Rosegarden v1.4 (Linux/free)


Rosegarden is designed to be easy to use, attractive, and familiar. If you've some experience with other sequencer applications for other platforms, you should find it easy enough to get up and running with: even if you haven't, it's not hard.

This tour will quickly show a few of the things Rosegarden can do, and hopefully explain how Rosegarden can work at the centre of a whole world of music composition and editing software. Read more.

Changes:
Significant new features include:

* You can now record to multiple MIDI tracks at once from
different devices and/or channels.

* There is a new track parameter box which can be used to
select the playback instrument for a track, recording
filters, and the default parameters for new segments
created on that track.

* You can now create tracks identified with particular
real-world performance instruments, so that new segments
subsequently created on those tracks inherit the right
clef, transposition and note range for each instrument
(notes outside that range are displayed in a different
colour in the notation editor). A database of around 300
instruments is included, courtesy of Erik Magnus Johansson
of Eolin KB (http://www.kandav.com/eolin/).

* The composition no longer has a fixed duration. In
previous releases it was necessary to adjust the
composition duration manually in order to record or create
segments longer than the default duration. As of this
release, the composition extends itself as you record or
drag out new segments.

* If you add a key change across multiple segments that
differ in performance transposition, you can now choose to
have the key transposed automatically for each segment.

* You can now enter special directives in the notation
editor that will be interpreted when creating LilyPond
output, to achieve effects that are possible in LilyPond
but not yet supported in Rosegarden (glissandi, arpeggios,
segno/coda etc).

* Soprano clef has been added.

* Lilypond export now supports LilyPond 2.8 (dropping
support for 1.x and 2.0) and has a new feature to merge
multiple staffs as voices into one LilyPond staff, a new
option to group staffs with a system bracket, as well as a
huge number of bug fixes and performance improvements,
which have tremendously improved the reliability and
usefulness of the export engine.

* You can choose to display the parameter boxes in a
tabbed layout as an alternative to the default vertical
stack. In the tabbed layout you can display a much
greater number of MIDI controllers than was previously
possible.

* You can now cut, copy and paste "ranges" within a
composition (cross-sections of all segments and tempo and
time signature changes between two given end points in
time).

* There are new functions to split selected segments at an
arbitrary time, and to split segments according to the
MIDI device used to record them (which can be applied
retrospectively to recordings made with Rosegarden 1.0 and
newer).

* The facilities for adding and editing markers (labelled
positions in time) and setting loop ranges have been
improved in a number of ways.

* Tempos can now be "ramped" (smoothly changing from an
initial to a final tempo over a period of time).

* The tempo ruler has been overhauled and now permits
in-place editing of the tempo map with the mouse (with
undo and redo, of course).

* You can finally zoom in and out of editing views using
the mouse wheel (with Ctrl pressed).

* The Panic function is now accessible from all transport
toolbars.

* When step-recording notes from a MIDI device, you can
now enter chords simply by playing overlapping notes.

* Rosegarden can now respond to MIDI Start, Stop and
Continue system messages (as well as MMC/MTC), and send
MMC Locate messages (as well as Play and Stop).

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