midi stuff

[Cyber Source]

Thanks Dave. I am sort of confused about the whole process of midi, 
whether it be hardware or software but here is what I ended up doing. 
BTW, this was all started because my step mother who I have running FC3 
and T-Bird was getting email from one of her freakin AOL friends and was 
sending email with embedded midi's for background sound. And whenever 
something doesn't work it looks like a shortcoming to Linux to those 
that don't know better. Amazing how Linux gets blamed if an application 
doesn't do something but windows NEVER gets blamed if an application 
doesn't do whats expected.
Anywho,
   Here is what I did. Both myself and step mother have motherboards 
with onboard sound VIA chips (via82xx), almost every motherboard comes 
with onboard sound and they just work so, it would seem that timidity 
does not require a hardware midi port? Don't really know what I'm 
talking about here but from quick reading yesterday it seems that you 
can have hardware (or virtual) or software? If I modprobed the 
/dev/snd-whatever stuff it (kmid) stopped bitching and would play the 
file but no sound so I assume I just didn't have done all that I needed, 
etc. So my son who is always noodling in apps for Linux said he had used 
timidity before, so I apt-getted and it worked straight up, with nothing 
in my /etc/modprobe.conf file for sound except # --- BEGIN: Generated by 
ALSACONF, do not edit. ---
# --- ALSACONF verion 1.0.8 ---
alias snd-card-0 snd-via82xx
alias sound-slot-0 snd-via82xx
# --- END: Generated by ALSACONF, do not edit. ---
"
However, 1 small problem remained, to fire up the gui for timidity you 
give it the option -ig (for gtk interface) but the apt-getted version 
told me it wasn't compiled in and without a gui, she wouldnt be able to 
stop the midi without killing the process and I can't have my 80yr old 
step mother firing up a terminal to kill a process. So I then looked for 
a gui piece to the thing that I might be able to apt-get, couldn't find 
anything. I then decided to download the latest tar and compile the gui 
option in and all would be well right? Nope, the tar was missing the 
critical timidity.cfg file that contains all the sound relations, etc. 
(it's huge, not something your just going to whip up without a few years 
in midi college).
  So I did a little trickery due to my lack of knowledge or another way. 
I apt-getted back the timidity app which contained the all important 
timidity.cfg file and which the executable got installed under 
/usr/bin/timidity AND I left the compiled timidity on the system as 
well, as that one had the gui option. I copied the timidity.cfg file to 
where the compiled version was looking for it (I suppose at this point I 
could have uninstalled the apt-getted version but I left it anyway). The 
compiled versions executable was installed to /usr/local/bin/timidity. I 
then moved that to /usr/local/bin/oldtimidity and created an executable 
script called /usr/local/bin/timidity that calls to the oldtimidity file 
with the -ig option. Then I created the associations in Gnome, Firefox 
and Thunderbird to play midi's with /usr/local/bin/timidity.
Might be ugly but it works and the timidity gui is pretty nice with all 
the tempo options, etc. that kmid has and without the need for a 
hardware midi, or anything special as far as an alsa config is concerned 
( I can never find just a straight answer to an alsa question)
Anyway, there it is.


Dave Andruczyk wrote:

>--- Cyber Source <peter at thecybersource.com> wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Anyone know the alsa config line to add /dev/sequencer?, it is what I 
>>believe to be missing to get a midi playing.
>>
>>    
>>
>
>Add the following to /etc/modules.conf (or conf.modules)
>
>alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss
>alias /dev/midi snd-seq-oss
>
>If your program is attempting to open /dev/sequencer adjust the above line.. 
>be sure to run "depmod -a" afterwards..
>
>
>
>
>
>
>Dave J. Andruczyk
>
>
>		
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