play midi files using your soundcard's "FM" port.

[disciple]

HOWTO: use your soundcard's opl3 port to play midi files with hardware fm synthesis

N.B. the alternative is to use timidity++ or something to do software synthesis, which sounds very good (instead of awful ) but requires ~1GHz processor to play more complicated files without glitches. Or if you have a fancy soundcard with a wavetable port or something, then you should go somewhere else and figure out how to use that.

---------------------------------
(You might not find some of these steps necessary )

1. Make sure your soundcard has an opl3 FM synth (I don't know how, but I think almost all do). If you have a Soundblaster Live! with an EMU 10K1 chipset or an AWE32 card, then the instructions are slightly different - see Tempestuous' post below.

2. Make sure your soundcard is set up properly with alsa in Puppy to use the FM synth. Somebody might have a better way, but I figure if you just do step 3, and you actually see the FM port in alsamixer, or the synth option in setvol, then it should work. If you know that your soundcard has an opl3 port, but Puppy doesn't already know it, then there is something on this page that I think may help http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8234

Check /etc/modprobe.conf or /etc/modules.conf, and look for lines like this

Code: Select all

alias snd-card-0 snd-fm801
alias sound-slot-0 snd-fm801
options snd-fm801 fm_port=0x388

snd-fm801 is the name of my soundcard - yours will be different. You probably need to add the third line and restart Puppy. 0x388 might need to be something else, but it is normal. You might be able to find out the correct number by looking in your bios or in windows.

3. Make sure the FM port on your soundcard is not muted and has the volume turned up. I don't know about other graphical mixers, but if you have xtmix, then it is probably on the left hand end and should have a (musical) keyboard picture.
You can also use alsamixer (run "alsamixer" from a console, find the "FM" control, press m to unmute it if it is turned off, and turn the volume up with the arrow keys).
You can also use setvol. Run "setvol" from a console, and it will list all the volume controls on your sound card. It probably says "SOUND_MIXER_SYNTH 3", in which case you can run "setvol 3 55" to set the volume to 55%.
The volume is probably muted every time you boot Puppy, so it is easy to set it automatically by putting the setvol command in a startup script (e.g. at the end of /etc/rc.d/rc.local).

4. Download and install the sbiload package from http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=18723 (unless you already have sbiload - try running it in a console)

5. Run "modprobe -l *opl3*" in a terminal. Mine shows me:

Code: Select all

~# modprobe -l *opl3*
/lib/modules/2.4.29/sound/drivers/opl3/snd-opl3-lib.o.gz
/lib/modules/2.4.29/sound/drivers/opl3/snd-opl3-synth.o.gz
/lib/modules/2.4.29/sound/isa/snd-opl3sa2.o.gz

Load the first two modules:

Code: Select all

~# modprobe -k snd-opl3-lib  

~# modprobe -k snd-opl3-synth

The parts of the names may be slightly different or rearranged - I run Puppy 1.x, but I have seen people talking about them with slightly different names, so they have probably changed.
You will probably want to put those two commands in a startup script so they are loaded when you boot Puppy.

6. run "sbiload -l" in a terminal. It will look something like

Code: Select all

~# sbiload -l
 Port     Client name                       Port name
 64:0     ForteMedia FM801-AU MIDI          ForteMedia FM801-AU MIDI
 65:0     OPL3 FM synth                     OPL3 FM Port

Note the number of the FM synth port.

7. run "sbiload -4 -p65:0 --opl3 std.o3 drums.o3"
You will probably want to put that command in a startup script too.
You can also run a slightly different command to get a different sound - see my later post.

8. play a midi file with something like

Code: Select all

/mnt/hdb5/My Documents/Nathaniel/Songs# aplaymidi -p65:0 *.mid

9. If everything is working right, set the ROX file permissions for .mid and .midi and .MID and .MIDI, so if you click on these filetypes they will play. I recommend

Code: Select all

 rxvt -e aplaymidi -p64:0 "$1"

as then you can close the window to stop playing if you want.

If anybody can find any better patches to use to get better sound, please tell us

If anybody can find or make a gui player that has skip buttons and allows us to play multiple files, or that allows us to skip to a spot in the track, please tell us.

