Re: [Soundtracker-discuss] octal

[David O'Toole]

On 20 Mar 2001 13:15:28 -0500, Dave Phillips wrote:
>  
> > PS.  What happened to Octal? :-)
> 
> As we say here, I think his eyes were bigger than his stomach... ;)  The
> project is ostensibly still alive, but I've heard nothing from it for a
> long time.

Dave, I wish you had at least looked at the project's webpage or mailing
list (www.gnu.org/software/octal) before making this announcement, and
seen all the recent screenshots of the GUI under construction or heard
all the discussion of the new instrument architecture. The Octal project
is very alive, and moving solidly toward its goals. Several devlelopers
have already begun either writing or porting plugins for use with it.  

The reason I do not post a lot of updates to other people's mailing
lists is because the project is not ready for general use yet and I
don't wish to spam until musicians can at least do something useful with
it. :-) So, Dave, although I am not making a lot of noise, please don't
tell people the project is dead without checking. :-)

That being said, I do agree with you about SoundTracker being "*the*
linux tracker to support." It is well-established and it's the most
mature project in its category. But I don't consider any opposition
between the projects, because I can't really call Octal a tracker
anymore.  Late last year I decided to depart from the tracker model and
step-sequencing. You know the old problems... if you want high PPQN in a
tracker, you have to make the patterns very very long so that you'll
have enough rows to play with. Buzz-style plugins worsen the problem: if
you deal with a complex plugin that has lots of parameters, each track
could be very wide because trackers use up a column whether there's an
event in it or not. Some of the more ambitious Buzz synths are difficult
to use because you can only see one or two tracks at a time. 

Step-sequencing might be merely inconvenient at times for completely
electronic sequenced stuff, but it can become a real problem if you need
your sequencer to record timestamped events with any precision (human
keyboard performances) or sequence digital audio from the real world
(producing something that puts real vocal or instrumental performances
alongside electronic sequences.) Under those requirements, a sequencer
that doesn't let you place events more or less where you want them to go
is not very useful. It all depends on how you're planning to use the
program. 

-- 
@@@ david o'toole
@@@ address@hidden
@@@ www.gnu.org/software/octal