I think of Jack and the ALSA MIDI sequencer module as the spine of the system, to the extent that I get annoyed at audio programs that can't talk to Jack. If you want to route audio flexibly between programs, you can use Jack, and if you want to route MIDI you can use the ALSA sequencer. Check out aconnect and aconnectgui to get an overview of the ALSA seq; you can also manage it using qjackctl, the Jack control panel, if you haven't already discovered that.
I like to use shell scripts to set up Jack and various programs, but it's nice to have the qjackctl GUI to get an idea of how it works.
One other possibility, silly as it may sound, would be to have Rosegarden talk to the ALSA sequencer, and that talk to fluidsynth. I could be wrong, but I think the reason to do this would be that, if you ever want to route the same MIDI composition through Pd or Csound or whatnot, instead of fluidsynth, you could leave the Rosegarden setup as is and reroute the ALSA sequencer instead. That way you don't change your Rosegarden file. And whoever talks to fluidsynth, it is also an option to have fluidsynth talk to Jack and Jack talk back into Rosegarden audio, which talks back to Jack which talks to ALSA- so you can do mixing and effects in the same program where you do the sequencing.
If you want to use MIDI with Csound, I believe you also need the "virmidi" module, for virtual MIDI. The current Csound manual describes how and why, if you know to look for it. Once virmidi is set up, it starts automatically and can be thought of as an almost invisible extension of the ALSA MIDI sequencer module.
I don't think of this all as hodge-podge; just that it's all held together by dedicated audio and MIDI routing programs which have no other purpose.
-Chuckk
On 10/28/07,
david <gnome@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I have a laptop with the Intel integrated audio, which lacks any form of
hardware MIDI synthesizer, so I use fluidsynth. I use Rosegarden for my
sequencer. I just got an E-Mu 1x1 USB<>MIDI cable to hook in my Yamaha
keyboard.
Let me see if I've got this whole thing straight. Keyboard talks to
Rosegarden. Rosegarden talks to fluidsynth (and to the keyboard, if I
want). Fluidsynth talks to JACK, JACK talks to ALSA, ALSA drives the
sound hardware. So I play something on the keyboard, it bounces through
the above chain (with of course the manual step of playing the
composition from Rosegarden if I'm using Rosegarden), and sound burbles
joyously from the laptop sound output. Yes?
Then, also, I can have other programs (like PD, CSound, amsynth, ALSA
Modular Synth, Audacity, etc) hook into this chain somewhere, too? Do I
connect everything together using JACK?
I'm asking all this because my present music setup on the laptop is sort
of hodgepodged together - somehow it works, but I'm not sure how, or if
it's even working the best way it could be.
I'm not planning to switch distros, boring Debian testing works for the
vast majority of my needs (music writing is a smallish part of that).
Later, I'll tackle setup/configuration of the desktop computer, which
has more horsepower and a real sound card, and perhaps set that one up
with an audio-focussed distro. But for now, just focusing on the laptop.
Thanks. IIRC, I also owe Julien some song lyrics, too - sorry, Julien,
it's on the to do list!
--
David
gnome@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
authenticity, honesty, community
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