I love Rosegarden

I really do. Not a real rose garden - my allergies would never let me near one - but the multi-track recording and mixing software for Linux. I installed it last week after being overwhelmed with Ardour, another Linux-based multi-track recorder/mixer that comes standard with Ubuntu Studio. Ardour is a fine program, but it's definitely aimed at those who have some recording experience. Not me, in other words.

Rosegarden, though, is clearly designed to be more intuitive for the recording n00b, of which I am one. The interface is simpler and it already creates tracks for you (you have to add them yourself in Ardour). I had some recording success with it early this week and I wanted to expand on that success by actually making a multi-track recording that sounded decent. I'm happy to say that last night I did just that.

One of the biggest boosts to my recording escapade was figuring out how to properly use my Vox headphone amp to get sound into my computer. Once that was achieved it was all about Rosegarden. Getting sound into it was easy - like I said, it already creates tracks for you. You just have to find the right one (any one marked Audio will capture sound from standard input) or change one of the others (which is as easy as changing a drop-down menu). I had to go into Patchage - an excellent graphic configuration tool for JACK connections - and tie the recording monitor output to the system output so I could hear what I was recording. I know there's a setting in Rosegarden somewhere that does it for you, but I really like Patchage, so I took care of it that way.

I'm using a chord progression that a friend of mine used in a song he wrote. I figure this way I really don't have to think about what I'm playing, I can just learn how to record it. I started out with a track where I strummed the chords using about half-gain on the Vox for a nice overdriven sound. The nice thing about Rosegarden, too, is that you can change the input levels and the waveform will adjust, so if you're peaking too much (you can tell you are if the waveform is a solid block) you can turn down the input level until you start seeing the peaks and valleys indicative of a normal waveform. The track was too loud at first, but a simple adjustment of a slider control (two actually, left and right) and it was perfect.

I then wanted to record a pseudo-bass line, so I turned up the gain on the Vox and turned down the tone to roll off some treble and played muffled root notes. It sounded pretty good for what it was. The only thing I noticed was that my timing was off at one point on track one, but since this is only a learning experience, I didn't really care. On that point, Rosegarden includes a metronome that you can set up to use any sound you want, including those from a built-in synth plugin. I used a DX7 emulator on an electric piano setting and I was able to hear it with no problems while I was recording. I never got the metronome on Ardour to work, so this was a major victory for me.

So now I have a real multi-track recording using Ubuntu Studio on my piece of crap laptop. I can only imagine how it would do with better hardware. I'm still up in the air on whether or not I'll get a Mac or a Linux computer for my studio, but with every victory with Ubuntu Studio the decision gets harder to make.