Is it just me or would the n800 make a great device for making music?

Probably not for multi track recording, thats wishful thinking! I was thinking more as a music notation device. I saw that Timidity is working on the n800 so it can process MIDI, I want to compose, not just play!

In the past I’ve used Rosegarden on linux (http://www.rosegardenmusic.com/) but its a little too full featured to be realistic on the n800. I was thinking of porting something purely just to do music notation, and nothing quite as full featured as Finale (for those in the music notation biz, Finale is the best of the lot).

So once I manage to download the Vmware dev kit, I’ll try Brahms (http://brahms.sourceforge.net/) - it might also be a bit too much for the n800 but I thought it’d be a good place to start.

Does anyone have any experience with any other notation packages?

----
I also posted this on my blog: http://admira.wordpress.com/ Feel free to drop in!

Have you considered Note Edit? It's a nice full-featured notation package available for linux: http://noteedit.berlios.de/

R.
==

I second the note edit vote and would really find the software on the n800 useful.

Thanks for that, I hadn't heard of that but it looks exactly like what I was after. If I ever manage to download the vmware kit from bittorrent I'll do that one first.

similar topic here:
http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...ighlight=music

also: check out what this linux device can do with music.

http://createdigitalmusic.com/index.php?s=gp2x
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTOkUWB9iDM

Hey Earl,

Thanks for that - I saw those threads on sequencing software, which is interesting (I also saw someone asking for MOD Tracker style software which I thought would be a good option) - however I was thinking more of notation based editing.

I didn't see that youtube video before though - good stuff!

I actually have a GP2X... it's a handy little gadget to have. Never looked into it for music notation, but it is fun and functional nonetheless... I think you should look into a program called LMMS. It is a linux clone of frooty loops (for windows) and it is pretty extensive. On an N800 that boots from SD, it shouldn't be too much of a pain to install... I'm sure the port will be a little heavy, no matter what you do... but it would be a great program to use on a portable touch screen device

Have you considered Mup? (http://www.arkkra.com/) It's commercial, but cheap, and you get the source (which you can compile and test before you buy). I'm not using it on the N800 yet, but I will. I've bought a license ($29 IIRC) and I use it on the PC.
It's _not_ a graphical notation application, it's a textual notation (easy enough to learn) and you can use any editor you want. It can create midi too, which is great for catching mistakes. I use timiditity together with Mup on the PC, elsewhere in your posting you indicated that timidity is available for the N800 so that's one problem out of the way for me at least. The notation output of Mup is Postscript, but Evince is supposed to support that.. I'll see soon enough when I just get Mup recompiled for the N800.

I realized after posting that porting NoteEdit is going to be a problem (unless you want to also install KDE). It's not Gnome-based, so you're going to need your QT libs.

There is another program based on GTK called Denemo that might serve better: http://denemo.sourceforge.net

It has the following requirements that seem doable on the tablet:

g++ 2.95 or higher
flex 2.5.4a or higher
bison 1.35 or higher
gtk+ 2
libxml2
LilyPond 2.4
autoconf 2.59 or higher

Not being a programmer, I couldn't say how difficult it actually would be to port it, but I would think it would be easier than the KDE route.

R.
==

Hi Rickh,

I was just looking at all that with NoteEdit, wondering how I was going to get it to work - you've got a lot of experience with notation software on linux? I've only used rosegarden with lilypond before!

Denemo looks ideal, thanks for the tip. Looking through the forums it seems someone else had the same idea:

http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...ad.php?p=70946

I wonder if Iball ever got to try compiling it? Might save me the hassle!

I'm also thinking of waiting until the new OS for the n800 is ready before trying to create any packages. Seems a shame to set up the scratchbox environment when, in ten days or so, it could be out of date.