Configure Fedora To Practice and Compose Music: Posted by On

Conﬁgure Fedora to practice and compose music ... https://fedoramagazine.org/conﬁgure-fedora-to-pr...
   
Configure Fedora to practice

and compose music
Posted by Yann Collette on August 21, 2020  23 Comments
Introduction
RECENT POSTS 
Using Fedora and Linux to produce and play music is

now easy. Not that long ago, it was a nightmare:
con�guration was a complicated task and you needed
Tune up your sound with
PulseEffects: to compile some applications yourself. The
Microphones compatibility with electronic devices was the real
story. But, now we can see the end of the road.
1 of 29 9/8/20, 10:52 PM
Playing music under Linux with Fedora is becoming
Contribute at the Fedora user friendly.

Test Week for Btrfs
Con�guration
Btrfs Coming to Fedora 33 Fedora has long been usable to play music because of
the CCRMA repository. Moreover, there also exists a
Fedora Spin dedicated version: Fedora Jam. And
today, you also have a COPR repository (which I
manage) with a lot of stuff in it.
To install the Fedora CCRMA repository:
rpm -Uvh http://ccrma.stanford.edu

/planetccrma/mirror/fedora/linux
/planetccrma/$(rpm -E %fedora)/x86_64
/planetccrma-repo-1.1-3.fc$(rpm -E
%fedora).ccrma.noarch.rpm
dnf install
https://download1.rpmfusion.org
/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm
-E %fedora).noarch.rpm
dnf install
https://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree
/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-$(rpm -E
%fedora).noarch.rpm
To install the LinuxMAO Fedora COPR repository:
dnf copr enable ycollet/linuxmao
There are still some minimal steps to follow before
2 of 29 9/8/20, 10:52 PM
being able to ef�ciently use a musical application.

First, you will need to install the Jack audio
connection kit and the qjackctl user interface:
dnf install jack-audio-connection-kit

qjackctl
Then, as a root user, you will need to add yourself to

the jackuser group:
sudo usermod -a -G jackuser <my_user_id>
To enable the changes made, you just have to logout

of and log back in to your session or if you prefer
reboot your machine.
Using basic
applications
Now, you can add some applications to play with like
LMMS or MuseScore.
3 of 29 9/8/20, 10:52 PM
A LMMS session.
A MuseScore session.
You can also record your voice using Audacity.
All of these applications are available in the main

Fedora repository:
dnf install lmms mscore audacity
Fedora and your

instrument, in real
time
Con�guration
Editors note: A real time Kernel is necessary for audio
recording on your PC, especially when doing multi track
recording.
4 of 29 9/8/20, 10:52 PM
If you want to use your instrument (like an electric

guitar) and use the sound of your instrument in some
Fedora application, you will need to use Jack Audio
Connection Kit with a real time kernel.
With the CCRMA repository, to install the real time

kernel, use the following command as a root user:
dnf install kernel-rt
With the LinuxMAO Fedora COPR repository, use

the following command:
dnf install kernel-rt-mao
The RT Kernel from CCRMA repository corresponds

to a vanilla RT kernel with some Fedora patches
applied whereas the one from the LinuxMAO
repository is a pure vanilla one (a clean RT kernel
without any patches).
Once this is done, we still need to perform some

tuning on qjackctl to reduce the audio latency so it is
negligible.
The main QJackCtl interface.

Click on the “Setup” button and set the following
5 of 29 9/8/20, 10:52 PM
values:
Sample rate: 48000 or 44100 (this is the sampling

frequency and these values are mostly supported
on all commercially available sound cards)
Frames / period: 256
Periods / Buffer: 2
MIDI driver: seq (this value is required is you want

to use a MIDI device)
With these parameters, you can easily achieve an

audio latency of around 10 ms. While this value is the
limit for the human ear and is hardly noticeable, you
can reach lower latency with the penalty of increased
CPU load.
Using Guitarix
To add some effects to your instrument, we will use a
rack of effects: guitarix (edit: guitarix, the virtual guitar
ampli�er).
dnf install guitarix
Now, you have to connect your instrument to the

