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Sound


MIDI

Hardware

The MIDI standard is about signals in a cable. Many musical instruments understand those signals and can communicate through them. The computer can act as a musical instrument, and join the conversation.

There is also a standard midi file format, which describes files containing the same signals. Below is an explanation on how to enable your computer to play such files. MidiHardware describes a method to enable your musical instruments to connect to the computer and be recognised.

Software

The MIME types are

and the file extensions

 mid
 midi

You can use Timidity to easily play MIDI and ?karaoke files in Linux and Mozilla.

You can also install a software synthesizer to play midi files in the totem media player or in VLC. It requires the following packages:

sudo apt-get install fluid-soundfont-gs  fluid-soundfont-gm 
sudo apt-get install vlc-plugin-fluidsynth

GNOME

Store a midi file in your home directory. Open Nautilus and right click in the midi file. Select "Open with" (other application) or in Properties go to "Open with". Select Timidity in /usr/bin. Appears the text:

 '/usr/bin/timidity'

Change it to

 '/usr/bin/timidity' -ia

Now, every time you click in a midi file, timidity is going to play it.

You can use a similar procedure for *.kar (open karaoke) files.

Mozilla

Go to Edit / Preferences / Advanced and in "System preferences" mark the box "Use the system preferences" (if you have Timidity installed in your GNOME system).

ALSA

Jack MIDI

OSS

See Also


CategorySound CategoryMIDI CategoryFileFormat