Waveform 9 turns the Rasp Pi into a recording studio

Faceplates

Tracktion has always pursued its own design concept. The application and the interfaces of the underlying JUCE library were designed to be lightweight, functional, and easily scalable to different resolutions. The developers do not bother imitating metal or even wood as a front panel, something you can see with many plugins from other manufacturers. Overly playful elements, like virtual handsets that you can't touch anyway, are instead implemented in the mixer and channel settings as simple bars that you drag with the mouse.

However, for musicians, plugins have the image of virtual hardware, and many love the controls to look like the controls of real Neve or Moog devices. In order to fulfill such wishes, Waveform 9 introduces the concept of faceplates: graphical interfaces with controls as pixel graphics and backgrounds that look like brushed die-cast aluminum or painted sheet metal (Figure 5).

Figure 5: A truly Frankenstein-like plugin interface with buttons in the style of Moog, Juno, or Nord.

You can set up these faceplates for plugins and also design and configure them yourself. Faceplates open up the possibility to assign any parameter of a plugin to the buttons and thus create something like a virtual MIDI controller.

In order to change the frequency of the second oscillator quickly in the built-in soft synth, you need to select the correct control for the parameter in the GUI of the synth. Put the control on the faceplate, and you can reach it without detours. It is also possible to operate several parameters simultaneously with a faceplate controller and thus implement operations that would simply be impossible in many plug-in interfaces because controllers are located in different views.

Macros

Waveform 9 also introduces macros. Macros let you combine several parameter controllers in one controller. In this way, it is possible to set the influence of the controller on different parameters in different ways. For example, you can couple the opening of a filter cutoff with a decrease in distortion – a technique that might be particularly interesting for friends of controllerism (see the "MIDI Despite Everything" box).

All controllers can now be controlled with wave functions known as modulators. Drag the conspicuous orange symbol in the upper-right corner of the main window onto a plugin, but not directly onto a slider. The modulator functions offer the usual curves (sine, triangle, or similar), envelopes, and a MIDI tracker.

A special new feature is hidden in the interface: MIDI clips now support MIDI Polyphonic Expression (MPE), which means you can apply tone-shaping signals such as vibrato and aftertouch, to individual notes. In the classical MIDI standard, such expression signals are only possible for all currently audible notes at the same time. Of course, this includes a MIDI instrument that sends such signals in line with the MPE standard. Linn and ROLI offer expensive instruments that demonstrate their special qualities in Waveform and Bitwig Studio, even on Linux.

Conclusions

Waveform 9 solves some small problems of the previous version and offers many new, useful extensions. The program still launches and runs as fast as an arrow, even on the meager hardware of the RPi3. With its tidy interface, which is well suited for small screens, it is also suitable for self-built devices based on the miniature PC. If you can live with the problems in the MIDI recording function, Waveform 9 is a very good complete solution for music production on the Rasp Pi at a reasonable price.

The Author

Hartmut Noack works in Celle and Hanover, Germany, as a lecturer, author, and musician. For him, free software and homemade music have always been a great match. At http://lapoc.de, you can find some CC-licensed results of his work with free music software.

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