Amuc - the Amsterdam Music Composer [LWN.net]

Version 1.0 of Amuc, the Amsterdam Music Composer, was released by author Wouter Boeke in time for the 2005 Linux Audio Conference.

Amuc is described as: "a Linux application for composing and playing music". The online manual and screen shots page explains more about Amuc's capabilities:

Amuc is quite different from other music software. It is especially focused on composing music, which is a very difficult but rewarding endeavor. The tool tries to place as little hurdles as possible on the user's road. The entering of new tunes is done on a normal 5-bar staff (treble or bass clef) in one of the 2 panels at the left. There are 2 kinds of instruments: sampled instruments for percussive sounds, and sounds that are generated real-time. Fore each kind there is choice between 6 instruments, indicated by a color. The sound of a real-time instrument can be modified via its own control panel, that will appear when the appropriate color is selected.

Amuc uses graphical score entry windows for entry of a series of musical notes. Note pitches are displayed by vertical position on the score and time duration is displayed as line length. Synthesized waveforms include FM synthesis, variable frequency sine waves, random waveforms, pulse waveforms with chorus capabilities, and additive synthesis.

The scores form the basic compositional building blocks, there are capabilities for doing various editing processes to the notes grouped in a score. The scores can be combined to form the big score that represents the entire musical composition.

Scripting capabilities add a high-level control structure over the scores, they can be used to manipulate a variety of score parameters such as pitch, amplitude, and synthesis parameters.

Once a composition has been assembled, it is possible to play it in real-time, or save it as a wave (.wav) or MIDI (.mid) file. The composition itself is saved as a score file (.sco) and a script file (.scr). The tune can be modified as it is played by adjusting various parameters including tempo, volume, and a multitude of synthesizer parameters.

For an idea of how the software functions, see the example screen shot while listening to the matching dance.mp3 musical sample.

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Amuc - the Amsterdam Music Composer

Posted May 7, 2005 21:07 UTC (Sat) by yodermk (subscriber, #3803) [Link]

From the manual:

> Compiling should pose no problems on any Linux system, as only
> X-windows functions are used, and no toolkits. The used sound system
> is OSS (default) or ALSA (optionally).

micah@nova src $ make
g++ -c -O -Wno-multichar amuc.cpp
amuc.cpp: In constructor `ScLine::ScLine(Score*)':
amuc.cpp:1726: error: ISO C++ forbids initialization in array new
amuc.cpp: In member function `void Score::reset()':
amuc.cpp:1827: error: ISO C++ forbids initialization in array new
make: *** [amuc.o] Error 1

Right.

Amuc - the Amsterdam Music Composer

Posted Jun 6, 2005 11:36 UTC (Mon) by w.boeke (guest, #30350) [Link]

Sorry ... this is Linux. Now and then they update the gcc
compiler, so old code might become broken. If this occurs,
simply email the author so he can correct his code.
That's better then complaining.

Regards,
Wouter Boeke