PMIDI(1)                                                      General Commands Manual                                                     PMIDI(1)

NAME

       pmidi - A midi file player for ALSA.

SYNOPSIS

       pmidi [ -pclient:port ] [ -l ] [ -ddelay ] file...

DESCRIPTION

       The  pmidi  command reads in the specified midi files and plays them through the ALSA sequencer.  You can specify on the command line which
       sequencer port that you wish to use.  Use the -l option to get a list of possible sequencer ports for your machine.

   OPTIONS
       -pclient:port
              Specify the ALSA port to send the midi file to.

       -l     List the possible output ports that could be used.

       -ddelay
              Delay after song ends.  This is used to prevent the last note of a song being chopped off early.  The default is two seconds.

   Port numbers
       You can specify client:port numbers in the ALSA_OUTPUT_PORTS environment variable.  You can also supply a comma (or space  if  quoted  cor-
       rectly) separated list of client:port numbers.  This will allow you to play midi files that use more than 16 channels.

   Examples
              pmidi song.mid song2.mid
              pmidi -p "64:0, 64:1" song.mid

TROUBLE SHOOTING

       Before  you  start  you need to have ALSA installed and configured correctly.  This man page cannot cover all general ALSA topics, but here
       are a few things to check when things do not seem to be working.

   Checking ALSA
       1.  First check that the correct sequencer modules are loaded for your sound card:

           -  For a card with an external Midi connection, you need to load snd-seq-midi.

           -  For the OPL2/3 internal synthesiser you need to load snd-synth-opl3.

           -  For the AWE32/64 internal synthesiser you need to load snd-synth-emu8000.

           -  For the SB Live! internal synthesiser you need to load snd-synth-emu10k1.

           -  (Let me know of any more)

       2a  If you have an AWE32/64 or SB Live! you will need to load the sounds with sfxload in the same way as for the standard kernel drivers.

       2b  If you have the OPL3 FM synthesiser you will have to load the FM instruments with sbiload.  See note below.

       3.  Make sure that the synth in the mixer is turned up and unmuted if appropriate.

   Before use
       Because you may have more than one sound card and each sound card may have several MIDI connections, you have to tell pmidi  which  one  to
       use.

       First find out what the possibilities are for your system:

       If you run:
              pmidi -l
       it will give you a list of the possible devices that it can play to. On my system I get:

       Port    Client name                      Port name
       64:0    Rawmidi 0 - EMU10K1 MPU-401 (U   EMU10K1 MPU - 401 (UART)
       65:0    Emu10k1 WaveTable                Emu10k1 Port 0
       65:1    Emu10k1 WaveTable                Emu10k1 Port 1
       65:2    Emu10k1 WaveTable                Emu10k1 Port 2
       65:3    Emu10k1 WaveTable                Emu10k1 Port 3
       128:0   FLUID Synth (28152)              Synth input port (28152)
       129:0   Client-129                       TiMidity port 0
       129:1   Client-129                       TiMidity port 1

       Any  of the port numbers in the first column can be used with pmidi. In the example above the first one is the external Midi port, the next
       four are the internal wave table synthesiser.  Then there are two software synthesisers running, FluidSynth (http://www.fluidsynth.org) and
       Timididy.

       If you don't see anything listed then check that the correct ALSA modules are loaded as in the section "Checking ALSA".

ENVIRONMENT

       ALSA_OUTPUT_PORTS   Port to use in playing midi file.

SEE ALSO

       playmidi(1)

AUTHOR

       Steve Ratcliffe <steve@parabola.demon.co.uk>

                                                                    Dec 20 2003                                                           PMIDI(1)