audio card (the internal one or a USB adapter).
Editors note: This normally requires an interface
between the electric guitar and the audio line in of the
audio card. There are also guitar to USB adapters. Once
6 of 29 9/8/20, 10:52 PM
your instrument is connected, with qjackctl, we will

connect:
the audio input to guitarix
the guitarix mono rack to the guitarix stereo rack
the guitarix stereo rack to the stereo audio output

of your audio card
Connecting Guitarix using the QJackCtl graph

window.
You do that by clicking on the Graph button of
QJackCtl. Inside the Graph window, you just have to
connect wires to the various elements . Each block
represents an application. Guitarix is split into two
blocks (preamp and rack). The preamp is where you
select the ampli�er characteristics, and the rack is
where you apply mono and stereo effects. There are
two other blocks with the system label for the audio
input (the one on the left in the above �gure) and the
audio outputs (the one on the right).
Your instrument should be connected to the �rst
7 of 29 9/8/20, 10:52 PM
audio input. You should test that your guitar is

connected and that it’s able to be heard when played.
Most of the time, we use the �rst two slots of audio
output. But this will depend on your audio card.
Editors note: The actual con�guration of inputs and

outputs depends upon the type of hardware chosen. The
stereo speakers of the PC were chosen as the output in
the example shown.
If the MIDI interface of the sound card is chosen,

there are also two red blocks which are dedicated to
MIDI inputs / outputs. These would then be setup as the
input from the instrument and the output from the rack.
Guitarix is an amp plus a rack of effects for you

instrument. Mostly dedicated to guitar, but you can
uses it with synthesizers too.
8 of 29 9/8/20, 10:52 PM
The Guitarix rack effects.
Adding some backing tracks

Better than just playing guitar on your own, you can
play guitar with a group. To do this, we will install
TuxGuitar.
dnf install tuxguitar
The TuxGuitar main interface.

TuxGuitar will play GuitarPro �les. These �les
contains several instruments scores and can be
played in real time. You just have to download a
GuitarPro �le from this website and open it with
TuxGuitar.
Start TuxGuitar and click on Tools -> Plugins and

check the �uidsynth plugin. Then, once �uidsynth is
9 of 29 9/8/20, 10:52 PM
checked, click on Con�gure. Click on the Audio tab

and select Jack as Audio Driver. In the Synthetizer
tab, choose the same sampling frequency you chose
for QjackCtl above (48000 or 44100 Hz).
In the soundfonts tab, you can add your own SF2 or

SF3 �le to improve the audio rendering. You can now
close the Plugins window. Click on Tools -> Settings
-> Sound. Here, you can select the king of audio used
to render the score. If you have several SF2 / SF3
�les, you will select the chosen one for the audio
rendering here. Restart TuxGuitar after you’re
satis�ed with your selections. After restarting
TuxGuitar, a new block will appear in the Graph
window of QJackCtl.
QJackCtl with Guitarix and TuxGuitar.

You will just have to connect the block tagged
‘�uidsynth’ to the audio output like you have done
with Guitarix.
10 of 29 9/8/20, 10:52 PM
Using MIDI devices

Using MIDI devices in real time is as easy as with
audio. We will connect a virtual MIDI keyboard:
vkeybd (but the same procedure applies with a real
MIDI device) to a MIDI synthetizer: amsynth.
dnf install amsynth vkeybd
The main interface of AmSynth.
The virtual MIDI keyboard VKeyBD.

Once you have started amsynth and vkeybd, you will
see new connections on the QJackCtl’s Graph
11 of 29 9/8/20, 10:52 PM
window.
Amsynth and VKeyBD in QJackCtl’s graph window.

In this window, the red slots correspond to the Jack
Audio MIDI connections whereas the purple ones
correspond to the ALSA MIDI connections. Jack MIDI
connections talk only to Jack MIDI connections. And
the same for ALSA. If you want to connect a Jack
MIDI connection to an ALSA MIDI connection, you
will need to use a MIDI gateway: a2jmidid. You can
read some more informations in the Ardour manual.
We have now covered some main topics of the audio

under Fedora Linux. But there are a lot more things
you can do.
Other possibilities
You can do multitrack recording with ardour, qtractor
or zrythm.
12 of 29 9/8/20, 10:52 PM
QTractor for multitracks live recording.

