sonic-pi

09/01/2019

sonic-pi

Linux generated techno beats

I came across a self published album on Amazon from someone I follow on Twitter of 8 bit notes, and this inspired me to put together a bit of simple techno 🙂
There’s alse another passionate techy on Twitter who hosts a site full of synth and moog samples; so my plan is to get a music editor working and then add in some funky sounds.

I’ve played briefly with sonic-pi: https://sonic-pi.net/ on the Raspberry Pi in the past, I like the simplicity and the idea of live coding; so seems like a good place to start.

install sonic-pi

sudo apt-get install sonic-pi

To load run

qjackctl
then in a new terminal window
sonic-pi

now let’s make some music 🙂
… except still no sound for me 🙁

I’m to try and install Raspbian: https://raspbian.org/ on VirtualBox and see if it works from there.
Would use my own Raspberry Pi but I don’t have a desktop installed on there currently.

Awesome current Raspbian iso downloading, but VirtulaBox not playing, seems like issues with the newly installed 4.20 Linux Kernel.
Warning guides me to run sudo modprobe vboxdrv
This doesn’t work either due to kernel maybe?

Sought guidance, found this link: https://askubuntu.com/questions/920689/how-to-fix-modprobe-vboxdrv-error-in-virtualbox/920713

Re-install linux-headers, virtualbox-dkms, dkms
sudo apt install --reinstall linux-headers-$(uname -r) virtualbox-dkms dkms

Then reboot to try sudo modprobe vboxdrv again… while rebooting I’ll also check the BIOS to disable Secure Boot… let’s see

All this fun and I haven’t even started sonic-pi with working sound yet, I <3 Linux 🙂


post reboot

BIOS updated to disable Secure Boot, but VirtualBox won’t open, and sudo modprobe vboxdrv still fails 🙁

& the Raspbian OS I downloaded was an img file not iso; so no good to install on Virtual Box

No worries, Raspbian VirtualBox vdi sourced from here: https://www.osboxes.org/raspbian/ and VirtualBox machine created, but still receiving the error Kernel driver not installed (rc=-1908) ?

Tried rebooting and using an earlier kernel but no success, I don’t want to give up on this and would like to find a solution so I’m off to the Ubuntu IRC channel (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/IRC/ChannelList) to find someone with more knowledge than myself to help… just need an IRC client, always liked http://xchat.org/ let’s see if it’s still active.

OK word on Ubuntu irc is that I need to go back to a supported kernel, last one for 18.10 is:

linux-image-generic (source: linux-meta): Generic Linux kernel image. In component main, is optional. Version 4.18.0.13.14 (cosmic), package size 2 kB, installed size 15 kB

Let’s see if I can find it and go from there 🙂


post rollback

Bugger no luck with kernel 4.18 either, and I tried Debian 9 and couldn’t get any sound working on there.
To call it a night, this is fate telling me not to make music, back to my acoustic guitar… for now!


windows win

I broke, thought if I’m trying it on Debian then why not Windows 10, and it worked flawlessly & I had heaps of fun.
So tomorrow my sonic-pi learning begins and I work on picking up the skills and my first compositions… but first I must see if I can get the Windows MSI to work in Ubuntu 🙂

Download wine for Ubuntu: https://www.ubuntufree.com/download-wine-for-ubuntu/

Ended up installing PlayOnLinux as a Wine GUI, but no success; so back in Win10 tomorrow… might even play some RockSmith again after a long hiatus 🙂