Hello, Helgi Örn wrote:
Thank you again. I have more or less given up at the moment trying to get this MIDI thing going, but if someone can give me some hint on what the =%7#€= I'm doing wrong then I would be very grateful. If someone for exempel got this same card (Ensoniq PCI64, Ess1371 chip) running with Alsa and the MIDI function, I would very much like to have a copy of that modules.conf file.
I too know the frustration, I hate having to boot into windows to use Cakewalk for my MIDI stuff. However recently I've some little progress with SuSE Linux. 1. Timidity. As far as I can tell it's a software MIDI to .wav converter. This might sound bad, but it actually does a very nice job. I was able to use a *10 meg*(!) piano Sound Font (that I had purchased elsewhere) in Timidity and the result was nearly indistinguishable from playing it in windows. So for playing MIDI, this is the way to go. 2. The lilypond that comes with SuSE 6.4 seems to work well and can produce MIDI output. The newest development versions seem to have even more MIDI capabilities such as tempo and volume change, though I was unable to get them to compile. At some point soon this package might actually be able to meet all of one's notation and MIDI needs - assuming you don't mind using a markup language for your music recording. 3. There is a program called Melys that is a MIDI sequencer for ALSA. After several frustrating hours and several emails to the author I was unable to get it to compile. Perhaps some of the more knowledgeable people on this list can take a crack at it. You can find the link off of www.alsa-project.com. It looks quite promising as it gives one a GUI style MIDI sequencer, input, etc. By the way, ALSA seems to be the future for sound in Linux, getting used to it now will probably save some frustration later. 4. For the emacs nuts out there (like myself) both Timidity and lilypond have emacs modes that can be added to your .emacs file and seem to work well. 5. I have not been able to get my MIDI keyboard to be read by any GNU/Linux program (it works in windows). This would be nice, but if Lilypond will do everything I need then I won't be too disappointed. Perhaps there is a way to pipe the MIDI signal strait through to Timidity, anyone? The piano sound font I mentioned before sounds so incredible that I'd like to just use that when I'm playing around on my keyboard (instead of its built in sounds). 6. And finally a question for everyone. I've not played with lilypond much, but does anyone know how to tell it to use different MIDI sounds? Everything I compile uses the default piano sound - how do I tell it to use a different instrument number? I know it can do it, because one of the examples plays organ sounds. Hopefully you can find something useful or encouraging in this. And maybe with a little gentle pressure we can get the SuSE people to give this music in Linux thing a little higher priority. Good luck, David Bellows -- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/support/faq