. Interval-based jamming works great for improvising but not for
playing full songs. There are exceptions, like blues works well if
you set the interval length to 12 bars and don't depend too heavily on
playing dynamics changing.

Stefan