You can do live coding using SuperCollider or SonicPi.
SonicPi in action.
Use some block connected language to perform many
things: PureData
13 of 29 9/8/20, 10:52 PM
An audio / video block language: PureData

There is also a great audio looper available:
SooperLooper.
SooperLooper, a great tool to build audio loops.

You can do live rehearsal through the internet:
Jamulus.
Against the COVID side effects: Jamulus for live

internet rehearsal.
14 of 29 9/8/20, 10:52 PM
Want to become the new famous DJ: have a look at

Mixxx
Mixxx for DJing.
Webography
Some links now:
Here is a YouTube video where I play guitar through

Guitarix and I use TuxGuitar to play the backing
tracks in real time. Both TuxGuitar and Guitarix are
sent through non-mixer which is a small mixing
application. To be able to record the audio of the
session “on the �y”, I also use timemachine. And to
avoid reconnecting everything each time I want to
play guitar, I use Ray Session to start every
application and connect all the Jack Audio
connections.
I also made a small demonstration of the use of
15 of 29 9/8/20, 10:52 PM
Jamulus for a live rehearsal. On this YouTube video, I

use Jamulus, QJackCtl, Guitarix mainly. The second
guitarix is 30 km away. The latency was around 15
ms. It’s quite small and hardly noticable.
On this YouTube video, I tried to make some

comparison between various SF2 / SF3 soundfont
�les. I used a GuitarPro �le for the Opeth’s song
“epilogue”.
On this YouTube video, I use MuseScore to play a

GuitarPro �le and I play along while my guitar sound
is processed by Guitarix.
Here, it’s a live performance with a dancer. TuxGuitar

+ Non Session Manager + Non Mixer + Guitarix. I
always used this kind of combination and Linux has
never hanged … Finger crossed !
Some compositions made with LMMS on Fedora 25

to 32. Using some really nice plugins like Surge,
NoiseMaker from DISTRHO package and others. All
these compositions are libre music and are hosted on
Jamendo.
If you need some help:
LinuxMusicians: a great place with skilled people

willing to help
LinuxMAO: if you speak french, this is the place to

be. A lot of resources related to various software.
16 of 29 9/8/20, 10:52 PM
LinuxAudio: another great website with various

ressources to help.
Like this:
Like
6 bloggers like this.
FEDORA PROJECT COMMUNITY
Yann Collette
 23 COMMENTS Add Comment →
Bill Chat�eld
This is a fantastic article. Thank you so much.

I’m wondering why the real-time kernel is not
distributed by default. It seems silly that it is
not. If people try recording audio with a
default kernel, which is what people expect
because that is how it is done with Windows
and Mac, they’re going to conclude that Linux
sucks. This situation is really bad for Linux.
17 of 29 9/8/20, 10:52 PM
Even if you know you need to install a real-

time kernel, that is a lot of extra (unnecessary)
work that you don’t have to do with other
platforms. This all just makes Linux look bad.
 AUGUST 21, 2020  REPLY
Stephen Snow
You absolutely can record music from an

instrument via the normal as shipped
kernel, however if you want to reliably use
MIDI say, you are going to need a RT-
Kernel at some point since those devices
are time domain dependent. Windows and
Mac are not RT OOTB AFAIK.
Venn Stone
It might be a good idea to let everyone know

installing a RT kernel will knacker their Nvidia,
Blackmagic, and Mellanox drivers.
That’s why I use one compiled with

