What software do you use?

General
1

What software do you use? audio and non audio related.

I muck around on Krita for my Bob Ross impersonations.
Scrivener for creative writing…lyrics … etc
Reaper and sometimes Logic for recording.
VS Code for coding . . having a few months off from coding

Latest VST purchase: Wavesfactory Spectre

Excel for work, chrome for browsing…ahh surfing the interwebs :slight_smile:
Windows mail or the Mac OS mail for email (depends on when I get my MacBook back from the shop)

Ubuntu when on Linux

Fuck me I should get out more!!!

2

I’ve been considering BIAB for lazy guitar practice and sight reading, seems to have come a long way since last time I eyeballed it:
https://www.pgmusic.com/bbwin.htm

https://keypirinha.com/ for launching software…I wanted to clear my taskbar and desktop of shortcuts, it learns your preferences or you can tweak/train it eg I type chr to start chrome, ter to start windows terminal etc

https://ditto-cp.sourceforge.io/ - multiple clipboard

VS Code, Powershell Core, WSL, PasteBin and Windows Terminal…I’m just playing guitar for now, no coding, so I only really use terminal atm for downloading youtube videos that might get censored

http://ytdl-org.github.io/youtube-dl/ - command line youtube downloader (works on tik tok, FB and other video sites also)

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/your-phone/9nmpj99vjbwv?activetab=pivot:overviewtab - run android phone apps on pc

https://apps.ankiweb.net/ - flashcard app for memorising

https://potplayer.daum.net/ - playing videos and music, nicer interface than vlc

https://order.surfshark.com/ - VPN

https://www.qbittorrent.org/ - torrentz

https://www.sandboxie.com/ - sandboxed browsing

https://www.voidtools.com/ - search everything

https://windirstat.net/ - space management

https://entropy6.com/xmeters/ -system stats for windows, displays cpu/RAM in your tray

https://www.ccleaner.com/ - removing temp files, cleaning registry

https://www.ccleaner.com/speccy - hardware analysis

https://www.speedtest.net/apps - internet speed

https://calibre-ebook.com/ - for epub format (pdfs I use foxit) - Google Books for reading across platforms

Google sheets for home excel stuff

https://notepad-plus-plus.org/ - tabbed notepad

https://getfireshot.com/ - screenshot plugin for browser (windows snip for non-browser screenshots)

https://www.grammarly.com/ - typo and grammar checker for browser

https://www.7-zip.org/ - uncompressing files

That’s all I can think of, someone might find something useful there

plus some program that runs at startup and shows everything that auto starts on my system,
but I can’t remember the name, so I’d need to restart my pc :smiley:
I’ll drop it here whenever I do, along with anything else worth listing

FInally had to restart :smiley:
This is the program, autoruns

3

Currently checking out Tracktion Waveform. I loved Tracktion 2 years ago. It now has a scripting engine but I haven’t checked out the API.

I noodle around with different languages and audio/MIDI programming, so all the tools re that stuff. neovim when in the terminal, VS Code/Visual Studio/Qt Creator when breaking out into gooey land.

Special mention/recommendation:

spacesniffer - nice visualiser for showing exactly what’s taking space on our disks

4

Outside of Reaper, I don’t use my computer much, check the news in the morning, that’s about it.

I’ve got Power Director 15 for video editing, but I don’t do much video anymore.

Got an iPad for email, banking, and a couple of games, and oh yeah, bloviating here and the Reaper forum.

Spent 45 years dinking around with computers, that’s plenty. :grin:

5

wow I didn’t know it had vlookup. if it could do xlookup then it would be really wow

6

FInally had to restart :smiley:
This is the program, autoruns

7

At first I thought you were joking :slight_smile:
But it does look fun. A lot of fun.
Maybe this forum could become the Band in a box lounge

This guy rocks

8

The biggest problem with BIAB is that you need to know what chords you want! That might not be so easy for people who learned music on instruments that only play one note at a time.

1 Like
9

Yeah, I thought it was some midi toy at first, someone on Reaper was always banging on about it back in the day when it was midi sounds only.

Looks perfect for improvising over different chord progressions now that I’ve checked it out, also sight reading some standards and tuition. The developer is a musician, apparently his brother is a decent jazz guitarist so it’s guitar-friendly.

Might also be good for throwing some quick drums down for writing as well, I’m pretty lazy when it comes to programming drums.

Or just having fun with some virtual band, it looks pretty deep.

