On Thu, 14 Jan 2021 23:39:27 -0500 Doug McGarrett <dmcgarrett@optonline.net> wrote:
On 1/14/21 10:26 PM, Ben T. Fender wrote:
On Thu, 14 Jan 2021 21:39:19 -0500 Doug McGarrett <dmcgarrett@optonline.net> wrote:
Tnx for your interest. This is certainly not a straight-forward setup! Sorry, it looks like I replied to your email instead of the list (often do that with lists)
It isn't THAT unusual I think, have you been able to launch qjackctl, THEN qsynth, THEN Rosegarden and either load a midi file into rosegarden OR compose a few notes and hear them when you play them? Maybe starting with less would be a first step before adding the keyboard to it all. I can walk you through my little routine (without the keyboard part) to see what comes loose :) Might as well try it, but the keyboard is what I really want. Altho I'm pretty rusty, I used to gig out on piano on weekends, and I can get some good sounds on a B3, so I'd like to find out what the midi can do. --doug
I see bengan is leading you in another direction, maybe you wanna start with that if all you want to do is play your keyboard. When I played on mine and wanted nothing else I just plugged it into my sound card. To get a music-session going here's what I do. NB. I have never once seen a day when things work the same way under Leap and/or Tumbleweed, for example the Audacity GUI for the last year or so has been unusable under tumbleweed. I'm doing this on my g73 laptop under Leap-15.2 1 Start Audacity (2.2.2) to familiarize yourself with it and to test if sound works 'at all'. Observe it has a dropdown list on the left just below the mic icon. This should show 'alsa' as the selected option. Import some audio into audacity (an mp3 or video with sound file) and see if you can hear the output. Don't go past this until you hear music. 2 Start qjackctl (0.4.3).. default settings 'should' work. Open the 'connections' window, see what lurks there, notice that Audacity is not there, it never will be. 3 Revisit Audacity and observe that you need to RESTART it because it's still showing ALSA as the only option on the badly ie. un-'labeled' dropdown list. Once restarted Audacity will also show JACK as an option, select it. Reload the audio file again and test if sound still works, this time using Jack. 4 Shutdown Audacity and qjackctl, just remember that if you need Audacity under jack you have to start it AFTER qjackctl (this applies to just about everything). 5 Start VLC (3.0.11.1) to familiarize yourself with it and to test if sound works 'at all'. Import some audio into audacity (an mp3 or video with sound file) and see if you can hear the output. Don't go past this until you hear music. This is the equivalent of #1 above because you have to count your fingers each time after shaking hands with something. 6 Start qjackctl (0.4.3).. default settings 'should' work. Open the 'connections' window, see what lurks there, notice that VLC in not there and never will be. 7 Revisit VLC and observe that you need to (a) set VLC in tools-prefs-audio-output, (b) save setings and (c) restart it. Once restarted reload the audio file again and test if sound still works, this time using Jack. 8 Shutdown VLC, just remember that if you need it under jack you have to have JACK in saved prefs as a prerquisite. This time leave qjackctl running with the 'connections' window left open. HUD: you now have some feel for how jack controlled via the gui qjackctl works or does not work. 9 Start qsynth (0.5.0) the gui front end for fluidsynth. Observe it appears in the qjackctl 'connections' window. NB. Rosegarden could work without jack but will NOT work without a synth (it does NOT have an internal synth) and fluidsynth controlled by the qsynth gui will NOT produce sound without a loaded soundfont. Visit setup-soundfonts to see that a usable soundfont is loaded. If not, work this until one is loadad. HUD: I work with ZynADdSubFX a lot so that's always installed. 10 Start Rosegarden (well here we go again, even if music by some miracle works in suse it's *garanteed not to work for long*). My RG is segfaulting, I don't know how many times I've been through this, for now I'm just gonna press on faking it. Observe that RG has also been recognised and connected in the qjackctl 'connections' window (as usual, it will not be there if you start RG before qjackctl). Also you need to set up studio-managemididevices to match ports to devices. 11 Import some little midi fie into RG, set that track to a midi instrument or to a ZynnAddSubFX voice (the zynn dssi used internally in RG). Try to play the track, are you hearing anything? Don't go past this until you are hearing it. 12 plug in you keyboard, if I remember correctly it should show up in the runing qjackctl connections window. RG should then also make it usable as a source OR as a target. As a source you can play the keyboard and record a midi track in RG (write the shet music) but I'll stop here because I haven't donethat for a long time now. As an exercise you can start qjackctl (0.6.3) under tumblewed, open its now relabelled 'graph' window and then start/stop qsyth and rosegarden a few times observing the automation in the qjackctl window. Don't use Audacity in TW however, the gui is unusable. HTH For music there's an AV-Linux distro, I tried it once but don't know its current status.