Preemptible Kernel (Low-Latency Desktop)
for the streaming box in the studio. It happily
handles 12/15 channels of audio during a live
show.
18 of 29 9/8/20, 10:52 PM
Stephen Snow
Hello Venn, that is a good point. Using a RT

kernel is not absolutely necessary to be
able to use the software noted in the
article. Kernel changes outside of the
shipped kernel and updates, will have an
effect on system and sometimes not in a
positive way.
Matthieu Huin
Interesting, could you elaborate? I’ve

wanted to look into music with Fedora for
a while, but I also want to bene�t from my
nvidia card for CUDA related stuff.
james
The nvidia proprietary driver does not

compile against a realtime kernel, and
all attempts at a hack have failed. It has
been this way for years, unfortunately,
but you can use the opensource driver
with the realtime kernel.
19 of 29 9/8/20, 10:52 PM
From memory, you can disable the

proprietary driver and enable the
opensource driver on the kernel
command line, but there is bound to be
more to it than that. I just elected to
use the opensource driver as I didn’t
need the greater power.
Stephen Snow
A good article. I have a builtin sound device on

my motherboard which provides a Line-in
audio input. I have two guitar ampli�ers that
can provide a line-out audio signal in dual-
mono, and a Tascam CD-GT1 which provides a
dual-mono output at line level as well. I have
recorded the guitar (without installing a RT-
Kernel), and shared the recording with
someone who was using a Mac to record a
track onto it. We passed this �le back and
forth layering tracks onto it, me with Fedora
and him with Macbook pro. My point is
neither of us noticed timing issues during this
exercise.
Anthony Stauss
20 of 29 9/8/20, 10:52 PM
Many thanks for this, and links to actual use

videos!
Oleksiy Lukin
I may suggest to install about

QSynth+�uidsynth? I use it with MIDI
keyboard.
Oleksii Lukin
Sorry, �rst it was a question and there’s no

possibility to edit.
Yann
I use QSynth from time to time to perform

multitrack recording on qtractor.
I start tuxguitar as a MIDI sequencer and
then, I connect tuxguitar MIDI output
track by track to several QSynth (one by
instrument). And then, I connect the
qsynth audio output to qtractor for
multitrack recording.
Here, you have the tuxguitar audio
21 of 29 9/8/20, 10:52 PM
rendering using several SF2 soundfonts:

https://www.youtube.com
/watch?v=p7fFXbFxLwI
nphilipp
Thanks for the article!
I have to disagree on one point, however: most

people won’t need a realtime kernel for audio
production. The mainline kernel as included in
Fedora has been able to do realtime
scheduling for a long time, and it’s been
absolutely adequate for anything I could
throw at it since I’ve switched back from using
PlanetCCRMA’s kernel-rt package years ago.
This means, on an aged hand-me-down
computer, multi-track recording with up to 24
channels (limit of my audio HW), occasionally
bee�ng up a miced instrument with sideband
reverb in monitoring, even monitoring ITB
with Ardour (though that’s admittedly and
noticeably pushing it, at least for percussive
sources, it would be something I’d consider
using kernel-rt again for).
One question: what obstacles are there to

having these packages in the of�cial Fedora
repos? They’d be much easier to discover, I
only found your COPR repo when googling for
22 of 29 9/8/20, 10:52 PM
some synth I found on linuxsynths.com…
Yann
Most of the work to put these packages in

the of�cial repo ?
– �rst becoming an of�cial RPM packager.
Once this is done, some of these packages
will be “easy” to put in the of�cial repo.
Some others, almost impossible: the real
time kernel for example. There are always
security issues an other things like that.
And for becoming an of�cial packager, this
is a work in progress on mys side �
bhavin192
Thank you for writing this, I might need some

of this to connect my guitar 😉
Interested Party
What are recommended hardware setups for

high quality electronic guitar music
production?
23 of 29 9/8/20, 10:52 PM

Yann Collette
The only thing I recommend to record a

guitar: a USB sound card with a
preampli�er.
Having a preampli�er on the sound card is
a huge plus on the sound of the guitar.
A good �rst card can be: Focusrite –
Scarlett 2i2
If you are a professionnal, you can have a
look at RME Fireface Ucx Interface Audio
Desktop USB. Not the same price �
Interested Party
Thanks. What about obtaining midi

output?

Yann Collette
For MIDI: it’s quite easy.

