[PlanetCCRMA] midi keyboard and rosegarden

[Nigel Henry]

On Wednesday 30 August 2006 15:52, Gilles Pelletier wrote:
> I am trying to connect a midi keyboard to rosegarden through jack. I
> can't seem to get it right. Anybody have a good link or something?
> I have a soundblaster card ES1371 with mpu-401 on a 3ghz smp box with
> the real time kernel and FC5. My keyboard is a MD500 from radio shack.
> I don't have a clue of how to go about it. I have read the Rosegarden
> manual but I can't seem to catch the beginning of what to do.
> Please help me.

Hi Gilles.  I don't know if you've fixed this by now. Apart from the 
Rosegarden problem, does the keyboard work ok on your Linux box, playing it 
through ZynAddSubFx for instance? If it isn't you can install Kmidimon from 
planetccrma, and can make the connection from your keyboard using Qjackctl. 
this will show if midi events are being sent to the machine, and then you can 
mess with settings on the keyboard until you get some output showing on 
Kmidimon.

Ok. Presuming that the keyboard is playing sounds using ZynAddSubFx, or 
whatever, the next problem is the soundcard. Most soundcards are not capable 
of hardware mixing.  On my other machine I have an Audigy2 soundblaster, 
which is capable.  All I have to do here is to load the soundfont which is on 
the CDROM which came with the card, tell Rosegarden to load the soundfont, 
and give it the path to the soundfont. So the sequence of events is. First 
start Qjackctl, then Rosegarden. Qjackctl shows Rosegardens audio connections 
made, and in the midi connections my keyboard is shown connected to 
Rosegarden.  When I play some notes on the keyboard they are shown over the 
"1" on track one, and I can record the keyboard on Rosegarden.

Moving on to cards not capable of hardware mixing, like your SB16 (ens1371), 
and my Ensoniq (1371). The workaround here is to use a softsynth like Qsynth.  
It needs a soundfont loading onto it, but you can get those from.
http://www.hammersound.net/  , and other places on the Internet. DL a GM 
(general midi) one. Put it in your /home/user directory, open Qsynth and load 
the soundfont.  Next. Open Qjackctl, and start Rosegarden. In Qjackctl 
Rosegardens audio connections are made, and your keyboard should be connected 
in the midi section. Make a connection in the midi section from your keyboard 
to Qsynth. Don't break the connection from your keyboard to Rosegarden.

Now back to Rosegarden, left click on the first track, choose "MIDI soft 
synth" and click on #1. You should now be able to play the midi keyboard and 
hear some sounds, and also be able to record them.

I'm not too clued up on making music on Rosegarden, so probably can't help 
with that. I started off on Linux wanting to make music, but have got 
seriously distracted.

Nigel.