Installing Bristol Summary:
a. tar -zxvf bristol-x.y.z.tar.gz
b. cd bristol-x.y.z
c. ./configure
d. make
e. sudo make install
f. /usr/local/bin/startBristol -mini
Table of Contents:
1. About Bristol
2. Installation
3. Command line options
4. ALSA Interface Configuration
5. Jack Interface Configuration
6. MIDI Driver Interfaces
7. Integration with MIDI Control Surfaces
8. [Removed]
9. Basics of Subtractive Synthesis
10. Basics of FM Synthesis
1. About Bristol.
1.1 What is it?
Bristol Audio Synthesis is a synth emulation package for a diverse range of vintage synthesisers, electric pianos and organs. The application consists of a synthesiser backend and a GUI frontend called Brighton.
1.2 Who is it by?
Bristol is written by Nick Copeland with additional contributions by others.
2. Installation
2.1. System requirements
Bristol does not place a high requirement on the underlying system installation, the DSP code is all packaged into the engine and the GUI was written for bristol. There are a number of packages that will give a more complete set of binaries and these may be considered. Also refer to section 1.3 below.
libx11-dev Bristol GUI requires this package
libasound2-dev ALSA support requires this package
jackd Jack support requires this package
libjack-dev Jack support requires this package
The system will also need libm.so to be installed as well as the build utils. The build utility requirements is a little outside the scope of this document.
2.2. Unpack the archive.
To do this, use the command below, replacing x.y.z with the version number of the downloaded source code.
tar -zxvf bristol-x.y.z.tar.gz
This will create a subdirectory called bristol-x.y.z
2.3. cd into the directory and do a 'configure'
cd bristol-x.y.z ./configure
Do bear in mind that if you have another version of Bristol installed, either through your distribution's package manager or locally installed before, the configure script will stop and refuse to continue. You can either use the package manager to remove the version of Bristol installed or just ignore it and add the --disable-version-check option to the end of configure on the command-line.
At the end of the configure process there will be a short report on the driver interfaces that have been auto-detected. Here is an extract of the output:
| Build with OSS support ......................... : true
| Build with ALSA support ........................ : true
| Build with JACK support ........................ : false
| Bristol needs jackd and libjack-dev to be installed for JACK support.
| Build with JACK MIDI support ................... : false
| Build with JACK Session support ................ : false
| Default audio drivers .......................... : alsa
| Default MIDI drivers ........................... : alsa
| X11 include file availability .................. : true
As is visible here it was not possible to find the relevant header files for the jack audio interface drivers so support will not be included in the eventual compilation. There is an indication provided as to which packages would be required to enable that support. For audio drivers there is a minimum of ALSA required (OSS is also possible) however if the X11 header files could not be found then there will be no graphical support in the binaries - a command line interface only. In this event there will also be a report on which packages are required to provide that support.
2.4. Execute a 'make'.
To build Bristol type:
make
This process will produce all the usual verbose output. It will contain some warnings about unused variables and some potential coding requiremnts however it should proceed to completion. If you get errors such as the following then you will need to contact the author or raise a bug report.
gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I.. -I/usr/X11R6/include -pthread -Wall -g -I./../include/slab -I./../include/bristol -I. -DBRISTOL_VOICECOUNT=32 -DBRISTOL_JACK_MULTI_CLOSE -D_BRISTOL_DRAIN -DBRISTOL_HAS_ALSA=1 -I/usr/include/alsa -ffast-math -fomit-frame-pointer -O2 -g -O2 -I/usr/X11R6/include -MT bristol.o -MD -MP -MF .deps/bristol.Tpo -c -o bristol.o bristol.c
bristol.c:62: error: expected asm __attribute__ before
make[2]: *** [bristol.o] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory `/opt/bristol/bristol-0.60.7/bristol'
make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/opt/bristol/bristol-0.60.7'
make: *** [all] Error 2
How to contact the author or log a bug are given in the last few lines of the output from ./configure above.
It is fortunately unusual that such compilation errors will occur on any Linux distribution.
2.5. install the application typically requires root permissions
If you get no errors from the 'make' process then the application is ready to be installed.
sudo make install
This step need to be run as root as, unless you have been very selective with the ./configure options then parts of bristol will be written to parts of the /usr filesystem which is typically read-only for user accounts. By default this should install bristol and associated apps to /usr/local/ with data commponets into /usr/local/share. To run the application you should now be able to use the startBristol script however that does depend on /usr/local/bin being in your path.
