[linux-audio-user] Newbie Linux user Struggling with MIDI

[Lee Revell]

On Mon, 2005-08-01 at 00:07 -0500, PhilJackson wrote:
> Lee,
> 
> I am coming from a Windows environement where MIDI  and such just 
> "works" .

OK, this is a common point of confusion, because Windows and MacOS come
with a toy softsynth, so you can just double click on a .mid file and
hear sound.

On linux, to do the same you would have to run a soft synth like
Fluidsynth.  Launching the softsynth will cause an input MIDI port and
output Audio port to appear in qjackctl, and you'd just connect the
output of fluidsynth to the ALSA playback input of alsa_playback to hear
the sound.

> Joystick port - at this point I am unsure  of most anything.  In this 
> machine's previous life as a Win ME machine it did work, though with a 
> different soundcard. 

OK.  It's not clear that ALSA is seeing this port.

Lee