Happy Friday, & welcome to another “5 Questions with…” feature!
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Remember how I talked (& typed) about open source software for your music business last week? Well, this week features an interview with Tom Ray of Lorenzo’s Music, a band which uses open source software. Their story has inspired me in my own open source software journey!
Before you head into the interview, why not turn on the Fischarper Blog Guests playlist?
And now for the interview!
How & when did you start making music?
Me personally? I started when I was in 4th grade. I had two friends that started taking guitar lessons and we decided to start a band. I didn’t play an instrument so I said I would be the singer. We just played cover songs.
When I was around 12 years old I played trumpet in the school band and did that through high school. I was in several bands over that period of time. But this is when I learned how to read and write music.
I ended up playing drums in a punk rock band during my freshman year of high school. I think this was the first time I was in a band that wrote original songs.
After that, I went back to singing, this time in a metal band I met through a friend. I was with them until I was about 20 years old.
The drummer and I for that band shared a taste for unique recording and music styles and outgrew the metal scene we were in. We actually started the concept for Lorenzo’s Music right after that band broke up. That’s actually Rob the drummer that’s still in Lorenzo’s Music with me today!
Would you tell us a little about Lorenzo’s Music?
The concept for the band was always playing what you like. With the different music tastes and recording ideas that Rob and I had a lot of the time, we would write something and be told that’s not what we play. I always wondered why that was?
So really the band was just an idea to be open to any idea we wanted to play.
How did you get interested in open source software, and how has that affected your music?
Basically it was the price. Even though I thought the price of recording and design software was ridiculous, after a while I started feeling bad about the pirated versions I would use.
Around the mid-2000s I was also learning to be a frontend developer. So while studying these things I heard about this new Linux based operating system called Ubuntu that had all of this free audio and design software built-in. (BTW, That’s also when I learned the concept and value of open-source and creative commons in music and technology).
So I tried it out. I dual booted my windows machine with the Kubuntu (KDE version of Ubuntu) Breezy Badger release that was out at the time.
I noticed I started using the Ubuntu partition and the programs more and more. Then when the next upgrade came out I decided to do a fresh install and accidentally wiped out my Windows partition. So I just switched.
Later I wanted the band to be able to track things themselves but they were not Linux users. That’s when I decided to use Ubuntu Studio. I chose it because the guys could boot off a live install on a USB stick and everything we needed, Recording software (Ardour), Effects (Calf), Midi instruments (Yoshimi) were already installed.
What are your favorite open source tools for musicians?
As I just mentioned Ardour. It’s what we use to track our recordings it’s a fantastic DAW. Also, there is Gimp and Inkscape for creating designs and KDEnlive for editing videos. Also the mp3 tagging software Kid3 for adding ID3 tags to song files.
Who else should be a guest for the “5 Questions with…” series?
Truthfully I don’t know any other musicians that use Linux personally. But I do know people that use Linux regularly. One is a guy I know who has been documenting his switch to Linux on his own show called Linux for Everyone, Jason Evangelho. I think he would be a good person to contact. [Fischarper edit/note: Jason Evangelho was the contributor for the Forbes article linked in the intro.]
And there you have “5 Questions with…Tom Ray.”What was your favorite part of that “5 Questions with…” feature? Did it inspire you to explore the world of open source software?
Head over to Lorenzo’s Music’s website, YouTube channel, Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter & say hi!
-Barbara
Lorenzo’s Music is an indie rock band from Madison WI. They are Creative Commons musicians who release music using only open source tools and software.
Fischarper interviews may be edited for accuracy (spelling, punctuation, etc.), sentence flow, space, etc. Interviewee views are not necessarily endorsed or shared by Barbara Fischer or Fischarper, LLC.
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Barbara Fischer runs Fischarper, LLC and loves her job as a harpist and private music educator. She enjoys blogging about various aspects of the music field on fischarper.com/blog. For more music resources, check out the Fischarper store. Find out where you can find Barbara on the interwebs here. And you can sign up to receive Fischarper updates by joining the email list.