Introduction
How I Got aRts to work with Brahms on an iMac.
I once had a nice little program called Digital Music Construction Set, which ran on the Mac Plus, and I'm still peeved that it was abandoned by Electronic Arts. So I'm an Open Source convert. I could of course spend about $400 for Finale and run it on the Mac OS, but who knows when it will be abandoned?
KDE 2 uses the Analog Real-Time Synthesiser, aRts, as a core component for sound. It is supplied with the Yellow Dog Linux 2.2 distro. (Oops! I think I mean in the Home/Office install). If KDE plays a tune at launch time, then it is configured to start the soundserver on KDE startup, and the aRts daemon has been successfully launched. You can compose MIDI directly with Arts Builder, or use the examples provided with it, and learn quite a lot about MIDI synthesis. You can also learn more from the website www.arts-project.org But MIDI synthesis in this fashion is a little too basic.
There is a composer available which makes things much easier. It is called Brahms. I have succeeded in getting it to write down and play some folk music I knew only by memory. There is a great deal more that it could do, including print the score, do multi-voice compositions, configure new instruments (with aRts), even accept MIDI keyboard input.
Check Your Soundserver
First of all, login with KDE as your session manager. If you get an error message about the sound server, we need to fix it. On my iMac, it has to be 8-bit sound
- Click on the KDE Control Center icon, between the shell-and-desktop Konsole icon and the lifebelt Help icon.
- Click the plus sign to the left of "Sound" and then select "Sound Server". The panel on the right has a tab "General" and another "Sound I/O"
- Click the tab "General"
- There are several checkboxes, and a button labelled "Test Sound". I was tempted to check "run soundserver with realtime priority", but "You need to start artswrapper as root or suid root" so I unchecked it.
"Display Messages..." can be on or off.
- For a test, click the "Test sound" button
- "Start aRts soundserver on KDE startup" plays the same sound file when you login to KDE.
Installation
- Click the "Sound I/O" tab
- There are several checkboxes and an options box labelled "sound quality" I had to change that option to 8-bits (low) to get sound to work.
- Click "Apply"
- Click the "General" tab
- Click the "Test Sound" button
OK, you could now go to the K menu, --> multimedia --> Arts Builder and play with the examples. But the following is what you will eventually want to do. Download and Compile Brahms.
Get on the web, visit http://brahms.sourceforge.net , and download:
brahms-1.02.tgz [ENTER]Then issue the command:tar -zxvf brahms-1.02.tgz [ENTER]Or you might find a .bz2 version at a mirror site, and bunzip2 it then:tar -xvf etc [ENTER]. . . . . . . . . .
Followed by the commands:cd brahms [ENTER]Go to superuser mode:su [ENTER]And:
password [ENTER]./configure [ENTER]
make [ENTER]
make install [ENTER]
Connect up aRts and Brahms
- Click on K menu --> multimedia --> aRts control (click the button, then into the menu list, and again)
- In aRts control, click View, then View Midi Manager. It is a window with views "Midi Inputs" and "Midi Outputs". The first menu label is "Add". Click on it.
- Select "aRts Synthesis Midi Output". A window opens with a dropdown selector box, containing a list of instruments. Click the dropdown arrow and select the last line "arts_all". Click OK.
- Or, you could select just some instruments (I recommend the "simple_sin","organ2" and "tri") and OK each. Each will appear in the "Midi Outputs" window.
Create, Edit and Play Some Music
- Click back into the Brahms main window, tell it to save (if you like), then mouse down in the bar with the numbers and ticks (it's the time sequencer) at the beginning, and drag to the end of the "new track" in the right hand window, to define the range.
- Launch Brahms. It should be in K menu --> multimedia --> brahms. Magically, Brahms will appear in both the Midi Manager inputs and outputs windows.
- In Brahms, click File --> New. Then Edit --> Add Scoretrack.
- Go to Midi Manager, click Brahms in the inputs, and any one of the aRts Instrument outputs, then click the Connect button.
- Back in the Brahms window, mouse into the "new track" that was added, and emulate right-click (mine is F12). Choose "Add Part".
- Right click (as above) the short label that just appeared in the right window, and choose "edit score". If the toolbar with "quantize all" is trembling, you can widen the window.
- Mouse on a note in the toolbar ( a note length) and click it into the staff. Do some more. If you are timid (or adventurous but musically untrained) just try a scale.
- Click back into the Brahms main window, tell it to save (if you like), then mouse down in the bar with the numbers and ticks (it's the time sequencer) at the beginning, and drag to the end of the "new track" in the right hand window, to define the range you want played. There are two right-pointing triangles in the toolbar above. The one on the left is "Play (range)" Click it.
- When you open a saved Brahms file, you need to reconnect inputs and outputs in Midi Manager.
Things To Watch Out For
- Do not stop the program while music is playing. You need the program to stop the music. It shoud be smarter, but it isn't.
- The Midi Manager forgets the connections when you open a new Brahms score. Just reconnect. If the sound doesn't come on, try the KDE control panel soundserver restart.
More
Experiment e.g. with the Midi Manager, and different connections inputs to outputs. Simple_sin is flute-like, and Tri is more complex. You could try aRts controller's FreeVerb, and there's lots more. Brahms appears to have sound clip editing capabilities too. I still haven't got my USB printer working in Linux, so I haven't tested printing the music.
This HOWTO was written by Albert J Rogers