------------------------------------------------------
These don't seem to be about .mid files, but:

I found an FM Synthesis forum http://www.soundshock.se/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=5

And here is a site that claims to get the most out of your opl3 chip
http://stano.korex.sk/index.php

[disciple]

1. Install mozplugger
2. In /etc/mozpluggerrc find the midi section and use this line:

Code: Select all

	controls: aplaymidi -p65:0 "$file"

For embedded midis with controls the pause button does not work, but the play and stop buttons do.

[disciple]

playmidi has a gui, but I couldn't figure out how to use it, so I compiled the amidi-plug plugin that allows xmms to play midis. It seeks, but not that accurately.

extract the two files to where their names suggest. My xmms is installed in /usr/lib - if yours is in /usr/local/lib, please report whether this still works when you put it there.

You also have to configure it from inside xmms before it will work.

BTW. Whoever made the audacious package already put up amidi-plug compiled for it.

[capoverde]

Hi, thanks for the hints: seems you're going deep into the problems MIDI musicians generally have with Linux, and your contribution is greatly appreciated.

I've succeeded only last week at editing *and* playing a Midifile with Rosegarden+Qsynth+Fluidsynth+Jack+ALSA (ufff), and that was in an interesting musician's Linux distro called Musix; how nice if it could be done more simply with Puppy!

Here I've installed Timidity in a jiffy, and it works OK: it's rather easy even to change soundfonts (haven't tested it on slow machines though). But of course there's sadly no way to edit a Midifile with it.

...I sometimes dream of writing an editing interface program in wxbasic myself, but it's remaining a dream...

[tempestuous]

disciple,
The "sbiload" soundfont loader only works with cards which have Yamaha OPL2/3-compatible fm synthesis.

For SoundBlaster Live! cards with the EMU 10K1 chipset (and also AWE32 soundcards) the necessary soundfont loader is "asfxload".
I just compiled the complete awesfx package from http://www.alsa-project.org/~tiwai/awedrv.html#Utils
which contains asfxload. It's now available as a dotpet from Raffy's site -
http://minipc.org/ipup/download/awesfx-0.5.0d.pet

The package contains the large SBLive soundfont ct2mgm.sf2 in /usr/share/sounds/sf2/
To load this soundfont, do this -

Code: Select all

asfxload ct2mgm.sf2

More details are in the full README which is installed as /root/my-documents/README-awesfx.txt

Then I think you need to load the ALSA midi driver -

Code: Select all

modprobe snd-seq-midi

To play a midi file with aplaymidi, the process is the same as explained by disciple.
Run this command to find available ports

Code: Select all

aplaymidi -l

Let's say yours is 17:0. Now play a midi file like this -

Code: Select all

aplaymidi -p 17:0 /somemidifile.mid

[disciple]

Capoverde - thankfully I haven't really gone anywhere near the problems musicians have with MIDI in Linux - this is just about MIDI playback. On the page I linked to for the sbiload package they were tackling MIDI editing in Puppy.

Tempestuous - thanks for that. I realised it didn't work with all cards, but most cards of a certain generation (around here anyway) seem to claim to have an opl3 fm synth. But I just read on wikipedia that AWE32 cards also have an opl3 fm synth, so they must either use it differently, or have something else as well...
Can you give us any insight into how to tell which cards need what? I can't even remember how I knew my card did opl3 synthesis...
It is asfxload for SB Live! and AWE32, and anything else?
Are there any additional systems as well as asfxload and sbiload?

Also, you mentioned that there are alternatives to the std.o3 and drums.o3 in the sbiload package you posted. You can't point us in the right direction to look for them can you? I've spent quite a long time searching, but maybe I'm looking the wrong way...

[disciple]

Interesting - I just tried playing those midi files of my brother's that Timidity was struggling with in Windows, and all the instruments sounded virtually identical in Winamp using the Microsoft software synthesizer, as in Timidity. But the disturbing thing is that they played fine, with no glitches or anything, even with Thunderbird and Firefox and AVG and everything running, but with Timidity I even had to exit X before they played without glitches. It seems strange that Puppy is so fast compared to Windows, but it seems to struggle with audio. Even playing mp3s in Puppy there are glitches when I move windows or even scroll a window. I wonder if it is possible to give the processes that are playing music some sort of priority, so this doesn't happen?

