Demystified Computer Tips

Fun Upgrade Project and Linux Rant

2011-08-14T18:30:00.000-04:00

Woo! So I finally got Ubuntu Studio in a working state on my computer. The details are a bit fuzzy, because of how long it's been since I've done the project, but here are some points of discussion

Linux: Long on features; short on usability
MS and Apple: Why no FLAC or OGG support?

Why is iTunes so bloated?
Can't we all agree on a better system than FAT (or NTFS) as the lowest common denominator?

Why won't Amarok compile on my Mac?

This is a really short post because I forgot what all I wanted to put on here, but these are some points that I may discuss further if I get comments on here.

Suggestions for Improving MuseScore

2011-08-12T18:27:00.002-04:00

Note: I originally started this post in February, but got busy with my study abroad and forgot about it. This is mostly based on MuseScore 1.0 and some complaints may have been long fixed in the development branch.

Since I discovered MuseScore last year, I've been back in the digital composition world. In the before times, I used Finale PrintMusic, but when I got my own computer, I couldn't take the program with me, being a Mac and the program for my family's PC, so I took my .mus files and sat on them, hoping to use them again someday. Eventually I found Muse and the earlier betas of MuseScore and did not enjoy using them that much because they crashed all the time on Mac OS. I came back the the program about 6 months later and was impressed at how it actually worked this time. I've been using it since then to write new music, re-imagine music I made under Finale, and arrange music.

After using it fairly heavily this past year, I have a long list of tips and suggestions for future development and users that I hope will be found to be constructive. I know I should submit all these to the bug tracker and/or feature request forums, but I'm a college student short on time, so here they shall reside until I can get time to atomize this long list into separate posts.

Although nothing can compare to LilyPond when it comes to printing music in a high-quality manner, MuseScore has impressed me, even more so than Finale. Without more exposition, here are the suggestions for you to browse and enjoy.

Protip: save your scores in a Dropbox folder for backup, versions, and syncing. It's saved me from more than one crash "recovery" that went wrong.

Keys should default to change all staves (except un-pitched percussion) when put in the score, like a time signature, maybe hold shift while applying a key signature to make it for one staff or selected staves only.

~~Speaking of time signatures, why not allow independent time signatures like LilyPond?~~ I saw that this was to be fixed in 2.0

Improved addition of parts—tempi and rehearsal marks should always be at the top of the score, even if a part (piccolo usually) is added on top of the existing topmost staff.
Better playback

Implementing dynamics hairpins
Control accelerando and ritardando
Articulations would be a plus.

Better transpose window: less scrolling for transpose by interval, add a diatonic transposition

Will be addressed in later post

Auto-expand the drum pallet when working on a percussive staff, maybe develop a way to enter drums easily with the computer keyboard
~~Add an easy way to edit instruments.XML/share it across OS's~~ Fixed with Dropbox or a shared data partition.
Any chance at figuring out Finale importing? Probably not, but that sure would be nice.
Auto-scale the score when adding new parts or suggest a different paper configuration if the staves are too small or it is really empty. This is especially useful when trying to customize a score for a large ensemble.
Adding brackets and accolades gets really weird after adding instruments. For example, the first bracket may or may not decide to line up flat against the start of the system. Sometimes, adding an accolade to a subset of staves in a bracket gives a conflict of the accolade and bracket.
Percussion-specific things:

More percussion sounds, specifically include the TimGM6withDL as a default soundfont with support for the instruments in the stock instruments.xml file. More percussion sounds in general would be nice, maybe as an add-on soundfont for those of us who need it, although I suspect this is outside the realm of MuseScore
Ability to switch staves to percussion and back at will (useful for writing for multi-percussion parts and for percussive effects on other instruments)
For mallet percussion, a tremolo on a chord should be treated as multiple rapid arpeggios, not just a repetition of the chord—if you do this, you'll be ahead of Finale in one area
Single-tick tremolos on percussion notes should be treated as two notes in the space of one for playback

