Virtual MIDI Piano Keyboard setup

Question

I installed Virtual MIDI Keyboard (vmpk) using apt-get install. I also have Jack control and Qsynth installed. When I open vmpk, I cannot hear the sound coming from it. How can I do the setting to let the sound come out?

Answer 1

vmpk is a virtual MIDI Master keyboard, and does not produce any sound. To generate sound, you must

• connect the MIDI output from mvpk to the MIDI input of some tone generator (e.g. qsynth). If you then
• connect the audio output from the tone generator to the audio input for your monitors,

you should hear some sounds.

In your specific situation, where you want to use vmpk, qsynth, and jack control, I would recommend the following procedure to generate audio based on virtual keystrokes:

1. Install the "patchage" and "fluid-soundfont-gm" packages
2. Open Jack Control
3. Review JACK configuration to ensure it is attached to your preferred audio interface
4. Start JACK (the big play button)
5. Open Patchage
6. Open vmpk
7. Open Qsynth
8. In patchage, connect vmpk MIDI out to Qsynth MIDI in
9. In patchage, connect Qsynth audio out to your audio interface (both left and right channels)
10. In Qsynth, load a soundfont from /usr/share/sounds/sf2/FluidR3_GM.sf2
11. Virtually press any key in vmpk to hear sound

Although the specific tools in use differ slightly, you may find the guidance at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuStudio/Workflows#Play_soft_synths_or_soundfonts_with_a_keyboard helpful. The primary difference is that you will be using a virtual keyboard rather than a physical keyboard, but patchage should not be able to tell the difference.

Answer 2

An alternative solution:

In Qsynth:

MIDI tab: Enable MIDI Input box checked
ALSA Sequencer Client ID: Qsynth1
Audio tab: Audio driver: alsa
Soundfonts tab: SFID 1; Name /usr/share/sounds/sf2/FluidR3_GM.sf2; Offset 0

In VMPK:

-->Edit -->Connections: "Enable Thru on MIDI Output" checked
Input MIDI Connection <blank>
Output MIDI Connection FLUID Synth (Qsynth1):0