Jackbeat - JACK Audio Sequencer ------------------------------- ## Introduction ## Jackbeat is an audio sequencer running on Linux and Mac OS X, for musicians and sound artists: * Drummachine interface with accurate VU meters for easy editing * Realtime operation : while playing, the sequence can be edited and resized, the bpm rate modified, and new samples loaded, * Easy to use and yet powerful : just JACK it into jack-rack and you can apply LADSPA effect plugins on a per track basis, perform mastering with jackeq , etc... * Loads and saves .jab files, Jackbeat's xml+tar file format. * Unique Masking feature: allows to insert silences into a a track in an interactive manner ## Requirements ## - JACK, the Jack Audio Connection Kit (http://jackaudio.org) : a running server as well as the API header files. Mac OS X users should see http://www.jackosx.com - GTK+-2.0 (gtk.org) - libsndfile (www.mega-nerd.com/libsndfile) - libxml2 (http://xmlsoft.org) - libsamplerate (http://www.mega-nerd.com/SRC) ## Installation ## Jackbeat uses autoconf and automake, so you should just need to type : ./configure make make install ## Usage ## Before launching Jackbeat you should start the JACK server, for example with qjackctl (http://qjackctl.sourceforge.net/), or by invoking jackd on the command line. If you don't know what JACK is, I recommend that you take a look at: http://jackaudio.org Jackbeat is pretty simple to use. You can load samples by pressing the track buttons (on the left-side of the window), then by toggling some of the buttons on the drummachine and clicking Play you shall hear some music. Well... hopefully ;) Some hints: Edit Menu: - Clear: empties the current sequence - Double: Increase the beats number by a factor of 2, and duplicates the beats data. This feature allows you to increase your workspace size, while keeping the output unchanged. - Transpose volumes: Interactively increase/decrease all tracks volumes by a given percentage Options menu: - Auto-connect: wether you wish Jackbeat to automatically connect its outputs to some playback hardware or not. - Transport control: If set to "Respond and query" (the default), clicking on "Play" will both enable (or disable) the current sequence and tell Jack to start (or stop) playback. If set to "Respond", clicling on Play only enables the sequence. It's up to you to start Jack Playback (check the jack_transport or qjackctl tools). - Resampling quality: This setting is used when the sample framerate (ex: 44100Hz) differs from JACK's framerate (ex: 48000Hz) on one or more track(s). Because resampling happens in realtime, choosing a high quality can consume much resources. About track masking: Tracks masks allow you to insert silences into a track in a highly interactive manner. Use Shift-Click to toggle the mask for a given beat. The corresponding track will then get muted during the duration of that beat. Of course this will only work if a sample is still playing when the masked beat is reached. Say you have a sample that plays for 4 seconds, using a mask, you could for example insert 1 seconds of silence in the middle of this sample. You might find this feature useful for both short and long samples. ## Feedback ## Please give me some feedback. Tell me if Jackbeat inspires you. I invite you to use the public forum at: http://www.samalyse.com/jackbeat/phorum It does not require any subscription, login or any other dumb questions about the color of your underwear. Bugs reports are greatly welcome. If you start Jackbeat from a console, it will dump a lot of debugging informations, which you can copy and paste into the Jackbeat forum along with a small note, in case of krash/problem. It shouldn't take you more than a minute. You may also send me links to your musical productions so that I can include them on the home page. ## Contact ## Home page : http://www.samalyse.com/jackbeat Olivier Guilyardi