midi on ubuntu?

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Wed, Jan 26, 2011 at 02:43:08PM -0500, Matt Price wrote:
> Hey folks:
> 
> sorry for hte long delay, fabio.  I figured out that the usb out was
> actually just for power -- oops! -- and I needed to hook up a usb-midi
> converter to get the midi signal out.  Did that, now it seems to be working
> (see below)
> 
> Really all my daughter wants to do is some minimal practicing -- that is,
> she wants ot be able to hear some notes when she presses the keys on the
> keyboard.  More complex stuff may come after I guess.
> 
> So, the question:  what software should I install for her?  In rosegarden, I
> can see the midi events on the midi transport, but I don't see how to hear
> any sounds.  muse won't run, complains about a missing midi sequencer (and
> anyway, the two use incompatible versions of jack on ubuntu).
> 
> I *don't* want to trash pulse -- if only because I've spent years fighting
> with alsa & jack in the past, and now I mostly just want to be able to
> listen to my music on banshee or amarok or gogglesmm without writing
> .aconfrc files & such.  But I am certainly willing to run qjackctl under
> pasuspender while my daughter's practicing. But surely there's a simple way
> just to listen to the output of the keyboard in some straightforwardway?
> I'm trying qsynth right now but it doesn't seem to be working.  Again, any
> help appreciated!  thanks,
> matt

Listen to what output?  It's not making sound, only note on/off events.
Something has to apply an instrument sound to that and render it.
So yes some synth is needed.

I have an sb live card in my machine which has a very nice midi synth
in hardware and alsa works great with it.

Onboard audio things almost certainly have no clue, and something like
timidity or other midi synth would be needed.

Alsa is a sound driver system, pulseaudio is an audio server (it still
needs alsa underneath (or oss) as the sound driver).  So pulseaudio is by
no means a replacement for alsa.  jack just allows fast audio routing,
and since you are dealing with midi, not audio, I don't see what use
jack would be.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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