With nowadays mp3 files, the midi files were never appeal to me, even with the WaveTable synthesizer, because I know hardware based WaveTable synthesizer might really sounds good, but they are not as good as mp3s. Moreover, the midi support under Linux has always been limited, so I never bother to figure it out, until now.
Why midi now? Because I've just found out the ABC music notation language (http://www.walshaw.plus.com/abc/).
The ABC music notation language is a wonderful tool to typeset sheet music. ABC is one of the best designed, easy to use, well-thought out, and nicely implemented notation formats I've ever seen: IMHO, it surpasses other good notation languages like GNU Lilypond or MusiXTeX. (Philip's Music Writer is a serious contender though.) You can write music in a very simple ASCII format and convert it to MIDI, or typeset it to make professional-looking scores.
I'm always a big fan of documenting complicated things using plain text. With ABC to notate music in plain text, even as complicated as Beethoven's Symphony No. 7, (http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/abcmusic/sym7mov2.html), music notations can be easily and portably stored or transported electronically. IMHO, midi is the notation for music instruments; while ABC is the notation for human, and computer too. For machine to analyze tunes (via artificial intelligence), plain text based notation is the first step.
A common editor such as vi or emacs is all that is needed to write an abc file. After the file has been written, it can be converted to a standard MIDI file using abc2mid or to a print-ready format using abc2mtex (MusicTeX), abc2ps (PostScript) or abc2pdf (Adobe PDF).
With ABC notation, one can not only produce professional-looking scores, or MIDI sound files, but also can translate MIDI files into plain text notations as well, with the help of Midi2abc (YAPS, http://abc.sourceforge.net/abcMIDI/).
References:
documented on: 2008-05-28, xpt
Here is the simplest way to play abc files under Debian (all commands are run from command line).
First, enable your system to play midi files. The following simple steps will guarantee that you can play midi, no matter what sound card you may have. If you have sound card that has hardware support to play midi, you can also try to install the proper sound card midi driver if you want.
Make sure your sound system is working, e.g., you can play mp3 or wave files.
Install the 'timidity' and 'freepats' packages
$ aptitude install timidity freepats The following NEW packages will be installed: freepats libflac8 timidity 0 packages upgraded, 3 newly installed, 0 to remove. Need to get 29.5MB/29.7MB of archives. After unpacking 36.1MB will be used.
Optionally install the playmidi package if you don't have a mid file to test that will surely work.
$ aptitude install playmidi gunzip < /usr/share/doc/playmidi/examples/jazz.mid.gz > jazz.mid
Play the midi file using timidity
timidity jazz.mid
If everything works fine, you should be able to hear the midi song. Else check the rest of this note collection for troubleshootings.
Now, we get to the playing abc files part.
Install the 'abcm2ps' and 'abcmidi' packages. The abc2mps has became the main standard for creating PostScript files from ABC files; the abcmidi package consists of several programs: abc2midi, abc2abc, and midi2abc. Check http://abc.sourceforge.net/abcMIDI/ for details.
$ aptitude install abcm2ps abcmidi The following NEW packages will be installed: abcm2ps abcmidi 0 packages upgraded, 2 newly installed, 0 to remove. Need to get 242kB of archives. After unpacking 614kB will be used.
Prepare a abc file. The sample file I used here is from http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8629. Use your favorite editor to create a file Scale.abc:
X:1 T:A Scale In C C:DLP M:4/4 L:1/4 K:C C D E F | G A B c |1 c/2B/2A/2G/2 | F/2E/2D/2C/2 :|2 c4 ||
Convert the abc file as midi file.
$ abc2midi Scale.abc writing MIDI file Scale1.mid
Now play it.
