It's been a long, long time

Introduce yourself
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I used to be a member on the old forums (2005 maybe?) and I was also very active on Sectionz. I either went by Somnio or Ambary, I can not quite remember, but hello again!

I had an information technology catastrophe during some point while I was going to uni and as a result lost all of my music that I had produced previously. I was so discouraged I just stopped doing any and all music. I even sold most of my gear.

The tools I had used a lot back then were: FL Studio (10 I think was the last new version I think I used), Reason 5, and Reaktor 5. I liked to ReWire Reason over to FL and do all the arrangement work in FL Studio. I also did a lot of found sound and circuit bending. I build up a rather large sample library that was lost. I still have most of my VST collection, though, and I think I might have a bunch of patches, but all my custom Reaktor ensembles are gone.

It also didn’t help that I moved on to use all Linux all the time and the learning curve of audio Linux is a bit steep.

So after a lot of soul-searching, dealing with some medical issues, getting a degree, starting graduate school, working in the world of semiconductor engineering, losing money in the stock market due to this wonderful quarantine situation, and finally reclaiming my damned SoundCloud account, I’ve decided to try and move on from the crushing data loss and the embarrassing, general atrophy of skill and begin creating music anew.

The tools I’m exploring are in the universe of Linux, so ReNoise is a first stop while I struggle to get a workflow established. I plan to buy a mic and maybe a field recorder, see if I can find any remaining piezoelectric disks I used before, and begin making bleeps and bloops again.

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Welcome back

Losing data sucks ass, but can usually be fixed by making new music and just backing up whatever’s the most important from now onward. I’ve been set back a lot by data issues, almost to the point of not wanting to build up my own libraries again and all of that, but in the end I just made better music. Anything that I’ve lost stems / project files to, I can now look back on and say it fucking sucked anyway and I don’t even want the stems or files back because I can do so much more now.

I’m not sure how compatible linux is, but everything has free trials nowadays if you need a new workflow. And I’d say with confidence that you can make some great stuff right out of the box with whatever DAW of choice long before obtaining a mic, a field recorder, or even VST’s / sample packs.

I believe VCV Rack and VM are linux compatible, if you’re into modular and just want a bunch of shit to start with (both are free, cov1d rules). Don’t quote me though because I don’t know anything about linux compatibility and I only run it for retropie

PS - rewiring is still the shit. And some of those trials don’t burn out :smiley:

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God damn… I feel this so hard. Glad you 're making the transition back!

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HI Somnio…welcome back to the fold. :wink:

It’s really strange, but a lot of us seem to be return right now with kinda the same story/life experiences. I recently found my way back here, after a few “gentle nudges” from other active members (…belated thanks guys…ye know who you are.) I also have been through a pretty dark phase in life…health, deaths, loss of one kind or another…and come out the other end of it more than a little shaken to the core.

My studio set up recently took a hammering, too. Two drives dies on my and I lost the best part of nearly 10 years of projects and tools I’d paid for, at the same time there was a fuck up involving my online storage, which resulted in me losing a lot of backed up stuff, but I managed to get all that data back again after a bit of emailing and outstanding help form the support guys at the company in question.

This last week has been a day-by-day, hour-by-hour marathon of juggling data back and forth from one drive to another, trying to get things ordered enough so I can have the basic bones of a functioning studio system again and I’m nearly there…just have to re-install Windows one last time (drivers got screwed up during the last install, resulting in conflicts) and I should be back in business.

It’s been crazy, crappy and very real…but rewarding all the same…and I came to think of this phase in my life as a “second chance” of sorts. It’s like life has thrown me a cure-ball…I can’t change what’s happened, but I can influence what’s yet to come…and, for me, it feels like I’m starting all over again…and, in a way I really am.

Losing all that “history” has freed me from the past and the things that held me creatively…kinda allowing me to move on “refreshed” and recharged, with a new positive view of the future, even while the world seems to be falling apart right now over what’s going on around us.

So my advice is just let go and make the best of it. It’s a chance to take all the stuff you leaned before and run with it! Linux is a whole different ball of wax, but there’s a lot of stuff out there now, which is pretty cool that runs on it…compared to even a few years ago. It’ll cool ,trust me…just have fun and enjoy the ride. :wink:

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Welcome

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Glad you 're making the transition back!

Thanks, makeuswhole. This is a time for transition in several different senses of the word for me. These are good times.

I appreciate the detailed response, A.M. Having clumsy data issues is terrifying and sometimes the greatest losses are not realized until much later when you go in expecting it be there but instead is corrupted. :frowning:

I’ve been using Linux for so long (wow it’s been over ten years) that I simply cannot tolerate Windows and at this point I just want to play with audio again; it does not seem trivial to pipe MIDI into a virtualbox, and the rtpMIDI path seemed steep and latency is a major threat. There just isn’t much drive for that direction for me.

On the other hand, winasio and wine-rt might work with JACK in which case I might be able keep FL Studio in my flow, which would be exciting to have that in a Linux context after that being a pile of crud for years to iron out. However, MIDI into wine? I’m just going to assume that’s another pain.

But between the electrical engineering degree and my ham radio interest, I’ve sure found many interesting avenues for musical(!) material that I’ve just thought: “Oh, this would be cool later”. But never recorded it, never sampled it, chopped it up and made something tasty out of it.

No more!

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Have you checked out Robolynx? It claims to be able to run a full Windows OS via its own VM, but I’ve never tried it and don’t really know that much about it, t.b.h…but I was thinking of giving it a go myself just to see.

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IDK if this helps at all, but FL is on v20 now and supports Mac. I have no idea what that does for Linux support, but I assume it makes things a bit better.

And Image Line isn’t kidding when they say lifetime updates, if you can get your account back, you can get up and running with the latest version, which does much better for audio editing than the older versions with autofades and such.

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SectionZ! Fellow veteran here. Welcome back.