Timidty

[D. Michael McIntyre]

On Saturday 15 December 2007, Bharani Prasanth Sure wrote:

> > I doubt selecting a particular bank would solve your problem, but maybe I
> > don't quite understand exactly what you're facing.
> >
> > Can you send me a sample file to examine for myself, so I can try to get
> > it to play with TiMidity?  I'll post the results back to the list.

> Yes,

I meant send it to me privately, instead of mailing a copy to all 50,000 
Ubuntu Studio users who are subscribed to this list.

>                I think you are right..But how to select a particular bank.
> Is there any way to do it? Please try to play the attached file..Most

You select a bank with a particular MIDI controller.  Something like 
Rosegarden insulates you from the details of how this works, and I don't 
quite remember them myself.

Anyway, as I suspected, changing banks doesn't have anything to do with your 
problem.  It says:

  No instrument mapped to tone bank 0, program 22 - this instrument will not
  be heard

What this means is that there is no program 22 in tone bank 0.  This doesn't 
mean you need to change to a different bank, because there isn't another 
bank.  Tone bank 0 is the only bank with the default setup as TiMidity + 
Freepats ship out of the box.

If you look in /etc/timidity/freepats.cfg you can plainly see that there is no 
program 22 in tone bank 0, just like this error indicates:

  bank 0

   0      Tone_000/000_Acoustic_Grand_Piano.pat amp=120 pan=center
   [...]
   21     Tone_000/021_Accordion.pat
   23     Tone_000/023_Tango_Accordion.pat
   [...]

They skipped over program 22.  I don't work at Freepats or TiMidity, and I 
have no idea why this is so.

Possible solutions:

1) Load the MIDI file into something like Rosegarden and change whatever is 
trying to use program 22 to use some other program.  (You have options from 
there.  You could export the result back out to a .mid file, or run TiMidity 
as an ALSA synth client (timidity -iA), and play TiMidity directly from 
Rosegarden.)

2) Edit /etc/timidity/freepats.cfg (as root, of course) and map program 22 to 
something else, just so you'll get some result here.

3) Run TiMidity with some other soundfont.  (I just spent 20 minutes digging 
around in the 897-line man page trying to figure out just how to do this, and 
I have no clue yet.  It does say it can run using .sf2 format soundfonts, the 
most common type, but damn if I see what string of text to feed it to make 
that happen; nor can I hit on what string of text to search for to find the 
answer.)

4) Abandon TiMidity in favor of something with a friendly interface, like 
QSynth.  (Unless you're using it for some purpose QSynth can't accomplish.  
It does have some unique functionality.)

> probably you will see the result same as mine.Also timidity  gets garbled
> sound when I use it in the back ground like when I am switching between the
> windows while playing. Is there any way to get over with it...?

That's probably a realtime priority issue or something.  Not my area of 
expertise.  I'm totally dependent on the kind folks at projects like Ubuntu 
Studio to save me from my abysmal ignorance about such matters.  (I know what 
I don't know, but you have to be a rocket scientist and breathe and sweat 
this realtime priority latency gobbledygook to get anything to work.  I'm 
glad there are people willing to wade through all that insanely complicated 
garbage on my account, because I'm certainly not up for the challenge myself.  
Blah.)
-- 
D. Michael McIntyre