Program version 1.0
Vico is a minimalistic Midi sequencer that is intended to be used in parallel with other software.
“Vico” (with c like ts in “bats”) just means “sequence” or “order” in Esperanto for obvious reasons.
In a loop- or pattern based environment you often want to have a ‘free flowing’ track in order to create an instrumental solo, for example. Sometimes you just want to record a sketch or an idea quickly and not open or create an entire DAW project.
Vico fulfills these conditions by connecting exactly one source to one output, and records and plays back in between. Or to put it another way: you only get one track, intended for one instrument (but with convenient layers).
Vico has been written primarily for users of Patroneo, but has no closer technical bond. Patroneo is a program characterized by strict repetitions and constant reuse of very short patterns. With this you can quickly create whole arrangements for drums, bass and accompaniment chords, but a beautiful, long melody is extremely cumbersome. Therefore Vico wants to solve this problem.
However, all programs that run as JACK transport masters or JACK timebase masters are suitable as “remote control”.
This README is just a short introduction. Consult the manual (see below) for more information.
If the latest release is not available through your package manger you can build it yourself: Download the latest code release on https://www.laborejo.org/downloads and extract it.
It is possible to clone a git repository.
git clone --recurse-submodules https://laborejo.org/vico.git
If you want to update at a later date you must use
git pull --recurse-submodules
./configure --prefix=/usr/local
make
sudo make install
There are multiple ways to run Vico which should give you the flexibility to configure your system as you want.
We make no distinction if you installed Vico yourself or through the distributions package-manager.
The differences are: With or without NSM, with or without sound, installed or from the source dir.
Starting Vico through the Non Session Manager after you installed vico system-wide
is the recommended and only supported way. Start non-session-manager and load or create a new
session. Then use the button “Add Client to Session” and type in vico.
It should appear with an icon in the list and open its GUI.
If you start vico directly it will present you with a dialog to choose your session directory.
You can also start vico from a terminal (or create a starter script).
vico --save DIRECTORY
Uses the given directory to save. The dir will be created or loaded from if already present. Use the applications file menu to save (Ctrl+s).
You can use this to load and save the files from an existing NSM session. If you create a new directory you can copy it manually to an NSM session directory, but that requires renaming the directory to append the unique ID provided by NSM.
Sending SIGUSR1 to the program in this mode will trigger a save.
Closing through your window manager in this mode will actually quit the application without a prompt to save changes.
You can run Vico after extracting the release archive or cloning from git, without installation.
“Calfbox” is the name of our internal realtime midi/audio python module.
./configure and make calfbox without subsequent install, which creates a site-packages directory in the source dir.vico --mute which runs without sound at all and does not need calfbox.The developer uses this way to develop and use the software, so it will always be as stable as the compiled version. But it is a bit less performant than building and installing it.
After extracting the release archive create a symlink from vico into your PATH. e.g. /usr/bin
or ~/bin, if that exists on your system.
If you compiled without installing you can also symlink to ./vico.bin
Use ./vico --save (see above). If you compiled without installing you can also run ./vico.bin
Combining the above options you can start the program directly after unpacking or cloning from git:
./vico --save /tmp --mute
Or even shorter:
./vico -s /tmp -m
This is the minimal run mode which is only useful for testing and development. But if you only want to look at the GUI and are not in the mood to install anything -including dependencies-, go ahead.