Make sweet music

Time it takes: 30 minutes

You shouldn't need any training or musical skill to make music - all you need is the ability to tell the different between what you like and what you don't. We're going to prove this point by creating a piece of music using nothing but the mouse cursor and a single Linux application - Rosegarden. From Rosegarden, you can create drum tracks, melody and chords, all played through internal instruments, and save the output to a file.

Getting started

Rosegarden uses Jack to talk to your audio hardware and other audio applications, so you'll need to include QjackCtl when you install the packages. We also installed as many DSSI synthesizers as our package manager could find. QjackCtl is the GUI front-end to Jack, and you'll need to launch this before starting Rosegarden. We've had best results restarting the machine, opening QjackCtl, clicking on the Setup button, disabling the real-time checkbox, setting the sample rate to 48000, clicking OK and then clicking Start. This should work for the vast majority of audio hardware, and when Jack is running you should see 'Started' in the QjackCtl window. You can now safely launch Rosegarden.

Create something

We're going to start with the bass track. Make sure track number one is selected within Rosegarden, and, in the Track Parameters panel on the left, use the Device drop-down menu to select Synth Plugin (this configures the track to use one of the DSSI synths we installed earlier). In the Instrument Parameters panel below the Track Parameters, click on the 'No Synth' button. This will open a new window asking for the DSSI synth to load into slot one. The synths that are listed will depend on what you've installed, but we've opted for the XSynth plugin. If that's not available on your distribution, try something else. A synth parameter window will open, but you'll need to close this for the moment.

Back at Rosegarden's main view, make sure the pencil icon is enabled in the toolbar and draw a couple of new bars on the first track. A long block of yellow should appear. Now right-click on this block and select Open With The Matrix Editor. This will open a new window into which you can point and click to add notes to play on the synth. Click on the piano keyboard on the left of the matrix to preview the note, then click in the matrix to add notes. Drag the right border of notes to alter their duration, and if you enable the 'Show Velocity Property Ruler' from the View menu you'll be able to change the volume of each note by dragging the orange blocks that appear.

Put it all together

Now close the matrix editor and enable the loop icon in the transport window, then use the right arrow next to the loop icon to extend the white looped area around the block of notes, and press Play. Your notes will now play back in a loop, and you should go back to the track properties panel for that track, click on Editor, and tweak the sound assigned to the synth.

After this, it's a matter of repeating the process for several more tracks, using different sounds and clicking on a different selection of notes. If you keep looped playback running in the background, you'll be able to gradually build the complexity of the track. At that point, copy and paste the blocks of notes on each track, and move them horizontally to build a whole song.

Step by step: Export audio

1. Launch Audacity, open the Edit, Preferences windows and change the recording device to Rosegarden, then press Record.

2. Switch back to Rosegarden, make sure the cursor is at the beginning of the track and click on Play .

3. Go back to Audacity. You should see the project being recorded, and when the playback has finished you can save the file.