MidiSoftwareSynthesisHowTo

How to get midi sound in Ubuntu

This could come in handy if you don't have a soundcard with hardware MIDI or have no external MIDI instruments connected to your PC. You must then use software synthesis. There are two common options, Timidity and Fluidsynth. This section only covers setting up and using Timidity at the moment.

Installing Timidity

First install Timidity (using apt-get or Synaptic).

Next you need a set of samples. The easiest way is to install package 'freepats' (a 28 MB download), and you're done. Alternatively, for better sound, read the section below to set up a soundfont.

Once you've done that, you can try playing a midi file:

timidity myfile.mid

If all is well, you should hear delicate strains of synthesised music. If you have problems, read 'Reducing CPU usage' below.

Setting up Timidity as a MIDI server

Issue the following commands:

sudo modprobe snd-seq-device
sudo modprobe snd-seq-midi
sudo modprobe snd-seq-oss
sudo modprobe snd-seq-midi-event
sudo modprobe snd-seq

This loads missing modules. You may not need all these (I found it worked with just the first two). Then enter:

timidity -iA -B2,8 -Os1l -s 44100

This loads timidity as a midi server and opens 2 midi ports, 128:0 ad 128:1. After issuing it, you should have midi players working. You can open another terminal and issue a command such as:

pmidi -p 128:0 music.mid
kmid music.mid

To close timidity, press CTRL-C in the terminal it's running in.

Launching the server as root may improve performance because of higher priorities given to the process.

Notedit, or your score editor of choice can then be loaded and recognised the midi ports.

If the computer is busy doing something else other than playing music, you may hear scratches or have latency problems. This might be solved with a realtime kernel patch, but is out of the scope of this HOWTO.

Automatically starting Timidity on boot

Ubuntu Hoary sets up scripts in /etc/init.d when you install Timidity. To start it on boot, edit /etc/default/timidity and uncomment the line

TIM_ALSASEQ=true

You'll also need to add the modules you loaded earlier to /etc/modules.

Finding and setting up a soundfont

Websites: http://www.personalcopy.com (try Unison.sf2) http://www.hammersound.net/ or look up soundfonts in a search engine.

If you end up with a file ending with .sfArk, it's compressed in an annoying proprietary format. You may need a windows machine to decompress it, depending which version they've used. Details at http://melodymachine.com/sfark.htm

Then you need to create the file /etc/timidity/timidity.cfg and add the following line (edit as appropriate):

soundfont /pathtothesoundfontfile/soundfontfile.sf2

Reducing CPU usage

If Timidity uses too much CPU on your slow machine, try adding these lines to the start of /etc/timidity/timidity.cfg (you may need to create this file)

opt EFresamp=l          #use linear resampling
opt EFvlpf=d            #disable VLPF
opt EFreverb=d          #disable reverb
opt EFchorus=d          #disable chorus
opt EFdelay=d           #disable delay