As an academic  spend much of my life getting students of all ages and backgrounds, from many different parts of the world to examine and articulate their reasons for doing what they do. Then contextualising them so they understand not just their motivations but are able to explain them to other people as well. But I have o confess, the last time I did the same was probably when I was still a student myself and when I mean undergrad thats sadly two decades ago..! So I chose to do that most uncomfortable of things, put myself in the firing line.

The title is perhaps a reflection of who I have become as my academic and musical life has progressed. Muso, well seems fairly obvious given my entire working life has been in music and a lot in academia. A DEd and PhD in Music Education and Composition preceded by a decade as a school music teacher is about as obvious as it can get. But FOSS?

Like anyone in my field I need to use my computers to write about music, I need to write music. I email daily, video call on a regular basis, research and keep notes. I need to keep records about my own work, that of my students, assess and mark work with feedback. I listen to and analyse music as part of my job, have to read scores. Essentially the same as any other academic musician. The difference? I don’t use Windows or Apple anymore unless I need to for specific purposes. In fact I’ve been moving away from them for nearly the same two decades as I’ve been working. What do I use? Linux.

Linux. A word that is either unknown to a lot of the music fraternity and public or a byeword for a computer geek. In my case its probably true that the latter is applicable as I use principally one of the most hardcore of all Linux distros Trisquel.One of the few distros (distributions, Linux terminology for an operating system) to embrace the FOSS (free and open source software) ideals to its most extreme even the majority of Linux users don’t go to this far. And they likely don’t need to but I enjoy both the challenge of making the machine do what I want and supporting the ideal of freedom and accessibility for anyone, allowing learning to not be restricted by the depth of your pockets. Doing so means a freer, fairer world and by my own example I hope I can show my students you can explore, question and learn while both challenging the commercial restrictions as well as being more individual.

Being FOSS

So what do I do? I use software that is generally a FOSS alternative to mainstream, commercial offerings. I write using Libreoffice, I take notes in Joplin,compose and notate in MuseScore Studio, web browse using Falkon and Firefox. I email copiously in a variant of Thunderbird. I video call using a selection of tools including Jitsi Meet. I listen to music using Rhythmbox, use the IMSLP and Internet Archive as a starting point for research (here I have to bow to proprietary sources at times to access journals and books as not all research is open source). For YouTube access I try to use one of several FOSS front ends instead of the behemoth its well-known owner offers. Streaming audio I’m pragmatic about, commercial music is there to make money, in fact a few works of my own are on such platforms and i need to live like anyone else. If I have to sometimes resort to commercial sources its not going to bother me but it is amazing what is out there. For search engines I use a selection of open source ones, Startpage being a favourite as it brings the power of the big boys through an open source front end though I’ve recently begun trying Qwant as well. For annotating PDFs and other files I use Okular, a godsend in the modern paperless college. In short for my own and students needs there is very little we can’t do with FOSS.

As a blog like this can wander I generally intend posts, which I hope to be monthly, or at least updated monthly to fall into one of three broad categories:

1. Doing FOSS – What I use, how I use it, principles of FOSS, advantages, challenges etc. If it isn’t musical it will likely fall here.
2. Being a Muso – The actual job. Musicology, composition, the wider humanities that music falls into.
3. Teaching – My first doctorate is actually in Music Education and I specialise in music assessment and educational regulation. This is often a technical field but there are philospohical aspects that fall in line with FOSS as well.

It is of course likely many will be a mixture of all three or even go completely off piste. And they will probably be my favourite ones!