Introduction
Imagine one would like to have a soft synth. Instead of going though the trouble of developing one in kernel, the developer can start off with running user-land timidity, and let the existing MIDI playing applications send their data to the 'timidity client' instead of the 'GUS MIDI output port' client. For the player it doesn't make any difference (only send events to another destination), and voila, we have a soft-synth. Over time, the developer can improve upon this soft-synth, make it more real-time, and possibly running it as kernel client.
So, just because it sounded such a neat thing to do...
This patch is very experimental and is only intended as a proof of concept. There are undoubtably many improvements that could be made. I will probably not enhance it further myself, but of course anyone is welcome to take this code and use it.
Download
timidity.Get the
patch
and apply it.
NB:
The patch
completely replaces
the existing server functionality
of timidity which allows the receipt of OSS events over the
network.
I used the following configure command, the important thing is the enable server switch. You can add others.
./configure --prefix=/usr --enable-gtk --enable-server
Usage
timidity -ir -Os [client [port]]
It may be useful to experiment with other timidity flags.
If you get drop outs try to increase the value of the
-B
flag.
You can play a midi file with pmidi. Use the -l flag to get a list of possible target ports and find the timidity one.
Port Client name Port name 64:0 0: MIDI Synth 0: MPU-401 (UART) 65:0 AWE Wave Table Synth : 0 Emu8000 port 0 65:1 AWE Wave Table Synth : 0 Emu8000 port 1 65:2 AWE Wave Table Synth : 0 Emu8000 port 2 65:3 AWE Wave Table Synth : 0 Emu8000 port 3 128:0 Client-128 Timidity receive port
pmidi -p 128:0 song.mid
The port
0: MPU-401 (UART)
has a keyboard connected so starting timidity like this:
timidity -ir -Os 64 0
FAQ
Q:A:
How well does it work?
It should have its own interface option rather than taking over the exisiting remote server option.
It doesn't respond as quickly as a hardware synth of course.