Making Music with Qtractor on Fedora Seth Kenlon
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Qtractor Making Music with Qtractor on Fedora Seth Kenlon f you’re either a musician or someone After these programs have been installed, who has the occasional musical idea to launch Qtractor. It should start jackd automa- Iimplement, there are a few great tools for tically – and you’re ready to make music. the job on Fedora Linux. One of the most ex- There are three different ways to get citing projects is called Qtractor. sound into Qtractor; you can hook up a mi- There are, basically, two different ways crophone and record realworld sounds, you to make music on computers: there is Audio can import pre-recorded loops, or you can (digital representations of sound waves) and generate sound using MIDI and a synthesi- there is MIDI (electronic pulses triggering a zer. Naturally, you can do any of these three synthesizer or sampler). Qtractor handles for each track you create, thereby mixing both quite well, producing music using va- MIDI data with audio tracks and loops until rious forms of audio and MIDI sources. a full soundscape is achieved. Qtractor is available in the Fedora repo- sitory. Along with Qtractor, you should install Recording Audio into Qtractor QJackCtl and QSynth. QJackCtl is an inter- To record sound from a microphone into face for wiring sound from one application Qtractor, first create an empty track. A to another, while QSynth is an example of a “track” alots space where the sound may good software synthesizer. exist and be effected or adjusted. To create a new track, click the Add Track icon in Qtractor’s toolbar or go to the Track menu and select Add Track. This will bring up a dialog box where you may name the track and define whether it is a container for Audio or MIDI. After the track has been added to the workspace, it must be armed for recording. Arming a track is marking that track as the ultimate destination for incoming audio. The button to arm a track is found un- der the track’s name in the form of a button labeled with “R” just next to the “M” and “S” buttons. The “M” and “S” are “Mute” and “Solo”, respectively, where “Mute” silences the track and “Solo” silences all tracks but that track. Now that the track is marked for recording, hit the Record button but- Figure 1. Enable RPM Fusion for even more great apps! ton in the top menu bar. Because 22 Linux Identity Set Qtractor this is the first recording being made during this session, a dialog box will appear, asking for the filename and location of the data about to be re- ceived. Define these carefully; good organization is a hallmark of good production, and where the raw data is stored now will make for easy bac- kups or system migrations later. Qtractor is using JACK for sound input and output, so the inputs defined by JACK are defining the Figure 2. Jack, the heartbeat of your sound production source of the sound input. To see the current JACK connections, you audio file will be visible, which repre- how many times you wish it to repeat. make go to the View menu and se- sents the clip recorded into the first Give it a number, click OK, and then lect Connections. This will show you track. To bring in new files, right-click place the string of clips where you the JACK connection window, with in the Files panel and select Add Fi- wish them to continue looping. input (including capture devices) on les. Note that there are tabs at the Since the art of looping relies on the left and writable targets on the bottom of this panel; one for Audio the lack of interruption of the clips, right. Most likely, your system’s Cap- and one for MIDI. You cannot import it often is helpful to fine-tune the ture device will be “plugged into” Audio tracks into the MIDI tab, so be Snap option of your cursor. By ena- the Master Inputs of Qtractor. If this sure that the Audio tab is selected. bling snapping, you force your cur- is not the case, then you may make Select an audio file to add to sor to constrain its movements to that connection now. your arsenal and they will be listed anything from being on the beat, or With the track armed for recor- in the Files panel. You may audition within one-eighth note of the beat, ding, and recording mode enabled, them by clicking on them; stop them or one-sixteenth, and so on. Since click the Play button in the toolbar from playing with the Play button on loops are delivered as whole bars, and recording will begin. Ideally, the lower right of the panel. Once constraining the snapping to the you should see sound waves being you’ve decided which loop to add to beat is a good idea. To do this, go created in realtime as the micro- your project, drag and drop it from to the View menu, to the Snap sub- phone captures whatever sound the Files panel into the empty space menu, and select Beat. you are generating in the real world. of your workspace. It will automati- If not, check your levels, your JACK cally add a new track for itself, com- MIDI in Qtractor connections, and if those appear plete with an appropriate name. Qtractor’s MIDI features are quite ro- to be in order, check alsamixer and If this is a short loop, it probably bust and, due to its JACK awareness, whatever GUI frontend for Volume needs to be repeated a certain num- allows the use of a wide variety of control your system uses (such as ber of times. To loop the clip, select MIDI soft synths and applications. KMix on KDE). the clip and right-click it, selecting This means that you can either use Copy. Then right-click the space adja- soft synth plugins or stand-alone Importing and Utilizing cent to that clip and select Paste Re- soft synths with Qtractor, making it Pre-Recorded Loops peat. A dialogue box appears, asking a powerful MIDI sequencer. Whether you’re a professional musi- cian or you’re completely tone-deaf, sometimes it is helpful to have pre- recorded loops to help your com- position along. These loops may be sound clips you yourself have created or they may be clips you’ve downloaded from http://www. freesound.org or loops you’ve got- ten for free along with electronic music magazines or that you’ve purchased from loop collections. As long as they are in a standard audio format (ogg, wav, mp3, aiff, au, caf, paf, and many more), they can be imported and used in your project. On the right of the Qtractor win- Figure 3. Mixing Audio and MIDI together to make hardcore jams dow there is a Files panel; thus far an in Qtractor www.linuxidentity.com/us/ 23 Qtractor will give you greater control over what sound bank or waveform that synth will be using. A good synth to start with is WhySynth, a DSSI plugin with hundreds of pre-made sounds to choose from. To create new MIDI data, click the New Clip button on the toolbar or go to the Edit menu, select the Clip submenu, and select New. The MIDI Editor (sometimes called a “piano roll”) window appears, with the beats and bars counted along the top and the keys of a piano along the left border. Notes are drawn with the Pencil tool, defining what note will play upon what beat. Figure 4. Editing audio loops in Qtractor This is known as sequencing, and there are many ways to do it. You Soft Synth Plugins Once you’re pointed Qtractor might wish to plug in a USB MIDI Qtractor supports DSSI, LADSPA, to the location of your plugins, you keyboard, hit record, and actually VST, and LV2 (in svn) plugins, thereby must make a track for whatever play MIDI data into Qtractor. Or you providing a full spectrum of software MIDI data you wish to create. This is may wish to simply point and click, synthesizers, samplers, and effects done with the Add Track button on drawing notes where you need them all from within one workspace. Many the toolbar, or via the Track menu. In to play in your composition. There is of the prominent Linux native synths the Track dialog box, select to make no right or wrong way to do it, and and effects are available via your the track a MIDI track and leave the either way allows you to return later distribution’s repositories, others remaining defaults as they are. and modify your work. can be found online. Now that you have a MIDI track When you have finished sequen- Download and install the plugins in your project, you may assign a cing your MIDI notes, close the MIDI you wish to use in Qtractor and then plugin to it so that the MIDI data editor window. It will prompt you to switch to Qtractor to define where you create will trigger sounds. Right- save the data, and then the data ap- they are found on your system. Do click on the name of the MIDI track, pears in your MIDI track. Playing your this via the View menu −> Options. and select Track Properties. This composition back will allow you to hear In the Options window, navigate to opens up the Properties window; all of your data, be it MIDI or audio.