Jokosher: a Garage Band Replacement for Linux

One of the least-populated categories of software for Linux has been consumer-level audio and video editing software. There are plenty of audio and video players, but as far as editors - especially multi-track recorders and mixers - that has been a relatively uncrowded area. Sure, there is the high-end professional-level program for Linux - Ardour - but that is a massively complicated program (a screen shot can be seen here), and isn't all that welcoming to new users.

So where is the Linux equivalent to a program such as Apple's Garage Band? It just may be Jokosher, a young program written for the Gnome desktop.

Jokosher, according to the developers, is "a simple and poweful multi-track studio. Jokosher provides a complete application for recording, editing, mixing and exporting audio, and has been specifically designed with usability in mind. The developers behind Jokosher have re-thought audio production at every level, and created something devilishly simple to use."

It really is an easy-to-use program. Simply start it up, and you are faced with a dialog asking you what you want to do. You can open a previously-started project, or choose to start a new one. Starting a new program shows a relatively blank window, with only audio play controls at the top, metronome, tempo and time signature buttons, and - most importantly - a button labeled "Add Instrument." Clicking this brings up a dialog with a series of instruments you can add to your recording. Simply click a button and then click the "Add" button, or else double-click the instrument and it will be added to the project.

Once an instrument has been added, you may record something into Jokosher (instructions for setting up a good recording system is outside the scope of this program review, but a quick Google search will turn up a mountain of information). After a recording is made, any number of effects can be added to it. To add these effects to your system (something installing Jokosher does not do automatically, at least in Ubuntu), simply type the following into the terminal: