Linux Audio Plugin Development (LAPD)

Alison Wilder

Linux Audio artist interview with Alison Wilder

This interview was conducted by Amadeus Paulussen in 2025.

Dear Alison, thank you for taking the time to do an interview with me for The Linux Audio Plugin Development initiative! 🙌

Can you tell us a little about how you got into producing music?

Recording/producing has been a very slow series of changes for me, starting from childhood piano lessons/improvising. In high school, I learned guitar and how to write very bad songs. By college, I liked to play with others and multi-track record myself on an early digital multi-track recorder (ca. 2000). After college, I started a 3-piece band. We didn't want to try to come up with the money to record professionally, so I decided to do it, and that really kickstarted started my production habit.

Over the years, I became more interested in making electronic music. It started with Musique concrète in grad school and has morphed into my having a full electronic music studio, complete with synths, samplers, and sequencers!

What fascinates you about making music in general?

For me, music is the art of time manipulation. Being able to bend and shape time into patterns that evoke cognitive states and feelings is a superpower if there ever was one!

When you start working on a new song, do you usually follow the same approach?

I have a couple of starting points. Sometimes, I work like a traditional songwriter. I play an instrument, usually guitar or piano, and words, melodies, and harmonies come out, seemingly with no help from me. This situation is the closest I have ever come to knowing God.

On the other hand, sometimes music just comes out as pure music. Ideally, this happens in the studio or somewhere I can capture the sound for later use. These days, I don't tend to learn parts or play the same thing again, so I like to sample myself when things are sounding nice so that I can use it later. That's why I have so many samplers these days!

Do you handle every stage of the process yourself, or do you involve others, e.g., for mixing or mastering?

I've done both. I prefer not to mix/master my own recordings, but since I'm not trying to make money from my music, I haven't tended to spend money on mixing/mastering the last few years. I can do a passable job, so I've just muddled through.

In my current setup, I've worked very hard to get things sounding great in the room before using the DAW like a multi-track tape machine. That eliminates a lot of the complexities of mixing.

I've also been lucky to work with Greg Wilder a lot over the past ten years or so, and he's quite a good mixing/mastering engineer, although he doesn't do it professionally. So the best-sounding things I've actually released are things he has probably worked on!

How long have you been using Linux as your digital audio workstation?

Not long! As of now (July 2025), only a few months. I've wanted to switch for several years, but I have a pretty complex hardware setup that uses a 32-channel RME interface that's not class-compliant, and there weren't drivers in the kernel until recently. Since I couldn't find another 32-channel solution for Linux, I stayed on Windows waaay longer than I wanted to!

I personally switched to Linux because I dream of a money-free society where everything, not just software, is Open Source. So, I wanted to invest my energy in an Open Source operating system. What were your personal reasons for using Linux?

I work pretty hard to maintain control over my own brain, and Windows has been such a fight on that front lately. I felt like my operating system was hijacking my attention way too often.

And, of course, I have major moral and ethical concerns with Microsoft, as I do with all big tech at this point. It feels great to be living in an OS that is community-driven based on people's actual needs and not on the profit motives of Microsoft or Apple.

Nowadays, do you have everything you need on Linux, or are there things you are missing?

I absolutely have everything I need. As I insinuate above, I make music mostly live on hardware these days, so my needs in a DAW aren't too great at the moment. I'm multi-track recording and mixing in Ardour, which is super mature. It's been easy to transfer my knowledge from all the other similar DAWs I know.

As for plugins for mixing/mastering, I don't have extreme needs on that front, but the u-he plugins are as good as any I've used on Windows or Mac, so they'll take care of probably 80% of what I need. I've found a few other key plugins that are native to Linux that will round those out, so I'm good to go!

I plan to spend more time creating fun samples in Bitwig in the near future. It's so heartening that it has native Linux support! I've been using it for years, and it's 100% my favorite creative, music-making DAW.

When other musicians ask you if they should switch to Linux, what advice do you give them? Which distribution would you recommend they try?

I'd say try to keep it Linux-native, and don't try to do any heroic stuff with your kernel! :D (This comes from recent personal experience.) Seriously, if you're a professional musician who has to share sessions with people all the time, Linux might not be for you. But if you're able to work on music for your own purposes, it's a wonderful, stable, creative environment to work in.

If you find yourself feeling like you can't make music without X, Y, or Z Windows or Mac tool, I'd recommend asking some deep questions about why that is, and asking yourself whether it's worth being surveilled and taken advantage of by Microsoft/Apple for the rest of your life so you can use that whizbang tool!

Musicians lived without computers for almost all of human history. Linux, or any other OS, gives us an absolute wealth of riches. Don't get hung up on the specifics of plugins or virtual instruments!

That said, to each their own. :)

As for distro recommendations -- I haven't gone too far afield with this. I've used mostly Debian and Ubuntu Studio and recommend them both. I'm currently using Ubuntu Studio and really loving it. (Surprised by how much I love KDE after using and loving Gnome for the last few years!)

I recently bought a System76 desktop for my studio and tried Pop OS, which is their Debian-flavored distro. I replaced it with Ubuntu Studio, but it seemed great!

Do you personally know many other Linux musicians?

Only Greg Wilder, my ex-husband/current bestie, who got me into Linux in the first place! He's an old-school Linux dude, so he's super helpful when I run into issues. I usually regret it when I don't take his advice. :)

Can you tell us your top 10 favorite native Linux apps/plugins?

