Jokosha | open source Garageband alternative

Jokosher is a simple and powerful multi-track studio. Jokosher provides a complete application for recording, editing, mixing and exporting audio, and has been specifically designed with usability in mind. The developers behind Jokosher have re-thought audio production at every level, and created something devilishly simple to use. (Link)

Six steps to rock and roll greatness*

• Find a phone, and piece of paper and a marker pen.
• Take the marker pen and draw a keyboard on the piece of paper.
• Position the phone so the camera can see your keyboard.
• Turn on the Piano Reality AR app
• Bang out a melody on your portable, paper piano.
• Practice dodging the paparazzi.
  

*May require some talent.

Music composition and notation

While I'm tone deaf and struggle to hold a note, I do appreciate well-composed, beautiful music. In the past the only high-end music composition package I've been aware of has been Sibelius, but at more than NZ$1000 a seat it's too expensive to have large groups of students discovering if they are the next Douglas Lilburn or Dave Dobbyn or not. Even if the school could afford it, shelling out another NZ$1000 to be able to tinker at home in the basement is just too much of a barrier for most students. Which is why I'm thrilled to have discovered Musescore. It's open source, multi-platform and powerful enough to meet the needs of even the most intricate of compositions. What did we do with the money we saved in software licences? We bought 18 new desktop computers to allow even more students to see if they've got a gift for song-writing.
...and as with most open source projects, free software means a large user base and a large community offering support and producing help documentation. Here's Musescore in 10 easy steps.

Jokosher: multi-track music composition

Now, I don't know the first thing about music composition, but I do know that even I could pull something passable together using software like this. Jokosher is only in 0.11 release, but already it's a very usable, powerful multi-track authoring studio. From http://www.jokosher.org/:

"Jokosher is a simple and powerful multi-track studio. Jokosher provides a complete application for recording, editing, mixing and exporting audio, and has been specifically designed with usability in mind. The developers behind Jokosher have re-thought audio production at every level, and created something devilishly simple to use."

For an overview of what it can do, check out these screenshots.

The Ubuntu One Music Store is coming

I've been listening to Tommy and the Fallen Horses lately. They're well worth checking out. One review I read had their new album as the best kiwi album of the last decade.
But I had my patience tested trying to download that same album. First of all their website returned a 404 when I went to purchase the album for download. Thankfully that's fixed now, but is symptomatic of the problems faced by smaller bands who shouldn't ever have to maintain their own websites in order to put beer (or honey-flavoured smoothies) on the table. There should be a friendly third party out there could take away the stress of e-commerce- oh if only such a third party existed :-). So then, under some stress, I ended up using the iTunes store, redeeming a gift card a colleague had generously given me. My reservations were two-fold: 1) the iTunes store files are proprietary and full of DRM rubbish that restrict my purchase so much that it's really no longer a purchase, more of a loan, and 2) only a measly 10% of the purchase price makes it to Tommy and his horses. The rest goes to Apple and their lawyers.
That's why I think it's brilliant that Canonical are launching the Ubuntu One Music Store: DRM-free music for the people, by the people. It's criminal that not only is Apple getting 90% of the purchase price of a DRM single, they want to cut it to 4%. I know where I'll be buying my music from.
Oh, and if you see Tommy any time soon, buy him a honey-flavoured smoothie from me. Just don't tell him I gave all his money to Steve Jobs.