$ timidity Scale1.mid Playing Scale1.mid MIDI file: Scale1.mid Format: 0 Tracks: 1 Divisions: 480 Sequence: A Scale In C Playing time: ~15 seconds Notes cut: 0 Notes lost totally: 0
That's it. Now go crazy and download every abc file available from the Internet, starting from the sites listed in this note collection. :-)
documented on: 2008-05-29, xpt
http://www.linuxquestions.org/linux/answers/Applications_GUI_Multimedia/Three_Steps_to_MIDI_on_Linux
By harishankar at 2006-02-17
I've always wanted to document any tricky steps to getting things done in Linux and MIDI is a very tricky one indeed. In fact, for most of us, the only way to play MIDI music is to install TiMidity++ and use it as an ALSA sequencer. I've struggled though, in the past, due to lack of documentation for this and so decided to share my knowledge in a place where others can easily get the bigger picture without getting confused with the details. Note that this is not an extensive article and will not go in-depth into each step, but only to serve as a general guide to MIDI on Linux.
I assume that you've properly installed and configured ALSA drivers and sound generally works in your system. Also I assume that you have a fair idea of how to install and uninstall packages for your particular distribution or know how to compile from source.
The three steps are then:
Install TiMidity++. If you are a Debian user, this package is available in the official repositories. Other binary versions may be available. You can also compile from source. Instructions and download location available at the TiMidity website. Binary packages for select distros:
Debian package
Slackware binaries
RPM packages
Get some good sound patches — You will also need to download and install additional sound fonts and configure the software. Debian users can use Freepats. But I recommend the eaw patches which are of higher quality. No Debian packages are available, but luckily you can just download it and extract it in any location. You can download the tar.gz at http://gentoo.mirrors.pair.com/distfiles/eawpats12_full.tar.gz. Just extract it into your home directory. Let's say /home/hari/eawpats.
Replace the default TiMidity++ timidity.cfg file (rename the old file to something like timidity.conf.old) with the one in the /home/hari/eawpats/linuxconfig folder. Just edit it to make sure the location points to the directory where you extracted the EAW patches. The config file is located usually in the /etc/timidity/ folder in Debian. I don't know about other distros. Here is how the file looks like. Just change the dir setting to whichever location you extracted the EAW patches to:
dir /home/hari/eawpats/ source gravis.cfg source gsdrums.cfg source gssfx.cfg source xgmap2.cfg #mid -> wav: timidity input.mid -Ow1S -s 44100 -o output.wav
All right, you've now installed it. To test it, you need to play a MIDI file. If you have one, just run
timidity filename.mid
from the command line and enjoy the music! If timidity fails with an error message, just check the timidity.cfg file to make sure the path to your patches directory is correct. The EAW patches are excellent and much better than the freepats package in Debian, so the extra trouble to download and install it is worth it.
Now you have got MIDI playback. What if you want to use TiMidity++ as your ALSA sequencer device? Well, for this you have to issue this command from the command line:
timidity -iA -B8,2 -Os
This basically means that you are running timidity as an ALSA sequencer device (-iA) and you've set the buffer fragmensts to 8,2 (-B8,2) and the output device as ALSA (-Os). There you go. Now you can play MIDI files from KDE also. Don't forget to check out the TiMidity++ man and documentation pages as well.
You must run the above command every time you boot Linux if you want to use TiMidity++ as an ALSA back end so that you can play MIDI files from KDE (KMid) without using the timidity command line every time. The added advantage is that you can use MIDI composing tools like NoteEdit or Rosegarden without any additional setup because ALSA automatically recognizes the MIDI devices. So I recommend that you add this command to your startup scripts.
Hope this is clear. If you have any feedback or questions about this article, please drop a comment on the forums.
documented on: 2008-05-28
I tried to use timidity, which is supposed to be able to play midi by synthesizing it itself. . . I EVENTUALLY noticed some passing mention of soundfonts and discovered that these are required. Why isn't this mentioned in any howtos anywhere? Anyway, armed with this valuable but neglected information I downloaded the yamaha DX7 soundfont from hammersound.net, and added it to the timidity config file.
I'm still getting the following message:
No instrument mapped to tone bank 0, program 48 - this instrument will not be heard
"this instrument will not be heard" messages mean your soundfont is incomplete. There are sites which have free soundfonts but they usually only satisfy a certain niche (e.g. drum kits, piano kits)
What you want for playing midi files is a General Midi soundfont. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Midi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundfont
Check out the soundfonts in aur.
documented on: 2007-08-17, Gilneas
midi files contain notes for a song, then you need instruments to play those notes.
Now some soundcards have ram on em that contain soundfonts, ie prerecorded instruments that can be used to play those notes.
If you dont have a soundfont soundcard, you can still use the notes to control soft synths etc to get sound or use timidity to play them with downloaded soundfonts.
Now using progs like soundgarden the notes dont usually automatically get sent to righ instrument, thus ports are need to know what instument plays what notes.
BTW
i got asus and nforce too and the spdiff was pain in the arse to setup. although midis work:
Install timidity, install fluidr3 (soundfont), get some midifiles http://www.mididb.com/ , play with timidity:
timidity download/Unforgiven.mid
works for me.
documented on: 2007-08-17, Mikko777
If you don't have a real MIDI sequencer, use a software synthetizer.
Make Timidity into an ALSA output device with:
timidity -Os -iA
(-O: output=alsa, -i: interface=alsa)
To make it use less CPU and be more responsive, use:
timidity -Os -iA -B2,8 -EFreverb=0 -EFchorus=0
(-B: 2,8=set small buffers, -EFx=0: disable effects)
Make vkeybd (virtual midi keyboard app) into an ALSA input device with:
vkeybd
View the resulting (software) ALSA input and output devices:
aconnect -i -o
Then connect the vkeybd input to timidity output with:
kaconnect
or if you don't have this UI program, just use 'aconnect' directly:
aconnect <sender port> <receiver port>
Now you can use the virtual midi keyboard for testing the sound synthesis.
Finally You can test how well midi files are played. Check which ALSA port Timidity provides:
aplaymidi -l
And use that port for playing a midi file:
aplaymidi -p <port, e.g. 129:0> test.mid
(or use 'pmidi')
Note: Remember that you need to re-connect the (virtual) device ports each time you restart them.
Instead of Timidity, you also use other soft-synthetizers, like FluidSynth:
fluidsynth --audio-driver=alsa --midi-driver=alsa_seq soundfont.sf2
You could play a bit with other options to get more performance, sound volume etc:
--reverb=no --chorus=no -o synth.polyphony=16 --gain=0.6
And if you don't like the FluidSynth shell, use:
--no-shell --server
http://www.linuxfocus.org/English/September2002/article259.shtml
documented on: 2008-05-28
Try starting timidity like this:
timidity -iA -Os -B2,8 --reverb 0 --realtime-priority 1
and then see what aplaymidi -l says.
Andras
There is lots of articles on the subject but it is not so trivial to get needed information to use ALSA tools to play MIDI files.
This is some quick information:
the first is obviously to have a working ALSA installation,
if you have several sound cards, ensure the default is well the wanted one (for instance using system-config-soundcard under Fedora),
then it is important to ensure not having mute channel(s), you can use alsamixer for this,
then ensure to have a way to load soundfonts into the wavetable of the sound card; for instance of sound card managed AWE32/Emu10k1 sound driver, you can install the awesfx package
yum install awesfx
get a soundfonts to load, for instance this one,
at any moment, to check if there is a loaded soundfonts:
cat /proc/asound/card?/wavetableD?
you can clear currently loaded soundfounts but you want to keep it:
/bin/asfxload -i
then load it:
/bin/asfxload
find the "addresses" into the "/proc/asound/card?/wavetableD?" file (for instance: 17:0 17:1 17:2 17:3),
finally test installation using aplaymidi to play a MIDI file
aplaymidi -p "addresses"* "MIDI file path"
addresses must be coma separated, 17:0,17:1,17:2,17:3 for instance.
documented on: 27 May 2008, Bertrand BENOIT
Sound in Debian GNU/Linux http://newbiedoc.berlios.de/wiki/Sound_in_Debian_GNU/Linux
By Phil Kerr v1.20, May 2002
Introduction.
Copyright of this document.
Where to get this document.
Acknowledgments.
Disclaimer.
Background to MIDI.
Configuring MIDI devices.
