Playing soundfonts with midi keyboard, with just timidity and alsa

I thought it would nice to just be able to play my midi keyboard without launching rosegarden or some big application like that, so I decided to see if timidity could help me out. Install timidity++.

tony@0_o ~/ $ emerge timdity++

Then start timidity with the timidity init script.

tony@0_o ~/ $ sudo /etc/init.d/timidity start

I use an e-mu xboard49. When I plug it in, I can see the midi ports available with aplaymidi -l.

tony@0_o ~/ $ aplaymidi -l
 Port    Client name                      Port name
 14:0    Midi Through                     Midi Through Port-0
 24:0    E-MU Xboard49                    E-MU Xboard49 MIDI 1
128:0    TiMidity                         TiMidity port 0
128:1    TiMidity                         TiMidity port 1
128:2    TiMidity                         TiMidity port 2
128:3    TiMidity                         TiMidity port 3

Then I can connect the two ports with aconnect.

tony@0_o ~/ $ aconnect 24:0 128:0

Then voila! Insant midi jam. You can select which midi patch with your midi controller, its called “select pgm bank” or something like that.

Next I’m going to try to install some soundfonts.

Advertisement

Tags: midi gentoo timidity xboard emu 49 alsa