External midi & SBLive

[smokybobo]

Alright, so far I've been happily playing mp3s and wave files, but I would like to start playing the tons of midi files I've got. Now, I know that software wavetable support is practically non-existant for the SBLive card at this moment, but could anyone tell me how to get my external midi keyboard working with it? I've been searching the 'net for a long time for some kind of hint to setting my keyboard up, but all I've been able to glean from the hundreds of pages of documentation I've skimmed over is that external midi is supported. How do I set that up though?! I must be missing something totally obvious...

So if anyone can help or has actually set it up and could tell me or even just give me a hint, would be GREATLY appreciated!

And if it helps, the only sound related thing loaded by the kernel is just the stuff for SBLive...

(and if it really IS an obvious solution, then either too many brain cells have been fried, or I really need to improve my research skills some...)

[syn]

are you trying to control an outboard midi device such as a synth module or are you just trying to play standard midi sounds off of your soundblaster?
check this site out either way, its got to be the authority on linux sound utilities and resources http://www.bright.net/~dlphilp/linuxsound/midi.html
sure wish I could get some cakewalk sonar or something for linux with the realtime kernel patch for like .01 ms latency ;) i just boot to windows unfortunately :(

[smokybobo]

Whoa! Lots of apps! :eek:

Thanks for the link!

However, I still couldn't find much relevant information to my problem. See, I'm trying to set my external midi keyboard up so that I can play with whatever generic midi player out there as well as play some old games via wine (Gabriel Knight : Sins of the father). The problem comes when every single midi player seems to try and open /dev/sequencer up, but that device just isn't supported yet with the SBLive driver. If I really wanted to just play midi files through my keyboard and that's it with whatever midi player, then I suppose I could have just installed ALSA and be done with it (seeing as how I'd already done that before my last hard drive wipe and had it working)
I just find it strange that wherever I look on the 'net I keep finding statements that say SBLive has external midi device support and yet I can't find any information that would let me set it up properly...

On the other hand, maybe I have it set up properly, and it's just all the various midi player software's fault for trying to use /dev/sequencer instead of /dev/midi or /dev/midi00?

Maybe I'll just have to wait until the day the SBLive driver can support /dev/sequencer... :(

I suppose I could just play GK in wine without any midi sound (via the loopback midi device driver), but then that's one of the whole reasons to play that game...for the story AND the music!

<sigh>

Anyway, I'm still hoping against hope that SOMEONE has a solution for this problem! Or maybe there's a way to make wine go through the ALSA sequencer? Hmmm... :confused: