LinuxMusicians

Hi!

I recently got a samson graphite 49 keyboard. I use funtoo linux, which curiously enough was not accepted as "a linux distribution" when I registered here. :-/ I have installed jack, linuxsampler and some instrument samples. Among them, the salamander grand piano. So I have a nice piano to play now - with the keyboard connected directly to linuxsampler. I plan on trying other kinds of synthesizers (non sample-based) too. I use the soundcard in my laptop, with headphones or a stereo amplifier.

When searching the net for music software, I find lots of information about composing, multi-track recording & editing, and notation. Which might be interesting someday, but right now I won't need to record any sound (or midi) to disk.

I just want to play! Practice to get better, as well as having fun trying out all sorts of interesting sounds and effects. So the big question is - what software is good for playing? With easy switching between different instruments - instruments that possibly are implemented by different synthesizer programs. The keyboard has several buttons and sliders - it'd be nice being able to use them for selecting instruments (or mixes of instruments.) Right now, I can only switch instruments by setting some suitable linuxsampler instrument to 'channel 1'. Done on the pc unfortunately, not the keyboard. And using a different synth program seems to involve reconnecting in qjackctl.

Being a programmer, I don't worry about compiling, installing and setting up software. But once set up, it hopefully won't be too cumbersome to use. MIDI is completely new to me.

Welcome!

qmidiroute log will show the MIDI messages you send from the MIDI keyboard and it will come handy for some of your needs, I think.

I think patchage is faster and nicer than qjackctl to make connections. (But I still use qjackctl to configure, start and monitor the jack server).

Important note for you. There are two MIDI implementations:

Jack MIDI (MIDI tab in qjackctl, red colour in patchage) and alsa MIDI (alsa tab in qjackctl, green colour in patchage).

Your MIDI keyboard will do alsa MIDI but some synths do jack MIDI, at least as an option. There is "a2jmidid" (the alsa to jack MIDI daemon). Via the "-e" flag you can connect your hardware to jack MIDI ports.

There are a number of ways to manage your studio. You can do "linux audio scripting" (google that) with some commands. Also, there are a number of "linux audio desktop integration" or "jack session managers" that try to integrate different programs to make things easier.

As for synths and more, take a look at http://wiki.linuxaudio.org/apps/start

If you just want to get some sound out and play around I recommend ZynAddSubFX.

Pablo wrote: qmidiroute log will show the MIDI messages you send from the MIDI keyboard and it will come handy for some of your needs, I think.

Thanks, just what I needed. As a test, I have mapped some buttons to 'program changes', so I can change instruments from the keyboard now. But there are more instruments available than buttons, so I think I'll use a rotary encoder instead. that'll give me 128 instruments selectable with one encoder.

I wonder if it is also possible to send something useful back to the keyboard? For example, when I select an instrument it'd be useful the see the name on the keyboard display - not just the number.