thanks very much for this, kaimerra. interesting, if depressing.
one reason i’m attracted to ardour is that it is fairly early in its growth still, which means it’s
still fairly lean. one station i use i’ve had and faithfully upgraded for something like fourteen
years, now. i’m getting pretty sick of subsidizing midi development in that case. i don’t use
midi and i’m tired of watching my upgrade money go to subsidizing the incorporation of a
huge midi engine where once there wasn’t one while only occassionally upgrading or adding
features i do use. i’d like to start using another station that’s less midi intensive. it’s depressing
hearing all of the talk of midi implementation in ardour.
as far as music goes, if i want something approaching conventional music, i play acoustic
instruments. i use a workstation to record them and facilitate distributing the music. if i want
to use the workstation in the active process of music making, i don’t use it to mimic conventional
instrumentation, i use it in a more concrete context (musique concrete), composing the
interaction of recorded sounds from my sound libraries through editing, and adding to them
with things akin to foley made specifically for the piece. again, no midi needed.
one thing i take away from the discussion with paul is an interest in his perspective on
collaboration. the discussions of migration and collaboration are interesting. i’d point out,
though, that in some of the most prominent foss projects, projects like gimp and open office,
they have made a point of easing the ability of users to interact with the existing communities
for their types of work. they do so by making the file formats of the dominant apps in their
respective areas available to users. gimp opens and writes photoshop files, open office does
the same for microsoft office documents. ardour should do the same, reading and writing
either pro tools sessions or omf’s.
some of the points regarding aaf are good. here in l.a. omf remains a common standard. the
lack of ability to work with these seems to miss a fundamental point with regard to collaboration,
though. growing a community based in isolation in the ardour platform is growing a closed
community. if you want growth, migration, and openness, give users the tools with which to
migrate. the film/video post workflow is, at least in the commercial arena, pretty much by
definition, collaborative. an editor will most always export their tracks, usually via omf, to a post
audio facility or individual: collaboration. concentrating on adding a lot of midi is great in an
egalitarian sense in that you encourage the participation of every talentless-would-be rock star
(apologies to the talented, always a small percentage). it won’t, however, do much or anything
for a community which, by its nature, is already collaborative.
thanks again for the link,
BabaG