2.6. Run the application
If the binary is placed in a directory in your path then you can typically start it directly:
startBristol -mini
If this is not in your path then try the following, this is the default location for the binaries and may differ if you use alternative --prefix for configure.
/usr/local/bin/startBristol -mini
3. Some Useful options for starting bristol:
-voices
Sets the number of voices the synth starts with. The default for most of the synths is to start with as many voices as their hardware counterparts have. In the case of the mini moog, this would be 1 voice.
-mono
Starts the synth with 1 voice (-hnp -lnp can be used to select high/low note priority respectively)
-hnp
Selects High Note Priority, any notes played higher than the currently held note will sound and bounce back to the held when released. Notes lower will be ignored by the engine. Vice versa with -lnp.
-register
Changes the jack and alsa names to the text after it, so it can make more sense when connecting devices etc.
-ar
Ignores the emulator default aspect ratio. In tiling window managers, bristol can fight with the tiling for so long that active sensing will close the emulator. This option stops that behaviour.
Note: Active Sensing is a 'ping' between the GUI frontend and the synth backend, to ensure that the synth engine hasn't crashed.
-debug [1-16]
Produces debug output to the terminal. 1 is very little debug. 16 is very verbose debug.
Many more options, along with the full list of synths can be found by doing 'startBristol --help' or 'man bristol'.
4. ALSA Interface Configuration
To see the MIDI connections that can be built you need to look at aconnect commmand:
aconnect -io
Here is a sammple of its output:
client 0: 'System' [type=kernel]
0 'Timer '
1 'Announce '
client 14: 'Midi Through' [type=kernel]
0 'Midi Through Port-0'
client 20: 'USB Oxygen 61' [type=kernel]
0 'USB Oxygen 61 MIDI 1'
client 24: 'USB Keystation 88es' [type=kernel]
0 'USB Keystation 88es MIDI 1'
client 129: 'bristol' [type=user]
0 'bristol input
Here we can see two MIDI controllers and the bristol engine. The following command will link them together so that you can play bristol from your MIDI master controller:
aconnect 20 129
It is possible to connect two master controllers to bristol and this is not unusual for something like the B3. This emulator also has two manuals and can accept multiple controllers on different MIDI channels to allow control of both them.
If ALSA is the default interface (ie, you have not given any flags that imply another interface type) then bristol will use ALSA for both audio and MIDI. The default is the 'seq' MIDI interface. It is also possible to use a raw MIDI interface with the option '-midi raw', the type really depends on your soundcard and driver options.
5. Jack Interface Configuration
JACK is a low-latency sound server, similar to ASIO on windows. Any apps that are 'jack-aware' are able send audio information to one another seamlessly. Bristol is just one such application that supports JACK. More information can be found at http://jackaudio.org/
Using the jack audio driver is as simple as appending '-jack' to the startBristol command.
As of 0.60.7, the following can disable the 'bristoljackstats' app, which can cause startBristol to crash:
startBristol -jack -jackstats -count
The count and rate have to match the settings given to the jack daemon. In the event of mismatch you will get an error condition from bristol with some level of diagnostic output to indicate the cause.
Unless specifically told otherwise, bristol will use jack drivers for both audio and midi.
5.1 Using qjackctl
Using qjackctl you can easily connect midi controlloers by clicking on either the 'Midi' tab or 'Alsa' tab, depending on which midi driver you've selected to use with bristol and then clicking the controller you want on the left pane and the 'Bristol' input on the right and clicking 'connect'.
6. Controlling the GUI from the master controller
It is possible to get the GUI to be controlled from faders on the master controller. First connect up the MIDI as described above. Place the mouse cursor over the GUI control you want to track and push the Middle Mouse Button. Now move the MIDI control, the GUI should now track that control. Devices can be unregistered using the same method. The settings will be saved when you save a memory.
The settings themselves are in the directory listed below, and they can be edited with a text editor.
/home/username/.bristol/memory/profiles/
Most of the synths come with a standard GM midi mapping for controlling filter cutoff/resonance, etc.
7. Keyboard accelerators
7.1 Keyboard Mappings.
Bristol supports GUI shortcuts and playing the synths via a QWERTY keyboard. Playing bristol via the QWERTY on the B3 has C2 starting on '\' and going up to F3 on '/' on the bottom manual, while the top manual goes from C4 on Q to G5 on ']'. On a single keyboard synth, such as the polysix, C1 starts on '\' and goes up F2 on '/' and C3 starts on Q and ends at G4 on ']'.
For alternative mappings such as AZERTY it is necessary to manually edit the emulator profile files.
