[linux-audio-user] Newbie question-- what can I do with just a PC keyboard, my Linux box, and a SB 16 PCI card?

[Them]

Mark Wilson wrote:

> I don't have any sort of external MIDI equipment. 
> Just as the subj. line indicates, a fairly ordinary PC
> setup, a few years out of date (Celeron 400MHz, 128 MB
> RAM, ATI Rage 128 card and SoundBlaster 16 PCI card).
> 
> With this setup, all I can figure out how to do so far
> is to use timidity to play MIDI files.  I can use
> Rosegarden to export my "scores" to a MIDI file, but I
> don't know how set up a virtual sequencer, or what
> /dev file to specify in Rosegarden's sequencer
> configuration. When I try to put in /dev/midi, *midi0,
> *sequencer, *audio, *dsp, *whatever, it tells me "no
> such device" or unable to access or something.
> 
> But this is not just a Rosegarden question -- will I
> be able to use any synthesizers or sequencers without
> a "real" device to specify?  Would the solution
> involve symlinks, or named pipes, or other things I've
> never yet explored?

If you start up rosegardensequencer by itself, via the CLI, what output 
do you get?

I have an SBLive! on one my Linux PCs (the one I DON'T normally use for 
music production), which uses soundfonts, so I have to load a soundfont 
before I can use the onboard MIDI (Rosegarden can load soundfonts for 
you, if necessary).  I don't know what the older SB cards needed to 
playback MIDI through the hardware synth (and it's going to suck eggs, 
if I recall, the old SB onboard synth sounded terrible).

Are you using JACK?  You can use a softsynth easily using qjackctl by 
connecting MIDI out from Rosegarden to the MIDI in of the softsynth. 
Rosegarden can also startup JACK for you, if necessary (but unless you 
have patched your kernel, you will need to start JACK as root).

-- Brett