Setting Up a Linux-Based Recording Studio (Chapter 1)

As I stated in the Preface, I am a little dubious of this whole Linux-based studio idea. In theory, it is great, but in reality, it has been a lot of sleepless nights. As harsh as this might sound, a bit of the issues have not been the fault of the OS, but have been, in fact, due to errors on my husband’s part. Before you judge me for insulting him in public, please know that he had encouraged me to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but. This blog is meant to entertain the curious, but also to help guide others who are considering recording with Linux software.

The first lesson we learned was that if you are going to use a computer previously set up to do something else, take a good hard look at it. It turns out having it set up to be a server and having it run a raid system, forgetting this and then trying to load a new OS onto it makes for a very messy situation. At one point the computer would not shut down, then it wouldn’t restart.

Second lesson learned: Google is your friend. People think my husband is this all-knowing computer nerd, and I still claim this to be so, but I guess his secret weapon is Google. What he does not know, he finds pretty quickly. Google search: love it, use it.

So finally, last night we got Ubuntu Studio to load properly and started walking through on-line tutorials called “Getting started with LinuxSampler” and “Getting to Know JACK (QjackCtl).” There was some confusion because the instructions we were using were really meant for 64 Studio, so some of the terminology was different and of course the screen caps looked a little different as well.  I guess the computer savvy love to write the programs, but are not into creating all the less glamorous support articles or documentation.

The big moment of truth was when I was able to play and record my keyboard. That excitement lasted about 10 minutes, at which time something got really messed up with the sound. Later, after more Google searches, we discovered it is highly discouraged to run Jack and Pulse Audio at the same time. The sound card only supports one. So we were able to listen to a CD on the computer, but lost the ability to listen to the recording I made.

Undo. Can I hit “undo” now?!?!

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