Less necessity of having the cursor perfectly placed over the note for editing, this is especially annoying when trying to delete staccato dots. I don't want to have to zoom to 400% to move those little things. Maybe have a clear articulations function for a note or selection
~~Keep dynamics and hairpins together~~ ~~I'm not really sure what I meant by this~~ I think what I meant is that the dynamics should be at the same level as the hairpins that meet them by default, especially if an auto-layout is implemented
Auto-select the endpoint of a hairpin when created, like a slur. It's surprisingly rare that I actually want my crescendo to go all the way to the barline.
~~Playback of grace notes~~ Works, could be improved, especially if grace notes are on the first note or are of short duration
Movable tabs
Scroll bars in the page preview, so I can tell how long the music is
A scroll view, where the pages don't matter and you can focus just on the music. Integrating the mixer to the left side of the screen to start each instrument would be great.
Keep the pages scrolling in the preview during playback of long scores
Better mac integration—maybe use a full-screen app for Lion?
Detection of conflicts between default keyboard short-cuts and shortcuts used by other things would be nice to know of when starting the program (may be impossible)
Use window previews in Windows 7 to select which score tab and maybe some basic playback functionality, like IE9 and Opera have when you have multiple tabs open
Ability to extend a bracket upwards with a handle
More forgiving dragging of ornaments onto notes, see the point about not needing laser precision to hit the note head.
More consistency in keeping a dragged element close to the mouse pointer
Have "smart" articulations and get rid of the different up/down choices in Articulations and Ornaments pallet, with the up/down orientation being a property of the articulation or ornament
Snap dynamics and whatnot to sensible positions once an anchor note has been selected, maybe with some sort of "optimize score" option to line up the dynamics, hairpins, and slurs for final publication
Refresh screen (redraw) to get rid of text that has been deleted but refuses to depart from the screen.
~~Clean up-score button needed~~ I'm not quite sure what I meant by this, but it would be quite nice to have a button to remove all articulations, dynamics, and the like from a note or selection of notes.
Easier grace note entry
Transfer hairpins and dynamics when copying. It's annoying having to delete the old stuff after the notes are gone.
Integrate the info displayed on the play panel into the various toolbars.
I think I'll write a separate post (or an update) about UI improvements. I don't feel like opening Photoshop right now to make mock-ups
Have the dynamics palette appear if you press the shortcut on a note, then disappear and leave the note selected after clicking on the desired dynamic
The Mixer window ought to fit everything with no horizontal scrolling when it is called

As I said, a second part of this post will be up (sometime soon) with images and comments on them.

Computer (sort of) working.

2011-07-17T00:43:00.001-04:00

Everything has a trade-off. My computer has a 640GB drive with 100 GB partitions for Windows and Mac OS, a 45GB Linux partition, and the rest for data. This works fairly well, except it makes iTunes (in Snow Leopard) asplode [sic] due to it not being in the fruit drive in the iTunes-approved format. Once Amarok gets a binary for Mac OS and I've got something with which to import my iTunes meta data, I'm switching to all Amarok, all the time.

One thing about Linux is that I used not to be able to use sound. Now, both headphone and speaker output works (Jack and MuseScore haven't been getting along, but that's another rant), but the touchpad won't work.

Meh. This is a trade-off between writing (something I usually avoid) and playing a some games in an un-optimal position due to losing my two prong front to my charger and the three prong adapter not cooperating my my dining room wall outlet.

New Post

2011-01-01T02:10:00.002-05:00

Since I seem to only post once a year, I decided to get this year's post out of the way. I never did get my linux working quite right. If I do post again, I'll tell you about my experience upgrading my hard drive and new data structure

Helpful Hint

2010-10-20T02:29:00.001-04:00

If you want to have consistent posting for a blog, don't go to college

Boot Ubuntu Studio with Mac OS on Macbook Pro

2009-08-01T17:19:00.007-04:00

Intro:

I wanted to dual boot my 13” Macbook Pro with Linux because some of my favorite applications are Linux-only and I didn’t want to get stuck running OpenLINA all the time. However, I wanted to use Ubuntu Studio, a multimedia variant of Ubuntu which does not have a graphical installer. All the other tutorials I found in on the first page on Google said to install use the entire disc for the install and I wanted to dual boot. Please note that there aren’t screenshots, so please use your brain. If you have questions, try commenting.

