Hi Kevin,
you can familiarise yourself with quite a few of the utilities without your
keyboard. There are virtual keyboards, usiing either mouse or the computer
keyboard, IIRC. With aconnect you can list ports and connect them or you use a
graphical patchbay or MIDI router. You can play MIDI files to a software
synthesizer like fluidsynth or qsynth (fluid with graphics). I think there's a
general MIDI soundfont to load so you can mostly get the sound arrangement
from your home keyboard.
From what I've heard, I gather that Rosegarden or
qtractor are good for all
kinds of MIDI arranging. sequencer64 from the AUR or
non-sequencer or others
might be better suited to pattern based ideas. Not totally sure.
Midish is good on the commandline. It has a shell-like interface.
Oh: your mio usb-MIDI cable should be automatically detected when plugged in,
so no need to load anything special or reboot. If it behaves as all the other
USB -> MIDI adaptors that I've seen, it will be listed with or without an
attached keyboard or synthesizer.
Best wishes,
Jeanette
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