Playing MIDIfiles under Linux

[Lorenzo Taylor]

Timidity++ is about the best software midi synthesizer for Linux. It is
usually known to your package manager as timidity. Also, Ubuntu just got
the Fluid release 3 soundfonts which will work with timidity. If your
distro is Debian based, even if it isn't Ubuntu Hardy alpha, you can
download the debs from
http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/f/fluid-soundfont/fluid-soundfont-gm_3-0ubuntu1_all.deb
and
http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/f/fluid-soundfont/fluid-soundfont-gs_3-0ubuntu1_all.deb

You should just be able to wget those links if you use a command shell
on a regular basis. These debs are almost certain to work on any
Debian-based distro.

If you have an rpm-based distro such as Fedora, the Fluid soundfonts
may not be included, but you may alien the debs mentioned above.
Aliening the debs should almost certainly work, since there is most
likely no major difference in the filesystem hierarchy that would pose a
problem for these packages.

To setup timidity to work with the fluid soundfonts, just add the
following 2 lines to the bottom of your /etc/timidity/timidity.cfg

soundfont /usr/share/sounds/sf2/FluidR3_GM.sf2
soundfont /usr/share/sounds/sf2/FluidR3_GS.sf2

Also, you will probably want to comment out any line that mentions
freepats, since this patchset is incomplete and doesn't sound as good as
the fluid soundfonts. The line will look something like

source /etc/timidity/freepats.cfg

Hope this helps,
Lorenzo
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