Disclaimer(s):

1.) Seeing as this is a dual-boot tutorial, I am going to remind you all to back up your data. Because this dual-boot involves a Mac, there is absolutely NO reason not to back up. Time machine is stupidly easy to use. For more information, go to the Apple website and find a Time Machine tutorial.
2.) I used this method on a 13" Macbook Pro running Leopard - Macbook Air users, please note that you'll need an external disc drive
3.) Keep your computer plugged in. No point on a failed install because you ran out of batteries

Things You'll Need:

rEFIt (rEFIt.sf.net) - a graphical boot loader for use with EFI systems
Ubuntu Studio (http://www.ubuntustudio.org) - I used the 9.04, 64 bit edition
A Mactel computer
A back-up disk

The Procedure:

gathered from various other tutorials I read and my own experience of this install:

Back everything up. Since Ubuntu Studio does not have a graphical installer, it would presumably be easier to format the wrong partition than on your standard dual boot installation. If this is your first back up, you may want to leave your computer on overnight to transfer everything to the external disk. It took me about an hour to back up about 33 GB of data to my 1 TB MyBook. You may want to leave it running to backup overnight. Be sure you have your computer plugged in so that your batteries don’t die on your backup.
Install rEFIt (http://rEFIt.sf.net) - this just makes everything easier when restarting
Download and burn Ubuntu Studio to a DVD (it is too big for a CD, being about 1.8 GB). Disk Utility is great for burning ISO files.

This is the first of several time-consuming steps – you have been warned

Partition your hard drive. I used Boot Camp and let the "Windows" partition be where Linux will go and gave it 32 GB, figuring that I can use my main partition and external hard drive for storage, I’d give it just enough room for the kernel and some applications.
Once Boot Camp is done, click the quit and install later button. If you open Disk Utility, you should notice a BOOTCAMP partition on your main hard disk.
Make sure your computer is connected to the internet with an Ethernet cable. I read somewhere that internet helps you install better and Ubuntu Studio doesn’t support AirPort or wireless when it is being installed, although once instaled, AirPort should work out of the box
Restart your computer. You should see a rEFIt menu with a choice of your install disc and booting from your hard drive. Choose the disc (it has a large penguin logo and a small disc icon)
When the disc boots, select your language and then select the “Install Ubuntu Studio” option or check the dick for defects first, to make sure it was a good burn. (Again: rather safe than sorry).
- Note: this may take some time (I guessed about 30 minutes)
Enter the information as it asks
At the [!!] Partition disks screen, select manual
On the next screen, select the free space you created and press enter. In my case, it is partition #3 (34.2 GB) fat32 “Untitled”
1. The next steps are tricky. You now can rename your partition, set its mount point, set its bootable flag to “off,” and do other things. First, set it to be used as your preferred file system (I recommend ext4 or XFS – chose ext4). Then,
2. Set it to mount as /
3. After you are satisfied with your partition, scroll down to “Done setting up the partition” and press enter
Now, create your swap partition:
1. Find some free space slightly larger than your RAM and create a new swap partition there or resize one of your other partitions to create your free space. Although you may never use it for paging, it is used for hibernation
2. If you chose to resize your main partition, you must write the previous changes to your disk before continuing
3. Once you have some free area, select it, hit enter, and partition it as swap space
Then scroll down to “Finish partitioning and write changes to disk” and press enter again
Make sure you’re happy with the disk changes and say yes to continue
- A partitions formatting screen may appear, then the installing the base system screen. This doesn’t take too long
It will ask you for personal information. Enter it to make your user account. It gives you the choice to encrypt your home directory, and it’s your choice as to whether you like encryption or not. Next is the network information.
Time to set up and install software – finally! ~~This will take a while. Go grill something.~~ Actually, the first install does not take too long. Next, you are presented with four packages to install; you can select the ones you need. This is the time-consuming step
As on the Ubuntu website’s instructions, set the drive to /dev/sda3
FINALLY!! It will eject your DVD and try to restart your computer. You may need to hold down the power key to restart. When you restart, note that the penguin is now with a hard disk logo by it. Happy Linux!

Note:

There are still a few items to make it work smoothly in the Macbook Pro, I’ll cover those in a later tutorial

Coming next: a tutorial on how to create an acceptable a cappella version of a song from a single recording.