| Developer(s) | Stefan Kost and others |
|---|---|
| Stable release | 0.6.0 / 25 December 2011 |
| Operating system | Linux |
| Type | Tracker |
| License | GNU Lesser General Public License |
| Website | http://www.buzztard.org/ |
Buzztard is a free software project to create a clone of the Buzz music composer. The driving motivation is to preserve the playability of the compositions made with Buzz. Songs are made by adding virtual sound generators and effects, connecting them, recording short musical phrases and arranging them in the sequencer. For distribution, songs can be exported to common audio formats such as OGG, MP3, WAV and many others.
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In the middle of 2002 the main developers lost a song during a Buzz session as the result of a software error. As the sources of Buzz were known to be lost, they decided to start a new project. The project name Buzztard was chosen to link to its origin and also underline that the software is based on a mix of concepts. Development started between 2003-2004. A first version was released in October 2006. A demo was presented at Linux Audio Conference (LAC) 2007.[1] Several releases have followed since. Starting with version 0.5 Linux distributions have picked up the project and provided ready to install packages.
The software is based on the GStreamer media framework. As it is the only music composer built on GStreamer it serves as a test-bed for related features.[2] The graphical editor uses GTK+ for its GUI. It integrated with the GNOME desktop, but does not require it. Buzz users and the Linux press like the modernized look, but familiar layout.[3][4]
The component architecture supports song import modules. Buzztard can open songs both in its native and Buzz's format. A wrapper component allows to use the existing Buzz-machine binaries under x86 Linux and open-source Buzz-machines on all platforms. A GStreamer bridge plugin makes them available to all GStreamer applications. A controller framework allows the use of MIDI devices and any input devices (such as joysticks or wiimotes) to be used to control sounds in real-time.