pianobooster for Debian
-----------------------

To hear the sound Piano Booster needs a MIDI sound generator, there are two
different General Midi sound generators available on Linux, 'fluidsynth' and
'timidity'.

Pianobooster previously used either of those but now only support 'fluidsynth'.

To install fluidsynth you must install the following packages: 'fluidsynth',
'fluid-soundfont-gm' and 'fluid-soundfont-gs', using your favourite package
manager.

To start the fluidsynth sound generator copy and paste the following command
line:

fluidsynth /usr/share/sounds/sf2/FluidR3_GM.sf2

Piano Booster FAQ suggests this line instead:

fluidsynth -C 0 -R 0 -r 22050 -c 6 -z 128 -l -a alsa -o audio.alsa.device=plughw:0 -o midi.alsa_seq.id=fs /usr/share/sounds/sf2/FluidR3_GM.sf2 /usr/share/sounds/sf2/FluidR3_GS.sf2

If you have a fast machine, you can leave out the flags '-C 0 -R 0 -r 22050'
which turns off the reverb, chorus and reduce the sample rate.

The flags '-c 6 -z 128' control the latency. Try '-c 5 -z 128' for less
latency but at the risk of audio drop outs.

The flags '-o audio.alsa.device=plughw:0' bypasses the Pulse Audio layer
which might cause a lot of latency delay, but unfortunately these flags
may also bypass the desktop volume controls.

For more information on running fluidsynth with low latency see this page:

https://github.com/FluidSynth/fluidsynth/wiki/LowLatency

On PianoBooster set the Setup/Midi Setup/Midi Output Device: to "FLUID Synth (fs):0"

If you get problems with unsteady playback or the audio cutting out then try
closing all other programs, turning off your wireless network and unplug any
network cable.

If you get an error, make sure to have snd-seq-midi kernel module loaded in your
system (sudo modprobe snd-seq-midi).

You might prefer to use qsynth as GUI interface to fluidsynth for easy setting
of Reverbs, chorus effects, etc.

-----------------------

Clarification of RtMidi's license by Gary Scavone <gary.scavone@mcgill.ca>:

Subject: Re: About RtMidi License
From: Gary Scavone <gary.scavone@mcgill.ca>
In-Reply-To: <CAFotxVNxGxkrBFr06OuAcHg5PjH9ztS7J1OR0B033mBqr_B43A@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2011 09:24:29 -0500
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Message-Id: <D1AE9378-B9C3-4A71-BEDB-BBA27E8CC69C@mcgill.ca>
References: <CAFotxVNxGxkrBFr06OuAcHg5PjH9ztS7J1OR0B033mBqr_B43A@mail.gmail.com>
To: Miriam Ruiz <miriam@debian.org>
X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.1084)

Hi Miriam,

I updated the license for RtAudio several years back to address your =
concern but neglected to do the same for RtMidi.  The following is what =
I currently use for RtAudio and I propose it should be the same for =
RtMidi.

===============
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a =
copy of this software and associated documentation files (the =
"Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including =
without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, =
distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to =
permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to =
the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included =
in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

Any person wishing to distribute modifications to the Software is asked =
to send the modifications to the original developer so that they can be =
incorporated into the canonical version. This is, however, not a binding =
provision of this license.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS =
OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF =
MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. =
IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY =
CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, =
TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE =
SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
===============

--gary

On 2011-11-29, at 2:38 AM, Miriam Ruiz wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> My name is Miriam Ruiz, and I am a Debian Developer. I am interested
> in packaging a program for Debian and Ubuntu [1] that embeds RtMidi
> [2], but I found out that RtMidi's license includes a clause that
> legally requests to send the modifications to the original developer.
> That clause is not recognized a Free Software by the DFSG [3] [4] and
> thus is preventing me from doing to. I was wondering if it would be
> possible to soften this clause so that, even if it was suggested, it
> wasn't legally mandatory or, altenatively, dual-licensing the code
> with some copylefted license such as LGPL or evn GPL so that I could
> include it in Debian Free.
> 
> Please, feel free to ask me whatever doubts you might have about it.
> 
> Greetings and lots of thanks,
> Miry
> 
> [1] http://pianobooster.sourceforge.net/
> [2] http://www.music.mcgill.ca/~gary/rtmidi/
> [3] http://www.debian.org/social_contract
> [4] http://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html (see 9 a and b)
> 

 -- Miriam Ruiz <little_miry@yahoo.es>  Tue, 29 Nov 2011 15:41:19 +0100