– some audio card (like on some
focusrite models) have a MIDI in /
out connector
– most of the synths have an USB
24 of 29 9/8/20, 10:52 PM
MIDI connector which is supported

out of the box on most cases
– You can also by a USB / MIDI
connector (around 15€) which will
allow you to connect old synth on
Linux. I use such a connector to
connect my behringer fcb1010
pedal board to control guitarix.
Dave Yarwood
For those who are interested in the idea of

composing music in a text format and using a
command line-oriented work�ow to play and
iterate on your compositions, there is also
Alda, a music composition programming
language: https://alda.io
Full disclosure: I am the creator of Alda �
james
Hi, and thanks for the article. I’m glad to hear

fedora jam is up and running, and that the
planet ccrma still works. Both sort of
disappeared for a while.
Do you know if falktx’s python apps cadence
or claudia etc are available for fedora?
25 of 29 9/8/20, 10:52 PM
Pieter van Veen
James: cadence is available in the regular

Fedora repo and AFAICT claudia is
included in the cadence package. So all you
have to do (from the command line as root)
is:
dnf install cadence

Yann Collette
Carla and cadence are available on Fedora

32. I don’t know for Fedora 30 and 31 …
Bruno
Finding a ef�cient work�ow is not easy, there

are many choices, but applications are
improving. And there are some good
motivation: https://www.youtube.com
/c/unfa000/
As for the packaging, I admit I ended up using
the AppImage directly from MuseScore and
the install script directly from Ardour. I gave
up on of�cial Fedora packages for Audio. And I
26 of 29 9/8/20, 10:52 PM
use Github directly for Helm or RaySession or

ZynFusion.
Maybe in a few years Flatpak will solve this.
We’ll see.
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Conﬁgure Fedora to practice and compose music ... https://fedoramagazine.org/conﬁgure-fedora-to-pr...

Configure Fedora to practice

Using Fedora and Linux to produce and play music is

Playing music under Linux with Fedora is becoming

Contribute at the Fedora user friendly.

To install the Fedora CCRMA repository:

rpm -Uvh http://ccrma.stanford.edu

To install the LinuxMAO Fedora COPR repository:

dnf copr enable ycollet/linuxmao

There are still some minimal steps to follow before

being able to ef�ciently use a musical application.

dnf install jack-audio-connection-kit

Then, as a root user, you will need to add yourself to

sudo usermod -a -G jackuser <my_user_id>

To enable the changes made, you just have to logout

All of these applications are available in the main

dnf install lmms mscore audacity

Fedora and your

If you want to use your instrument (like an electric

With the CCRMA repository, to install the real time

dnf install kernel-rt

With the LinuxMAO Fedora COPR repository, use

dnf install kernel-rt-mao

The RT Kernel from CCRMA repository corresponds

Once this is done, we still need to perform some

The main QJackCtl interface.

Sample rate: 48000 or 44100 (this is the sampling

Frames / period: 256

MIDI driver: seq (this value is required is you want

With these parameters, you can easily achieve an

dnf install guitarix

Now, you have to connect your instrument to the

your instrument is connected, with qjackctl, we will

the audio input to guitarix

the guitarix mono rack to the guitarix stereo rack

the guitarix stereo rack to the stereo audio output

Connecting Guitarix using the QJackCtl graph

Your instrument should be connected to the �rst

audio input. You should test that your guitar is

Editors note: The actual con�guration of inputs and

If the MIDI interface of the sound card is chosen,

Guitarix is an amp plus a rack of effects for you

The Guitarix rack effects.

Adding some backing tracks

dnf install tuxguitar

The TuxGuitar main interface.

Start TuxGuitar and click on Tools -> Plugins and

checked, click on Con�gure. Click on the Audio tab

In the soundfonts tab, you can add your own SF2 or

QJackCtl with Guitarix and TuxGuitar.

Using MIDI devices

dnf install amsynth vkeybd

The main interface of AmSynth.

The virtual MIDI keyboard VKeyBD.

Amsynth and VKeyBD in QJackCtl’s graph window.

We have now covered some main topics of the audio

QTractor for multitracks live recording.

An audio / video block language: PureData

SooperLooper, a great tool to build audio loops.