How do you get rosegarden to play sound when playing a midi in it?

Question

How do you get rosegarden to play sound when playing a midi in it? Do I need Jack running?

Answer 1

You do not need to have Jack running in order to playback MIDIs with Rosegarden.

What I now have running is MIDI file playback via Rosegarden and QSynth.

The process as of Ubuntu 17.10 is largely the same as here, but follow these steps:

• install QSynth apt-get install fluidsynth
• install a soundfont library apt-get install fluid-soundfont-gs
• configure QSynth to Enable MIDI Input by checking the box in Setup > MIDI
• configure QSynth to use alsa Audio Driver under Setup > Audio
• configure QSynth to use the soundfont under Setup > Soundfonts; point to /usr/share/sounds/sf2/FluidR3_GM.sf2 or your soundfont location
• allow QSynth to restart when it prompts you
• install Rosegarden apt-get install rosegarden
• with QSynth open, launch Rosegarden
• Tell Rosegarden to play through QSynth Studio > Manage MIDI Devices and set the General MIDI Device to whatever QSynth broadcasts as its MIDI input option, ie 129:0 Synth input port or similar.

Answer 2

The documentation says:

Rosegarden includes synth plugin support for sample-accurate synthesis of MIDI tracks.
[…]
And as well as plugins, Rosegarden can communicate with any number of standalone soft synths for Linux using the ALSA sequencer MIDI protocol.

Synth plugins usually are very specialized; if you want to play some random MIDI file, you probably need a general-puporse software synthesizer like Fluidsynth or Timidity.

Answer 3

I adapted the Rosegarden+Qsynth answer to work without having to open 2 different windows, as follows:

1. Install fluidsynth and rosegarden, as well as the corresponding soundfonts via apt
2. Add the following function to ~/.bashrc or ~/.bash_aliases:

midy() {
if [ -n "$1" ]; then
  rosegarden "$1" &
else
  rosegarden &
fi
fluidsynth -a alsa -m alsa_seq -o midi.autoconnect=True <PATH_TO_YOUR_SF2_FILE>
}

3. Open a new terminal: type midy and load a MIDI file, or midy <PATH_TO_MIDI_FILE>, and hit play: rosegarden should open, and fluidsynth should play the file in the background, without the need of a Qsynth window!

Notes:

• To test that fluidsynth is working, you can try the corresponding command (after the fi) separately, by adding the path to the MIDI file at the end. It should play the file.

• In my case the .sf2 files were installed under /usr/share/sounds/sf2

• You can find further options by checking man fluidsynth and fluidsynth -o help

Hope this helps! Cheers
Andres