[tempestuous]

I just read on wikipedia that AWE32 cards also have an opl3 fm synth

Mmm, interesting, and confusing.

Can you give us any insight into how to tell which cards need what?

No great secret. Google + README's.
sbiload is one of the utilities provided by the ALSA "tools" package. There are many other utilities in this collection, for various specialised functions for various sound cards.
awesfx is available from a page on the ALSA website relating to extras for SB AWE32/64 -
http://www.alsa-project.org/~tiwai/awedrv.html
There is an interesting section at the bottom of that page: "Free SoundFont Sites"

It is asfxload for SB Live! and AWE32, and anything else?

Just those 2. The awesfx README says this:
"This package includes several utilities for AWE32 sound driver on Linux and FreeBSD systems and for Emux WaveTable of ALSA sbawe and emu10k1 drivers."

It seems strange that Puppy is so fast compared to Windows, but it seems to struggle with audio. Even playing mp3s in Puppy there are glitches when I move windows or even scroll a window.

Blame the application, not the operating system. DVD playback on my Pentium2-350 under Puppy (with MPlayer properly configured to use xvmc video acceleration) is brilliant. A modest 50% CPU usage, compared to Vector Linux at about 65%, and WindowsXP at 75%.
It sounds like you are using a big heavy application to play mp3's. The solution is simple; get yourself a better audio application:

XMMS http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=23682

Xhippo+LAMIP http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=10722
Basic gui, but low system resources. Extensive format compatibility, including AAC.

mpg123 http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=18885
Commandline only, the ultimate in low resource MP3 playback: 66% CPU usage on 100MHz 486 machine!

Regarding poor midi performance, it remains an issue of whether midi synthesis is being performed by the host processor. Even though we now know how to set up hardware synth in Puppy, I think (??) that Timidity will only do softsynth. I investigated this stuff several years ago when I was sharing a house with a musician, but I can't remember all of the details.
I seem to recall that the midi application "MusE" could be configured to output to the fm synth of your sound card, and obviously this should achieve performance benefits. But, of course, onboard fm synth can sound ugly. I think the "professional" approach is to use an external midi processor. Then you configure MusE/Timidity to output/input midi to the MPU port of your soundcard, which you then connect via cable to your midi processor device.

[disciple]

Yes, DVD playback on my machine is great too (much better in Puppy than Win98). I am using XMMS to play music, but it is the same with Mplayer, Gxine, and a few of the other players I have tried - I get glitches in the sound when I move Windows or scroll, or do similar things that make lots happen on the screen.
I have wondered whether it is something peculiar about my soundcard, or the way it interacts with the rest of the system, as I would have expected 900MHz and 512 MB RAM to be plenty for running a Puppy that is only using JWM and ROX... I actually don't have high CPU usage anyway.
Maybe the onboard Graphics card simply isn't up to it.

Yes, Timidity was doing software synthesis, but I was also using software synthesis in Windows, so maybe the Microsoft people are just very clever and can do it more efficiently.

[Tug]

tempestuous-disciple,

Thanks for the discussion. I installed awesfx-0.5.0d.pet and following tempestuous' directions got a MIDI file to play without skipping with my SBLive. Got a long way to go to figuring out audio apps with linux but I feel like I am started now.

Thanks,
Tug

[jamesbond]

disciple - your amidi-plugin is great! I use 2.15CE and it's no problem at all to have xmms playing midi now (I only need to move the files from /usr/lib into /usr/lib/xmms/Input).

As for timidity - I found out that timidity doesn't give you good performance. Fluidsynth is better and faster. In my previous machine (retired now), timidity plays chopped music - especially if more notes are being played at the same time, while fluidsynth handles the same song with no problem at all.

[disciple]

The amidi-plug plugin for xmms can also use fluidsynth instead of ALSA as a backend, although I don't think the one I compiled would, as I don't have fluidsynth... or do you have fluidsynth set up so ALSA knows about it anyway, so you can use fluidsynth through the ALSA backend?

