[linux-audio-user] ecasound and software midi controller

Eric Dantan Rzewnicki rzewnickie at rfa.org
Thu Nov 13 12:49:21 EST 2003


I'm interested in this, too. I haven't tried it, yet, but, i've read
some of the docs, so I'll try to share what I've learned so far. 
Hopefully someone who has done this will fill in the gaps ....

http://www.wakkanet.fi/~kaiv/ecasound/Documentation/examples.html
has a section "Using controller sources with effects"

Example #4 shows this:
" ecasound -i file.wav -o /dev/dsp -ef3:1000,1.0,1.0 -kos:1,500,2000,1,0 \
-kos:2,0.2,1.0,0.5,0 \
-kx -km:1,0.1,1.5,2,1

      Ok, let's get real whacky. Here a 1Hz sine oscillator is assigned
to the cutoff frequency, while other controller is controlling
resonance. Now we add a MIDI-controller, that controls the second sine
oscillator. "


The ecasound man page:
http://www.wakkanet.fi/~kaiv/ecasound/Documentation/ecasound_manpage.html
has a section on MIDI setup and another on CONTROL ENVELOPE SETUP. Under
the latter is this option:

"-km:fx-param,start-value,end-value,controller,channel

MIDI continuous controller (control change messages). Messages on the
MIDI-channel 'channel' that are coming from controller number
'controller' are used as the controller source. As recommended by the
MIDI-specification, channel numbering goes from 1 to 16. Possible
controller numbers are values from 0 to 127. The MIDI-device where bytes
are read from can be specified using -Md option. Otherwise the default
MIDI-device is used as specified in ~ecasound/ecasoundrc (see
ecasoundrc(5)). Defaults to /dev/midi."


To send CC messages to ecasound I think you could use alsa's virmidi
driver. There is a quick toot covering using a sequencer to control a
softsynth this way which might be applicable:

http://linux-sound.org/quick-toots/4-sequencers_and_softsynths/quick-toot-midisynth_howto.html


then as far as a piece of software to do the actual controlling ...
there's something called vkeyboard ... perhaps one of the sequencers apps
like muse or rosegarden could be used? QMidiControl, xphat and others
listed here: http://sound.condorow.net/midi.html, might be interesting.
Though some of those links are broken ...


So, the pieces are all there, I think. But, as I said, I haven't tried
to put them together, yet. It looks like it is possible. But, anyway, I
hope this helps.

-Eric Rz.

On Thu, Nov 13, 2003 at 12:02:14PM +0100, Alex Marandon wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> This my first post in this list so I introduce myself. I am non-native
> english speaker, so forgive me if my english is not correct, I hope at
> least it will be understandable ;) About my computer skills I'd say that
> I'm an advanced beginner in Linux and *BSD systems, i'm very far to be
> expert but I manage to deal with my own problems without much pain now.
> I work as a Perl/Python programmer and I slowly learn C/C++. 
> 
> For a few days now I've started to explore the world of linux
> audio-related software, so I'm a real newbie on this topic. I've played
> a little bit with ecasound (i love its concept) and I wonder if there is
> a way to control parameters of operators in realtime using software
> midi-controllers. If yes, what software to use ? What configuration ? Is
> it possible, and how to perform automation in order to replay what was
> done manually ?  Any information about how to achive this goal is
> welcome.
> 
> Thanks.



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