Published by ubustu on September 27, 2007
in News.
Although probably not inspired by our critique of the originally proposed wallpaper, a member of the Ubuntu Studio team held an either/or vote via the Ubuntu Studio mailing list to determine the official wallpaper for the upcoming Gutsy release :
Option flame:
http://andrew.wedderburn.googlepages.com/flames-ish.png
http://andrew.wedderburn.googlepages.com/flames-ish-s.png
Option lights:
http://andrew.wedderburn.googlepages.com/ubuntu-ish.png
http://andrew.wedderburn.googlepages.com/screenshot1.png
“Lights” (pictured above) won by a landslide. A few people were curious whether the original gray wallpaper from the first Ubuntu Studio release would still be available. Rest assured, if its not, we’ll hunt it down and host it here ourselves. As for the new wallpaper, new theme, new icons, whether you love them or hate them, it still only takes two clicks to change ‘em. Here’s a little more insight into the new artwork from the lead developer of Ubuntu Studio :
From the chat here and forum votes its clear that “lights” is the preference. I will now take this chance to explain the art. We lost our lead artist mid-way through the development cycle. We had a design direction that also suffered because of this. We called for another art lead but nobody stepped up. Its now open to the community here:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuStudio/Artwork/OfficialHardyIncoming
So with v2’s idea being moved to v3, we had to scramble to put another idea in place. What will ship with Gutsy is the result. The gloss is gone. Everyone loved it but it’s being done to death and we are moving away from it to create something really unique for Hardy. So while people wont like it, ultimately, it’s the tools that matter. So everyone get prepared to contribute to Hardy. We’ll be posting a lot to -devel and all constructive chat is welcome.
Published by ubustu on September 24, 2007
in News.
Welcome to the second installment of the Ubuntu Studio Weekly Roundup. This should be self-explanatory 
New Artwork for Gutsy
First things first, check out some of the proposed art (not necessarily final) for the upcoming Gutsy release of Ubuntu Studio. We really like the new simplified logo, and the psychedelic logon screen, but, we’re not so wild about the new wallpaper. The proposed wallpaper is the same as the background for the logon screen (which we like!) however, we feel the image is too busy and distracting for a desktop. We’d prefer something more thoughtless, zen-like, and serene. A clean slate, so to speak.
Bulk Image Resize/Rotate
Did you know you had bulk image editing capabilities built into your file browser? Thanks to an extension of the file manager Nautilus (both of which are prepackaged with Ubuntu Studio) you can convert images on the fly. Select the images you want to resize and right-click to bring up the context menu pictured above.
Liquid Rescale via Seam Carving
This amazing technology has been turned into a GIMP plugin. While not officially packaged with Ubuntu Studio for the time being, you can download the plugin for Feisty or Gutsy here. It’s a .deb file so all you’ve gotta do is double-click and go! We used it to shrink the Bulk Resize menu above in a matter of seconds!
Learning to Love the Terminal
Lastly, we found this great guide to getting the most out of the Terminal (otherwise known as the command line or shell). This particular guide is extremely well written and walks you through the basics with great ease. If you want to be a power user, this is where its at.
We’re going to skim over a few things we’ve already discussed in the last Ardour tutorial, so if things get confusing please go there first.
This tutorial will show you how to sync up the digital audio workstation, Ardour, and the advanced drum machine, Hydrogen. This will allow you to have a full featured drum machine playing in perfect time with your Ardour session. Or, one hell of a fancy click track.
Learning to play nice
First, start up JACK. Open Ardour and create a new session. Near the top of the window in Ardour, make sure that Time Master is enabled (green) and is set to JACK rather than Internal:
Now, open Hydrogen. For simplicity’s sake, go ahead and load of one of the demo tracks from the File menu :
Continue reading ‘How to Sync Hydrogen with Ardour’
Published by ubustu on September 16, 2007
in News.
Welcome to the first installment of the Ubuntu Studio Weekly Roundup. This should be self-explanatory
MIDI Support Coming to Ardour
Back in August the Ardour team released a breathtaking screenshot of color coded MIDI tracks in Ardour. Thanks in part to Google’s Summer of Code, MIDI support will soon be a reaility within Ardour.
Quickly Remove Backgrounds in GIMP
A great GIMP tutorial on how to remove the background surrounding an object in a photo. That picture of you slouched in your computer chair can soon be you slouched in front of the Eiffel Tower!
Setting up FireWire Recording
Those of you using a FireWire audio interface with Ubuntu should investigate this very in-depth documentation over at the Ubuntu Wiki.
Ubuntu Studio on IRC
Looking for Ubuntu Studio support? Want to talk it up with the Ubuntu Studio team? Check out this tutorial for connecting to the official chat room using GAIM.
That’s all for this week. We’ll keep digging thru the mailing lists, the forum posts, the chatroom exchanges, and the blog entries for these morsels of Ubuntu Studio newsy goodness. You just sit back and relax. Honestly, you could use the break.
This tutorial will show you how to create perfectly timed loops in Ardour. Along the way we’ll learn how to edit the tempo, enable a click track, switch track inputs, set the quantinization/snapping, and how to fill your track with your new loop. We’ll be recording a short rhythmic loop of handclaps as a substitute for the sqeuaky, dull, yet indespinsible click track.
The Click Track
After you’ve created a new Ardour session, the first thing you’ll want to do is enable the click track. The click track consists of two tones, a high and a low. For example: if you are recording in 4/4 time, the first, or accented, beat will be the high pitch, and the remaining three will be the low.
Test it out now by pressing play :
Continue reading ‘How to Create a Basic Loop in Ardour’
