Playing MIDI files under Ubuntu

UPDATE: Found a more detailed and comprehensive explanation here.

Original Question:

I'm trying to play MIDI files under Linux. This is what I found so far:

sudo apt-get install fluid-soundfont-gm timidity timidity-interfaces-extra

then run

timidity -iA

in terminal first to get started. It should give something like this

timidity -iA
Requested buffer size 32768, fragment size 8192
ALSA pcm 'default' set buffer size 32768, period size 8192 bytes
TiMidity starting in ALSA server mode
Opening sequencer port: 129:0 129:1 129:2 129:3

However, all that I got is:

$ timidity -iA
/etc/timidity/freepats.cfg: No such file or directory
timidity: Error reading configuration file.
Please check /etc/timidity/timidity.cfg

xpt

Posted 2015-01-31T21:18:45.140

Reputation: 5 548

If you have an answer, post it as an answer – random – 2015-02-01T23:37:29.377

Answers

/etc/timidity/freepats.cfg is part of the package freepats on Ubuntu 14.04.

Try running

sudo apt-get install freepats

Then try starting timidity again.

John O'M.

Posted 2015-01-31T21:18:45.140

Reputation: 281

Seems to be the answer as explained here.

– JakeGould – 2015-01-31T23:58:36.823

@JakeGould, thanks for the link. Then would fluid-soundfont-gm still be necessary? I added that on seeing my first reported error. – xpt – 2015-02-01T04:41:01.457

1Not to necro an old thread... but you can use fluid if you want. You have to edit /etc/timidity/timidity.cfg though, by defautl it looks for freepats but you can comment out that line and uncomment a couple other lines instead to use fluid-soundfonts. – user153822 – 2016-05-02T03:23:29.997