this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2023
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I've wanted to get back into piano and to start off I was wondering if there was any decent FOSS piano software for linux?

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago (2 children)

piano software

What do you mean?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

Wondering the same. DAW? DAW-Lite?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

High end digital keyboards market themselves as pianos.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

That doesn't answer my question.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Digital keyboards (at least contemporary ones) use embedded systems that require software. OP wants a piano/digital keyboard that uses open source software.

I don't think it exists (I don't know of any). The software for these systems is going to be highly coupled to the feature set of that digital piano and the benefit of modifying the software is low. So it's unlikely someone has made a open source digital piano.

If it exists its either a very small project, a manufacturer has chosen to release their software as open source or an adaptation of keyboard/synthesizer software. Although many libraries for such software are likely open source.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 9 months ago

embedded systems that require software. OP wants a piano/digital keyboard that uses open source software.

How did you determine that?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago

Do you mean a VST? There's a good list of open-source VSTs here: https://github.com/webprofusion/OpenAudio

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago

https://blog.wolftune.com/p/software-recommendations-and-more.html

If anybody knows what you're looking for, the author of this blog does.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

Does musescore fit your needs? If you want a piano.. you should probably get a midi input keyboard. If you don’t need 88 keys and real-time playing, you can deal with less octaves.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

I guess the closest to a decent FOSS piano plugin is MDA Piano, or perhaps search for piano samples. Perhaps someone has created a decent piano preset for the dexed FM synth (but will probably sound very 80s). I'm using pianoteq (unfortunately proprietary, but it has native linux support and sounds good).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

I've never dived into this, but if electronic keyboards are just glorified midi-controllers, I'd have to think you could find a FOSS solution. If they're not simply midi-controllers, I wouldn't begin to know. I'd imagine you might have an easier time with keyboards from the 90s or whenever.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

I've used Ardour to capture keyboard midi input before. Not beginner-friendly, but it works if you want to play something, pick a soundfile, edit a flubbed note or two, and add it to a project.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Not quite sure what you're after - but on the off chance, I'll mention LMMS, as I don't think it's already been mentioned amongst the other audio software.

Website here: LMMS

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Well... if you want the very minimum necessary to play piano, I've written this tool to do it with just a MIDI keyboard and a modern browser.

http://tools.fabioiotti.com/midi-synth/index.html https://github.com/bruce965/midi-synth

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

You could try dexed, it's a YamahaDX7 clone https://github.com/asb2m10/dexed/releases