Software Synth in Jamulus

Linux

We will elaborate the concept of playing a software synth on Linux as example and transfer that to other operating systems (e.g. Windows, MacOSX).

• (Hammond Organ Synth) As an example we talk open source software synth setBfree, which is a hammond organ emulator that outputs through JACK on Linux.
• (MIDI Keyboard) The MIDI keyboard is used to generate the key pressed events, that are transmitted through a USB-MIDI interface to Linux system and the Synthesizer setBfree generates the corresponding tone for the pressed key. In general the MIDI keyboard can also be replaced by a digital wind midi controller, that does the same but the tone is dependent on how the musician blows air into the digital wind controller.
• (Connector to Jamulus) You may hear the audio output of your Linux system on your speakers but the audio output may not be use as input for your Jamulus session. So another step is to connect the audio out to Jamulus client (with QJackCtl).

First of all we explain a few basic concepts on Linux to use MIDI and Audio together.

• ALSA is the basic to connection to the hardware, i.e. the soundcard and the midi controller for the keyboard.
• JACK is build on top of ALSA and uses ALSA for the audio output. It provides a adequat environment for music production on Linux.
• Synthesizer like the Hammond Organ emulator setBfree connect to JACK for audio output.
• Jamulus connects to JACK.

Now we look an the workflow to use the whole infrastructure in Jamulus.

• Use the install script for Jamulus on Linux or install Jamulus with the manual in the wiki.