[disciple]

I was just playing around and discovered that the sbiload code I gave was not very good advice. There are essentially 4 alternatives:

sbiload -p65:0 std.sb drums.sb

sbiload -p65:0 std.o3 drums.o3

sbiload -4 -p65:0 std.sb drums.sb

sbiload -4 -p65:0 std.o3 drums.o3

I prefer the last one. The -4 is for a file with "four operators" rather than 2, whatever this means... I think it means the patch file it uploads to the soundcard can essentially have twice as much variation in the sounds it can make.
The .sb files are supposed to give a "soundblaster-like" sound for if you prefer it.

[jamesbond]

Yes, I have fluidsynth. Unlike timidity, fluidsynth doesn't need any special command-line switch to enable it - just launch it, and it will automatically register itself with alsa.
Once I launch fluidsynth and load the appropriate soundfont, amidi-plugin can play it through its alsa back-end - fluidsynth simply shows up as another MIDI output port in its configuration.

PS: if you're interested about 2-operator and 4-operator thingy, you can see it here: http://www.fit.vutbr.cz/~arnost/opl/opl3.html. Long time ago I used to have both - and yes the 4-operator chip, programmed correctly (ie loaded with the correct patch file) sounds better (=closer to the real thing, which is sampled sounds).

[disciple]

If anyone is interested in my sound problem I complained about - I transplanted my Puppy install to a much older pc with different motherboard, video and sound cards, and on this one I don't have any problems, so it's definitely some strange hardware problem...

[wiak]

Here I've installed Timidity in a jiffy, and it works OK: it's rather easy even to change soundfonts (haven't tested it on slow machines though). But of course there's sadly no way to edit a Midifile with it.

The soundcard in my old systems don't support opl3, so:

I'm running Fluidsynth version 1.0.8 (compiled from source)
http://www.nongnu.org/fluid/
on an old Celeron 400 MHz, 128 MByte system on Slitaz (fine with Puppy too I suspect). Admittedly, on that low-powered machine it gets choppy if I try doing other things at the same time (smooth if I just play the midi in X). I've now tried the same with Puppy Linux 2.17.1 on an old Armada 110, Pentium III 1000MHz machine with 256MByte RAM and fluidsynth runs smooth even when I'm browsing with Firefox.

I've also been editing midi files on the old Celeron. First I convert the midi into abc source files by running them through the utility midi2abc. The conversion works quite well with the midis I have tried. The resulting abc source can be edited in any text editor and then changed quickly back to midi using the utility abc2midi. These utilities are available in source code form from:
http://abc.sourceforge.net/abcMIDI/

Alternatively, you can find generic Linux executables for these and other abc utilities here:
http://abcplus.sourceforge.net/

The above website provides a good guide on producing music with abc:
http://abcplus.sourceforge.net/#ABCGuide

I really prefer abc text editing music files to graphical editors; abc is much quicker, I feel, once you learn the easy syntax. And the combination of fluidsynth, soundfonts, and the abc system is relatively light in terms of resources needed. (You can even just use a small soundfont for a single instrument if you are just composing music that instrument - e.g. I often use an AltoSaxaphone soundfont which is less than a couple of MBytes in size).

However, you can get a graphical frontend to these abc utilities here:
http://ifdo.pugmarks.com/~seymour/runabc/top.html

I haven't tried the latter though, since I'm happy enough without it.

I forgot to mention, you can produce sheet music (in postscript) from the abc source by using the utility abcm2ps from:
http://moinejf.free.fr/

You can then view the sheet music in, for example, gv.

[disciple]

You might like to package some of that software for anyone else

I also have fluidsynth compiled from source, and it is much better than Timidity - it has really low processor usage. But I can't find a convenient way to use it on demand. If I launch it manually when I want to play a midi, the I can play it using the amidiplug-in for xmms, with the alsa backend, or I can play embedded midis in firefox use mozplugger. But I can't leave it running, as I can't play any other audio, so this would only be appropriate if I'm the only one using the computer, as I actually know what to do.
I've also recompiled the amidiplug-in with support for the fluidsynth backend, and this solves half the problem - I can just click on a file and play it, without having fluidsynth running all the time. But this way it uses 5 to 6 times more processor than using the alsa backend, which is completely unacceptable!

Surely there is a convenient way to play mp3s with fluidsynth? This is soooooo frustrating

[wiak]

Here are dotpets for fluidsynth, abc2midi, and abcm2ps. These were compiled on Puppy distribution 2.17.1 but will probably work fine on several other Puppy distributions.

