Re: [linux-audio-user] Software suitable for children

On Sat, 9 Dec 2006 11:21:40 +0100
Bengt Gördén <bengan@email-addr-hidden> wrote:

> children of my own. My children play with our small studio and if
> theres a problem I'm there anyway. But my college needs software that
> is more geared towards ease of use and in his case towards children
> (not that fluent in English) in the age of 6-7 years. So if you have
> any suggestion it would be appreciated.

I haven't tried it yet personally but I've seen the video demos and
the Freewheeling sequencer seems quite intuitive to use. Maybe not to
setup (I don't know) but as far as using it, it looks fun and easy.

Here is what the author of Freewheeling had to say this November:

"I am especially interested in collaborating with people for whom music
is a community-based process. What tools can we create to teach and
encourage improvisation? How can we work with technology appropriately
in a group setting? The tools that would come out of these questions
would be fresh, because they turn the music production paradigm on its
head."

Home page and Videos:

http://freewheeling.sourceforge.net/

Linux Journal (from last year) :

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8445

As for at home, it's probably like yours. My kids (9 and 11) are using
Ardour and the Zyn synth. They start the system, start jack, etc...
and use Ardour to record. They don't find it difficult to do for what
they're doing. Heck, I don't even know what Ardour can do myself,
apart from what I'm doing, which is to record parts, add effects, mix
and export them. Looks like I'm using 10% of it. I'd sure would like
it if Ardour had a better user interface as far as the effects are
concerned. It's a real bummer to click on a low frequence eq to adjust
it and suddenly hearing it go way high because some mouse movment was
interpreted wrong. Not good for the speakers. Now I'm always bypassing
an effect when making adjustements, and turn it on after it's done.

I'll try to give Freewheeling a try this weekend. Re-reading about it
makes it tempting to try.

Cheers,
Al
Received on Tue Dec 12 00:15:12 2006