7.2 Keyboard Accelerators
Useful shortcuts are:
Ctrl + Load next memory
Ctrl - Load previous memory
Ctrl l Load/reload current memory
Ctrl s Save settings to current memory.
Arrow keys can control pot/slider movement with Shift being an accelerator.
9. Basics of Subtractive Synthesis.
Subtractive synths generally have 5 parts to them:
1. Oscillators
2. Filters
3. Low Frequency Oscillators (LFOs)
4. ADSR Envelopes
5. Amplification output
Subtractive synthesis works by taking the waveforms generated by oscillators, filtering them (or not) to remove specific frequencies, using a LFO to modulate the sound, applying an ADSR Envelope to them and then sending the sound out the synth.
9.1. Oscillators
Oscillators use basic waveforms (saw, square, triangle, sine) to produce sound. On some synths, these can be combined to produce harmonically rich sounds (saw and square for example).
The more oscillators a synth has, the greater number of waveforms that can be layered together to create a quite 'phat' sound.
9.2. Filters
Filters are used to remove specific frequencies from the oscillators.
Filters generally come in 3 types in the bristol synths:
Low Pass Filter
High Pass
Band Reject
Low Pass filters remove high frequencies (i.e they pass low freqencies).
High Pass filters remove low freqencies
Band Reject filters remove both low and high filters in a specific range and allow a certain 'mid-range' of frequencies through.
On all filters, there are 2 main controls:
Frequency Cutoff.
Frequency Resonance.
Frequency Cutoff allows you to control how much of the sound gets filtered. Resonance amplifies the narrow band of frequencies that are close to the cutoff point.
9.3.Low Frequency Oscillators (LFOs)
LFOs are exactly like normal oscillators (they have waveforms, like sine, square and triangle), but they sound below what a human can hear. In this way, they can modulate various parameters on the synths, without being heard. The parameters that an LFO modulates is called the destination.
LFOs usually have 2 controls:
Rate
Delay
Rate determines how quickly the LFO oscillates at, low levels modulates the destination slowly, while high levels will modulate quickly. Delay determines how quickly the LFO should start modulating the destination.
Common modulation destinations are:
Audible Oscillator's frequency (Vibrato effect)
Filter Cutoff frequency (wah-wah effect)
Amplification output (tremolo effect)
On most of the bristol synths, the LFO 'depth' (how much the LFO affects the destination) is controlled by the mod-wheel.
9.4. ADSR Envelopes.
ADSR envelopes shape the sound of the oscillators and filter (where available). ADSR stands for the 4 parameters that can shape the sound:
Attack - How quickly the sound reaches full volume.
Decay - How quickly the sound falls down to the sustain level
Sustain - Volume of the sound while the key is held
Release - How quickly the sound fades to silence
9.5. Amplification output
There is usually a control here that controls the overall volume of the synth.
10. Basics of FM Synthesis.
FM Synthesis stands for Frequency Modulation synthesis.
This means that one oscillator (called a Modulator) modulates the frequency of another oscillator (called a Carrier). In Bristol there are 3 FM emulators, 2 Rhodes Electric Pianos and a Yamaha DX 6 Operator synth.
FM synthesis works by feeding one signal from one oscillator (a modulator) into another signal from another oscillator (a carrier). The interesting part is when a modulator is audible, detuning the modulator will produce bell-like tones in the output as the carrier's frequency is modulated by an audible signal. It should be noted that all of the oscillators are sine waves so stacking them together can produce some nice hammond-esque sounds.
The DX emulation has got 24 different "algorithms" for all 6 of it's operators. These control which oscillators are modulators and which are carriers (modulators can be fed into other modulators as well).
All operators have their own ADSR envelope, so sound shaping is possible in a variety of ways. The ADSR is a 7-stage envelope. This means that it has 7 parts to it:
L1 - First audible stage
Attack1 - Rate at which the operator goes from silence to L1
L2 - Second audible stage
Attack2 - Rate at which the operator goes from L1 to L2
Decay - Rate at which L2 falls to the Sustain stage
Sustain - How loud the sound will be through steady state
Release - Rate at which the sound falls to silence
Input gain - How much the modulator affects the carrier for this specific operator. Output gain - How loud the operator is (when it's a carrier) and how much modulation is sent out (when it's a modulator).
Each operator has three buttons: LFO, IGC and OGC.
LFO drops the oscillator by a few octaves and removes pitch tracking.
IGC controls whether the input gain for that operator is affected by velocity.
OGC controls whether the output gain for that operator is affected by velocity.
Initial draft by Andrew Coughlan. Editing, additional information and suggestions by Nick Copeland.