Not exactly simpler, though scriptable. For sure there's many ways to do this, here's one example that uses Jack for MIDI and audio. The only manual step involved is to select stops in aeolus, though that could be automated by selecting a preset via MIDI (haven't tried that part). # start aeolus without the -A option (defaults to Jack) aeolus & # start a jack-MIDI aware smf file player like jpmidi or jack-smf-player from jack-smf-utils jack-smf-player -n foo.mid & # give a little time for ports to show up sleep 5 # using ecasound as a jack-aware command-line recorder ecasound -i jack -o foo.ogg & sleep 1 # ==== make connections in jack # == midi jack_connect 'jack-smf-player:midi_out' 'aeolus:Midi/in' # == audio jack_connect 'aeolus:out.L' 'ecasound:in_1' jack_connect 'aeolus:out.R' 'ecasound:in_2' # not required but you might want to listen jack_connect 'aeolus:out.L' 'system:playback_1' jack_connect 'aeolus:out.R' 'system:playback_2' sleep 1 # make sure to locate transport TL to zero echo locate 0 | jack_transport # start jack_transport echo play | jack_transport # ..recording..