I saw a video where you can import a song and it works out the chords for them too :smiley:

10

So the dev’s brother Oliver, who was musical director of BIAB, got the Order of Canada in 2017 for his guitar achievements.

https://www.pgmusic.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=449111&page=1

Probably his input on this cool feature:

11

This site is awesome, all the cats solos transcribed in BIAB format (Django, Wes Montomery, Charlie Parker etc)
Damn this is a tuition dream

http://www.djangoinabox.com/

12

I just setup a new pc and had the dilemma of how to share my keyboard and mouse between it and my laptop.

I installed the free Win-only Mouse Without Borders,

you just install it on your main computer,
it asks if you have installed it before, click No,
and it gives you a code to install on your other computers.

You can now use your mouse and keyboard across up to 4 computers, on wifi and/or ethernet,
and copy files between them.
Awesome! :smiley:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/garage/profiles/mouse-without-borders/#:~:text=Mouse%20without%20Borders%20is%20a,a%20single%20mouse%20and%20keyboard.

I ended up using Opera as my main browser for a few reasons, after using them all on my laptop

Workspaces - it has a workspace bar, 5 by default but expandable, which I divided up into Search, Youtube, Facebook, Spreadsheets, Email, etc
I set ccleaner to clean automatically upon close but not my cookies/cache,
so I can close the browser or restart the pc and my pages are still there logged in, but the RAM/temp has been freed up.

My Flow - Sharing files between devices, install Opera Touch on your phones and other devices and you can easily transfer or share files between them and your pc.

Built-In Ad blocker - works on youtube, vimeo etc (I hate ads)

Built-In Screenshot - no extension required, hit Ctrl-Shift 5 and capture a selection, lets you annotate /edit before saving etc.

Built-In FB Messenger + Twitter - located on the workspace bar beneath the workspaces (also Instagram/Whatsapp /VK/others that I don’t use)

Built-In Music Player - located on the workspace bar, uses youtube, spotify, apple etc

Pop-Out Video Player - you can pop out a YT video screen and have that run on top of your other windows as a resizable PIP

Built-in VPN - I use my own, Surfshark, but a decent feature

It also adds your new bookmarks to the top of the folder list by default, which always suited me better for finding recent shit,
and is generally pretty user-friendly and customizable all round
Can’t fault it so far for what I do.

Available on Win/Mac/Linux…

I also use Brave for fast, private, disposable browsing… :smiley:

13

Tor Browser rocks. Surf the dark net safely

14

Opera looks interesting, I’ve never tried it before. I had to use this fix from here:

Install chromium-ffmpeg snap:

sudo apt update

sudo apt install snapd

sudo snap install core

sudo snap install chromium-ffmpeg
Create a folder lib_extra:

sudo mkdir /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/opera/lib_extra

Create a symlink of chromium libffmpeg.so into lib_extra direcotry:

ln -s /snap/chromium-ffmpeg/current/chromium-ffmpeg-XXXXX/chromium-ffmpeg/libffmpeg.so /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/opera/

… to get Odysee videos playing in Opera in Linux.

15

At this point Reaper is the only proprietary software that I’m still using. And for the things I’m doing with it these days, I could very likely use non-proprietary software. I’m really still using Reaper mostly out of habit and some amount of convenience. I have even lost my hate for Gimp since the unified transform tool was implemented.

16

Manjaro, Firefox and plugins (ublock origin, vimium…), youtube-dl, Inkscape, Gimp, and other Linux desktop and command line default install stuffs. Nothing too exciting I guess. Forgot another proprietary one, LTSpice.

17

If you’re on Win this set of utilities is very handy, for changing your keyboard shortcuts, running any programs, window layouts, colour picker, bulk rename etc

18

PowerToys is good, I only use it for better file preview in Explorer and the launcher thing.

19

Code editors usage 2020

Editors 2020
Editors 20202152×1693 256 KB

20

BIAB raised some interesting musical questions- I tried out the program some years ago, with real tracks, and was pretty impressed with the drum track. Anyways, I put in some chords to a new song, interested in how BIAB would arrange the piece. Apparently, I did something wrong when putting in the chords, as BIAB’s finished arrangement had a different structure. Nevertheless, the result was pretty exciting. A normal, common musician wouldn’t play it like that. It was obvious that BIAB tried to avoid the usual musical logic, so to speak, probably to sound more “authentic”.

I listened to the music many times, then tried the whole thing again, with another song, with a different set of chords. This time I wasn’t too enthusiastic, because I could hear a pattern. Yes, BIAB wanted to do things differently but did “differently” in the same way. Suddenly BIAB had a “style” it wouldn’t deviate from.

I suspect this would be the case for AI music in general. It will have a “sound” or/and a musical logic that gives it away eventually. “Anti-sound” and “anti-logic” will also be telling. The programming can’t hide.