Linux Music Blossoms with Rosegarden

Who says that you can’t get professional applications for your Linux box? One great example that shoots that theory down is called Rosegarden. Software that is designed with the music pro in mind, Rosegarden allows its user to enjoy the familiar KDE interface.

When it comes to producing music with Linux on a professional level, Rosegarden includes the basic features that you would expect to find in a commercial music sequencer and scoring package: MIDI and audio recording and sequencing, sound effects and synth plugins, and a score editor. The array of additional stuff this free program offers is staggering when one considers that it is, as of this writing, on the eve of its version 1.0 release.

“I bought a magazine the other day that had tutorials about composing with each of the most common commercial sequencers for Windows and Mac, and almost everything in it could have been done using Rosegarden,” says Chris Cannam, a 32-year-old software engineer in London, England.