A couple of years ago I made a presentation called "Become a rockstar using FOSS!": it was a clickbait-y title, since I'm (obviously) not a rockstar at all, but it was a nice opportunity to introduce people to the music production ecosystem in Linux, which is huge and yet not that known to most. At the time, I mostly talked about the typical workflow for creating and recording music with either real or virtual instruments, but with a focus more on rock/pop music, in order to keep things simpler.

In this presentation I'll address a different point of view, that is how you can have a full symphonic orchestra in your laptop, write music for it and then have it performed in ways that are hopefully realistic enough to be used within the context of your compositions (unless you know 80 people that can play your music for you, that is!). I'll present my typical workflow, and the different pieces of software I used to make it possible for me to write purely classical music (symphonic poems), but also orchestral arrangements for songs in different genres (e.g., folk, progressive rock or metal) that I published as a hobby in my free time over the years.

Again, a clickbait title because I'm not really an orchestra composer... but FOSS definitely helped make me feel like one, and it can help you too!