Alsa drivers and my MIDI love

[beer-in-box]

Hi,
I needed to use MIDI for a Guitar Pro like application and I learnt that I could enable it by installing Alsa drivers (alsa-project.org). So, I downloaded them and tried to install. In its readme files, it tells that you need ncurses. So, I found it and installed it successfully. But the ./configure command didn't run properly because of the other dependencies (I tried, it always kept saying "bla bla package couldn't be found"). So, I looked for a guide to install them and fount this: http://monespaceperso.org/blog-en/

I followed the guide from the first step to the last one without touching anything. But it failed again. Now, my sound drivers doesn't work, no sound card is found on the computer. To sum up, I can't listen to music, which was my favourite activity.

Considering that I followed the procedures in that page, what should I do to get my sound card work again? (And it would be good if it could be used as a MIDI output )

[kyphi]

The command to find what sound devices are available to you is "aplay -l" (l = lower case L). You did not give any information as to which sound device was working previously. Check the BIOS to ensure that sound is enabled. For sound problems see: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SoundTroubleshooting

As for midi files:
If you install "timidity" you will be able to hear your much loved midi files.

sudo apt-get install timidity

The above command will also install the timidity-daemon. If you want different interfaces then you can install timidity-interfaces-extra. These you can invoke via timidity -ia (for the Gnome interface), timidity -ig (for the GTK interface) and timidity -ik (for the TKM interface). Timidity is installed in /usr/bin.

If you do not like these interfaces, midi files will now play in Totem and Banshee among others.

You can also set your application preferences in Firefox via Edit, Preferences, Applications.

[beer-in-box]

The command to find what sound devices are available to you is "aplay -l" (l = lower case L). You did not give any information as to which sound device was working previously. Check the BIOS to ensure that sound is enabled. For sound problems see: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SoundTroubleshooting

As for midi files:
If you install "timidity" you will be able to hear your much loved midi files.

sudo apt-get install timidity

The above command will also install the timidity-daemon. If you want different interfaces then you can install timidity-interfaces-extra. These you can invoke via timidity -ia (for the Gnome interface), timidity -ig (for the GTK interface) and timidity -ik (for the TKM interface). Timidity is installed in /usr/bin.

If you do not like these interfaces, midi files will now play in Totem and Banshee among others.

You can also set your application preferences in Firefox via Edit, Preferences, Applications.

Thank you for your answer.

I see that the reason behind a late answer was my wording the question

Everything was working fine with the original installation. Everything about the sound (and most of the other stuff) were stock drivers and applications. It all started when I realized that I couldn't hear notes when I play a GP4 (Guitar Pro file) with tuxguitar. I learnt that it needed ALSA, and tried to install it. Then everything happened and I had to ask this question. It was MIDI sequencer and MIDI port question, not only MIDI question. I am sorry about that.

Now, I reinstalled the whole OS and I have a working sound, but I can't use tuxguitar now. I found a tutorial here about installing ALSA to Mint. I am going to try it out and report back if I have any problems.

[kyphi]

1. ALSA is already installed in LinuxMint.
2. TuxGuitar is supposed to be able to read GuitarPro files.
3. The troubleshooting help file states that if there is no sound you should install timidity.
4. When you install timidity as well as pmidi then you can use the command pmidi -l to list all your midi ports.

[beer-in-box]

Oh man, thank you! I think I couldn't understand you very well.
Now I just wonder how I managed to mess up it... I just wanted to install the new one.

[AlbertP]

When you install ALSA drivers, you get newer versions of existing sound drivers on your system.