Re: [ecasound] midi-controller

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Subject: Re: [ecasound] midi-controller
From: Kai Vehmanen (k@eca.cx)
Date: Sat Feb 17 2001 - 14:52:46 EET


On Tue, 13 Feb 2001, Anthony Van Groningen wrote:

> Hi all, was wondering if anybody knows of a software app that emulates a midi controller.
> I want to have some sliders that I can hook up to the ecasound -km controller. I think
> I should then be able to do realtime mixing/processing then? I don't think this would be
> difficult to write but I dunno nuttin' bout midi! Thanks.

Ecasound's new MIDI-system accepts input from practically anything, as
long as its accessible via normal UNIX file operations. This means, that
you can do things like (using your favorite shell):

~> mkfifo /dev/midi-megaloop
~> ecasound -i smile.mp3 -o /dev/dsp -ea:100 -Md:/dev/midi-megaloop -km:1,0,300,1,0 &
[ let's increase the volume a bit ... ]
~> echo -e "\260\001\010" >/dev/midi-megaloop
[ ok, now to max volume ]
~> echo -e "\260\001\127" >/dev/midi-megaloop

... ok, not very practical. :) In the above you have to code the MIDI
messages into octal (and you do have to know the protocol quite
well ;)).

Seriously, it's quite easy to write an application that either produces or
is controlled by raw MIDI data (the protocol itself is very simple
compared to typical modern (monster-)protocols). From the app's point of
view, it's just the same whether it's talking to a real MIDI-device, file
or to a named pipe. Only problem is whether the app allows you to
configure the MIDI-device (some just default to /dev/midi). Anyway,
there's lots of apps that I know work fine with pipes and files: ttrk,
ardour, softwerk, quasimodo, xsynth, etc...

BTW; there's one design flaw in 1.9dev2's -Md option, it only
     accepts device names starting with the '/dev/midi' prefix. This will
     probably be changed to something like '-Md:rawmidi,whatever' in
     future releases.

-- 
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 . http://www.eca.cx/sculpscape [ my armchair-tunes mp3/ra/wav ]

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