On Mon, October 10, 2005 9:50 pm, Richard Tindall said: >> > Good idea. And for more perspective, read these: > > *HOWTO: Getting MIDI to work fully in Ubuntu [hopeful!]* > http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=8736 > > TUX Issue #5 > "getting other things like voip or midi to work can be a big problem for > beginners. I've been in and out of Linux boxes for about 5 years and > have never got midi to work right, it was always easier and quicker to > run the midi files through a windows system than it was to make it work > with Linux." [no comments yet] > http://www.tuxmagazine.com/node/1000144 > > Linux Audio - Midi - Video [what Lance said] > http://lyris.spc.int/read/messages?id=42540 > > etc > > Cheers, Rik
Excellent to find that ubuntu specific article, even though it does appear to go on about the 2.4 kernel which may mean it is a bit outdated. Some things you have to remember: 1. You need a synthesiser/sequencer to play a midi file. Some sound cards (higher end ones than those you find on the average motherboard) have synthesisers in them, and nice hardware or softloadable sound fonts, that can produce very good sound. 2. If you don't have a hardware synthsiser and want to play a midi file you need to introduce a software synthesiser. timidity is a software synthesiser - it does in software what a flash sound card or external synthesiser does. They also need "patch" sets, which are sound fonts - as I understand it, basically samples that can be played back at various frequencies - so you have a trumpet sample, piano samle etc. This is all in software. Fluidsynth does a similar thing I believe. With timidity running I get the following list of sequencer devices: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~/media/torrents $ aplaymidi -l Port Client name Port name 128:0 TiMidity TiMidity port 0 128:1 TiMidity TiMidity port 1 128:2 TiMidity TiMidity port 2 128:3 TiMidity TiMidity port 3 3. This is not to be confused with the ability to send control signals to an external synthesiser, which is done via a midi cable - usually these plug into the joysyick port on the sound card and have 2 din plugs on the other end - the din plugs go to "in" and "out" ports on the synthesiser. The synthesiser may also include a keyboard, or it may be just be a maker of noise [1]. The ability to do this control depends on whether the linux driver makes this interface available to linux. Just because you can plug a keyboard/synthesiser into the computer running windows doesn't mean the linux driver allows the same. 4. most of the howtos I have found on linux and midi concentrate on getting the sound card's onboard whiz bang synthesiser to go. Not many of them seem to be about getting the external device control working. This makes it very confusing. 5. I have to confess that I have resorted to using some quite nice windows program under wine record and play midi. Damned if I can recall its name now! It will come to me or google sooner or later. [1] I also saw a midi saxophone on trademe, but it went for too much for someone of minimal musical talent to justify - it made its own noise and could control another midi device, but couldn't be controlled. > > -- > InfoHelp ~ http://www.infohelp.co.nz > >
