In both Slackware 11 and 12, I have not been able to play midi files. KDE installs a midi player. I've fired it up, picked a midi file and the player goes through all the motions of playing the file, but there is no sound.
Other than midi files the sound card works perfectly and I've installed Timidity, but no joy. Is there a "switch" somewhere I need to throw?
Thank you.

If it looks like it's playing, then everything else should be ok but you either have muted the midi device, or you are using the wrong midi device (it could be using a dummy sound device, for example). If you're using ALSA, check alsamixer and make sure there are levels high enough (and unmuted), and if that doesn't help, see what device your player is using.

You might like to try this:-


Add the following to your /etc/rc.d/rc.local file:


Good luck

Maybe you don't have patches. Midi files have notes, but no sounds. Timidity and other midi players are often installed together with the "freepats" patch set, but there are other patch sets around, and you can also use Soundfonts. If you don't know whether you have patches, "locate timidity.cfg" and look in that file with an editor for a list of files with patches (if you have them).

Audacious is in Slackware 12 and it has midi plugins (timidity), still doesn't work. I gave up on midi a long time ago. Its just something that never worked for me under Linux, but at the same time it wasn't crucial at all. *shrug*

I hope this isn't considered spamming but...

If you go to the "how to properly set up Slackware Linux" link in my sig, you will find detailed instructions on getting MIDI to work.

Thank you. I tried that and get the message on boot up that,

"cannot execute binary file."

I've checked permissions, etc., and it is marked as executable. Any ideas why it won't execute?
Many Thanks.

Binary is for the wrong architecture? You can run "file" on the binary and see if what it identifies is what you expect.

When I ran "file" on the binary it reported,

"ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1 ( SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), stripped"

?
Thanks.

Hi, lately i installed prboom on my laptop and i couldn't get the music to play following the directions from the prboom homepage
But then i came across AlienBob's timidity SlackBuild
Problem solved for me
I'm not sure why it's not on Slackbuilds.org, i guess i'll ask on irc

I don't post nor host my own stuff on SlackBuilds.org. I am an admin of SBo and scrutinize the submissions, but I keep my own stuff in my own repository. My SlackBuild scripts do things different than the scripts on SBo in many ways. At SlackBuilds.org we have the goal to keep the SlackBuild scripts as simple as possible.

Eric

Well the answer was obvious and I downloaded a 32bit version and installed it. It fires up, but midi still doesn't play.... oh, well.......

I had the same problem with an Audigy 4 under Slackware 12. Midi files would appear to play, but no sound was produced... Installing the soundfont fixed the issue.

1. Download and install the awesfx package
2. Copy the soundfont from your Creative CD into /usr/share/sounds/sf2
3. Load the sound font:

# asfxload /usr/share/sounds/sf2/CT8MGM.SF2

4. Find an open port for playing midi:

$ aplaymidi -l
Port Client name Port name
14:0 Midi Through Midi Through Port-0
16:0 Audigy 4 [SB0610] Audigy MPU-401 (UART)
16:32 Audigy 4 [SB0610] Audigy MPU-401 #2
17:0 Emu10k1 WaveTable Emu10k1 Port 0
17:1 Emu10k1 WaveTable Emu10k1 Port 1
17:2 Emu10k1 WaveTable Emu10k1 Port 2
17:3 Emu10k1 WaveTable Emu10k1 Port 3

5. Play your midi file:

$ aplaymidi --port=17:0 pachebel.midi


If it works through aplaymidi, just configure timidity to use the sound font. Here's my /usr/local/share/timidity/timidity.cfg file:

opt -EFresamp=l
opt -EFreverb=G,32 # Set reverb level with a number(0-127)
dir /usr/share/sounds/sf2
soundfont CT8MGM.SF2 order=0


This only works if your card uses soundfonts though... Check out the Gentoo Linux ALSA Guide - I know, it's a Gentoo doc, but it has some really good info on midi and alsa in general.


SK

When you use timidity, your card never sees the Soundfont or any midi commands, so all the card has to be able to do is reproduce pcm audio.

Okay, people, here's a one-stop solution for getting MIDI to work:

http://www.vcn.bc.ca/~dugan/timidity/

It's a TiMidity++ SlackBuild that also installs eawpats and adds a TiMidity script to rc.d. Afterwards, you will have a working MIDI port at 128:0. You will also be able to use TiMidity to play MIDI files directly, and hear music in games that use the TiMidity libraries (such as prBoom and Exult).

I've tested it on a fresh full install of Slackware 12.