7.1 ALSA 0.9 quick install
7.2 Latency
Software.
8.1 Drivers
8.2 MIDI file players
8.3 Sequencers
8.4 MIDI Trackers
8.5 Drum editors
8.6 Patch editors
8.7 Software synths
8.8 Plugins
8.9 Notation
8.10 Development
MIDI Development.
9.1 Example 1
9.2 Example 2
9.3 Example 3
HOWTO Use MIDI Sequencers With Softsynths.
10.1 Introduction
10.2 Device Setup
10.3 Routing MIDI Events
10.4 Graphical MIDI Patch Bays
10.5 Applications
10.6 Sequencers
10.7 Software Synthesizer
10.8 Acknowledgments
Useful Links.
Feedback.
The purpose of this page is to indicate what Linux sound and music tools I personally use on a regular basis… many other apps are as important and/or evolved, but I use them far less frequently. Think of this page as a proof that Linux sound and music software is certainly mature enough to use for a power-user's desktop studio.
The selected applications all share the following characteristics:
usability
stability
maturity
development longevity
CD Software Csound & Cmix Helpers Demos Digital DJ Documentation/Newsworthy Drumming DSP Software Emulators Effects Processors File Compression File Conversion Games & Game Software Guitar Software Java Miscellanea LADSPA Plugins Linux Audio Bundles & Distributions Linux Music On-line Mailing Lists MIDI Software Mixers MOD Trackers/Players/Resources MPEG (MP3) Players/Encoders Multitrack Recorders/Mixers Music Notation Musicians Utilities Network Audio OggVorbis Software Other Sound+MIDI Pages Other UNIX Audio and MIDI Software Players & Recorders Radio Repositories Scopes Software Synthesis Software Tools Sound Cards & Drivers Soundfile Editors Speech Synthesis/Analysis Telephony/AV Conferencing
Newsgroups: gmane.linux.debian.user Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2006 08:36:51 +0000
> > I'm trying to create some midi file. I'm using etch. [snip] > > If anyone has suggestion, they warmly welcome ! > Hi, > I'd second rosegarden
Nah, after years of struggling with NWC, abc, Noteedit, Rosegarden etc, I gave up and swung over to Lilypond. It does things the Linux way. Super.
Joe
> But can I generate a midi file with it ? (I don't want to print it, just > listen to it )
Yes, here's an example: (try to get a 2.6 version, I am on Debian testing. I am not sure about chords, or complex stuff)
\version "2.6.3"
\header {
composer = ""
piece = "Raspberry Jam"
dedication = "For Molly Daly"
}
}
melody = \relative c' {
\clef treble
\key g \major
\time 6/8
\repeat volta 2 { %TUNE_START
b'8 d8 d8 d8 b8 d8 \bar "|" e8 fis8 g8 d8
b8 g8 \bar "|" c8 b8 a8 b8 a8 g8 \bar "|" a8
g8 e8 g8 e8 d8 \bar "|" g8 d'8 d8 d8 b8 d8
\bar "|" e8 fis8 g8 d8 b8 g8 \bar "|" c8 b8
a8 b8 a8 g8 \bar "|" d8 g8 fis8 g4. \bar "|"
}
}
\repeat volta 2 {
d'8 e8 fis8 g8 d8 b8 \bar "|" g'8 d8 b8 g'8
d8 b8 \bar "|" d8 e8 fis8 g8 d8 b8 \bar "|" c8
a8 a8 a4. \bar "|"
g8 d'8 d8 d8 b8 d8 \bar "|" e8 fis8 g8 d8
b8 g8 \bar "|" c8 b8 a8 b8 a8 g8 \bar "|" d8
g8 fis8 g4.
} % TUNE_END
}
}
\score {
\new Staff \melody
\layout { }
\midi { \tempo 4=60 } %%%%%%%%%%%%% MIDI FILE %%%%%%%%%%%%%
}
}
Joe
> I'd second rosegarden > use timidity for playing midi and look for freepats for midi sound > files.
Timidity and freepats works correctly, it's just rosegarden that I don't manage to install.
Pooly