1. Ardour
2. u-he plugins (helpful for mixing, creativity, and mastering)
3. Bitwig
4. Venomode Maximal 3, Complexer, and Lowtility (helpful for mastering)
5. Audio Damage plugins (was an Audio Damage lover in the 00s, and am so excited to use their stuff again!)
6. pavucontrol/Pulse Audio Volume Control (which, hilariously, doesn't control Pulse Audio on new systems, but does control PipeWire)
7. Those are pretty much all I use so far! :)

Which DAW are you currently using? Can you tell us a little bit about your setup?

I'm using Ardour for tape machine-style recording, then in-the-box mixing/mastering. There's not a lot to tell—I have 32 channels coming in, they get recorded, and I give them a little tweak here and a little love there, then squeeze them with a little compression here and there, then limiting to get the finished track to the level I want.

I haven't done much editing since moving to Ardour, so I can't speak to how good it is at that side of things. I always loved Studio One for editing, but so far, I haven't been able to install the Studio One Linux beta successfully on any system I've run.

What would you say are the five most important aspects of a good studio?

1. Consistency—Always set things up the same way as much as you can, so your brain doesn't have to work too hard while you're trying to let it make music.
2. Ergonomics—make sure you're not contorting yourself when you play an instrument. You might think it's fine, but you won't play as well.
3. Aesthetics—this varies among people, but for me, the way my studio looks and feels is super important. I like to be surrounded by colors and combinations of textures that make my brain happy, and I'm pretty sure it affects how readily I can enter that nice flow state.
4. Sound treatment—if you can't hear what you're doing, you'll never be able to make a mix that sounds good in other spaces. My studio was super hard to treat, because it's in an attic space with a slanted ceiling, but I found a way, and it has made a massive difference. Not only is it better to mix, it's just nicer to be in and play music in.
5. Patchbays!! As many as possible. I have three 48-point patchbays, and it's honestly not enough. Patching is life.

When collaborating with other musicians, does the fact that you use Linux ever present extra challenges?

It probably would if I ever collaborated with other musicians. :P

You have a beautiful studio. ❤️ How important is it to you that the software and operating system you use are aesthetically pleasing?

Haha, this is a bit of a sore point for me. I always wish I didn't care about the aesthetics of software, but I do. I don't have a strong preference in terms of style of interface, but I do like a nice-looking piece of software better than one where no one cared much about the UI.

I am not, however, millennial enough to care about the interface more than I care about the sound! If something sounds good enough, I will suffer through it being ugly. Or, more likely, I'll convince myself that it's beautiful. :)

I often hear macOS and Windows users say that they find Linux less polished. That there would be lots of rough edges everywhere. Although I can understand that, my Linux system feels very polished to me, but that didn't happen without effort, of course. But, you know, I feel about Linux the same way I feel about most things in life. If you want to use its full potential, you have to invest time and energy. It's just like learning an instrument or a language. And as cliché as it may sound, for me, the journey really often is the destination. What are your thoughts on this?

I find it baffling that people think macOS and Windows are more polished. Even back in 2012-ish, I thought Gnome was nicer than OSX or Windows. And today? Fuhgeddaboutit! (If this looks like gibberish to you, this is a phonetic way of writing how New Yorkers say “forget about it.")

I think people might be showing preference for interfaces they're already familiar with, which is fair enough. But I'm with you... I think people could take a little time and probably find all sorts of wonderful things to love about the various Linux distros!

Which five of your songs should people listen to to get an idea of your work?

1. Doctor Body—Misalignment This one is scaffolded on a set of lyrics and melodies that are very typical of my writing. Working with Greg Wilder on this album was a true delight.
2. Voodoo Economics—Time to Drive This is the first dark avant-pop song I ever wrote and recorded, ca. 2006. It's not my best song, but it sort of feels to me like the heart of all of my songwriting that came after.
3. Nightmother—A Walking Shadow I absolutely love making electronic music that leans toward the abstract and features the human voice. This one is based on a gorgeous recording of the famous “tomorrow” speech from Macbeth.
4. Blix Byrd - You Are A Time Bomb This track is emblematic of a phase where I was REALLY into deep editing and piecing complex songs together from loads of different material. I love how it came together into something that moves naturally and is (for me) super-emotive. (It's sung from the perspective of Mike from Breaking Bad, singing to Walter. In case you thought I wrote a normal love song.)
5. Voodoo Economics—Like Unto Pistols Dark, jammy, prog-adjacent indie rock from my youth. Deals with sex, math, and gossip. Doesn't get better than that.

How do you distribute your music?

I recently took all my music down from streaming services. Much of it is still available on Bandcamp, but going forward I'm probably only going to be using my own server (currently using Faircamp), or maybe cool Fedi services like Mirlo.

Can you make a living from making music?

In the immortal words of Bartleby the Scrivener, I prefer not to.

And the last question: What 5 plugins or plugin vendors you wish would offer Linux support?

1. Bleass (some really fantastic vocal stuff)
2. Sonible (makes life very easy!)
3. Melodyne (so good if you want to tune vocals w/out artifacts). But I just don't do it now, so what?)
4. Soundtoys (love, love, love those plugins)
5. Arturia (great for both effects and virtual instruments)

Is there anything you would like to add?

It's been fun to think through these questions. Thanks for the prompts, and thanks to anyone reading!

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