I took the opportunity of being alone in the house to set up for some recording in our living room. It's a much bigger space than the study, so I was hoping the acoustics would be good. The Zoom H4 was on a tripod in front of me on the sofa with my acoustic. It took a few attempts with me messing it up to get this version of an old song.

I also had a go at some more high-tech recording. For my next Six String Bliss album track I am starting with a MIDI version I found and will replace as many tracks as I can manage. I'm going to try using Rosegarden for both MIDI and audio this time, if it can do what I need. I didn't get far today as I was having trouble getting all the MIDI tracks to play. This may be down to the messing around I did to get the USB MIDI gadget working, but I also found that there is a bug in the version of the synth plug-in I have. I'll try again some time.

I got a little help with my MIDI issues on the #opensourcemusicians IRC channel. It's a fairly active channel that includes the people behind the associated podcast. Getting useful information on Linux audio can be tricky. A lot of How To documents are very old, but there are a few resources I look to:

• Planet Linux Musicians takes feeds from lots of relevant blogs to give a good overview of what is going on.
• Linux Musicians forum is not very busy, and plagued with spam, but has some knowledgable members.
• Dave Phillips at Linux Journal writes some great articles on what is new in audio.
• Linux Audio wiki has articles on a lot of available applications and hardware.

I still see a need for some more approachable reference material for people who don't know much about Linux, but want to make music. They need guides on what sets of applications they could use for various scenarios and how they connect together. In some cases the information is out there, but it's spread across various sites, including video demos. I may try collaborating with others on one of the wikis to try and bring it all together so people have somewhere to start. I should learn more myself in the process.

I've pondered further on which interface to get. Current favourite is the M-Audio Delta 44. It's getting on a bit, but can handle 4 inputs at high quality. It should give lower latency than a USB unit. I've seen a few on ebay and will see if I can pick one up there.