Note that abc2midi contains several abc music conversion/editing utilities, including abc2midi and midi2abc.

You also need to download a soundfont or soundfont instrument collection for fluidsynth to use.

A single instrument soundfont is much smaller, but you might not hear anything
with it if your midi is designed for a different instrument. To start off, I suggest
downloading an instrument collection soundfont bank such as the following
(it is around 6 MBytes to download). Note that you'll have to register on sf2midi (free)
to get this soundfont here:
http://www.sf2midi.com/soundfonts/file- ... -3604.html

After installing fluidsynth, to play a midi file you simply enter:

fluidsynth -i TimGM6mb.sf2 yourmidi.midi

(assuming you are using the above soundfont collection).

or you can miss out the -i and just enter quit once you have finished with fluidsynth.

To create your own midi, first install the abc2midi dotpet
and then learn the syntax for creating music in abc from this downloadable free guide:
http://abcplus.sourceforge.net/#ABCGuide

You actually just use a text editor to write the music in abc syntax.
You can then convert it to a midi using abc2midi,
or to Postscript for viewing or printing using abcm2ps as explained below.

Here is a simple example. Create it in Geany and save it,
for example, as mymusic.abc:

Code: Select all

X: 1
K: C
C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C | C D E F G A B c | c d e f g a' b' c'

Once you have saved mymusic.abc, you turn it
into a midi by opening a console at the save directory location and entering:

Code: Select all

abc2midi mymusic.abc

that produces the midi called mymusic.midi
Or, more completely use:

Code: Select all

abc2midi mymusic.abc -o mymusic.midi

[note that this time it is a small o for orange in -o]

You can include a command in mymusic.abc saying what instrument you want the midi for.
Each instrument is referred to in the midi syntax by means of an midi instrument number.
For example, the Alto Saxaphone is midi instrument 66.
For some reason or other, you need to subtract 1 from that when telling abc which instrument to use.
So in your mymusic.abc file, you could add the following header command to make the tune for an Alto Sax:

Code: Select all

%%MIDI program 1 65

Note that it will only sound like an Alto Sax (or even be heard) if the soundfont you are using includes alto saxaphone sound samples.

Finally, to view (or print) mymusic.abc typeset as a sheet of music,
you first turn mymusic.abc into a postscript file with the command:

Code: Select all

abcm2ps mymusic.abc -O mymusic.ps

and then use gv to view or print it.
[note that this time it is a Capital O for Orange in -O]

You can also take an existing midi file and convert it into an abc text file by entering:

Code: Select all

midi2abc whatever.midi -o whatever.abc

and then modify it in a text editor to whatever suits you.
[note that this time it is a small o for orange in -o]

I hope the above little howto helps someone and removes a lot of the mystery surrounding midi playing and creation, in this case via a software synthesiser: fluidsynth. Of course, the stuff concerning abc will
work with hardware synthesis too.

md5sums for the attached files:

9839049193b4aab7217d2ba0f5723c90 fluidsynth-1.0.8-i486.pet

3be63ff8d7f977ddfb5e9f93700b4c2e abcmidi-2.02-i486.pet

be0660f1b5383d41f3146f96a52ae342 abcm2ps-4.12.30-i486.pet

[jamesbond]

... If I launch it manually when I want to play a midi, the I can play it using the amidiplug-in for xmms, with the alsa backend, or I can play embedded midis in firefox use mozplugger. But I can't leave it running, as I can't play any other audio ...

Strange. I also use fluidsynth, compiled straight from source with no special parameters, and I have no trouble playing both the midi and mp3 at the same time.
1. I start with fluidsynth using qsynth (as it's more convenient). In the audio "setup" page of qsynth, I choose "alsa" as the audio driver, but I left the "device" settings blank (which I suppose, will pick the default alsa device).
2. then I play MIDI with xmms using your excellent amidi-plugin
3. when midi is still playing, I start gxine and use it to play an MP3 file.

I can hear both !

My understanding is that as long as both audio player target alsa default device (ie "default", not "hw" or "plughw"), it should work because the default alsa device is configured with dmix behind the scene. Don't use OSS emulation, as alsa's OSS emulation will lock the sound device exclusively for itself.

PS: I'm on 2.15CE updated with alsa 1.0.13.