Previous Next Table of Contents

2. Installation

2.1 How to obtain KMidi

KMidi is part of the KDE project http://www.kde.org. KMidi can be found on ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/, the main ftp site of the KDE project. It's home site is http://math.cornell.edu/~wuebben/kde.html

2.2 Requirements

In order to successfully compile KMidi, you need the latest versions of libkdecore and libkdeui. All required libraries as well as KMidi itself can be found on ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/.

2.3 Compilation and installation

If you have Timidity already installed be sure to back up your configuration file since by default KMidi will overwrite them!

% ./configure
% make
% make install

Should you run into problems please report them to me.

2.4 Where to get a full set of patches?

Each of those patch sets ( you need only one) should come with a .cfg configuration file similar to the .cfg files which come with KMidi and reside in /usr/local/lib/timdity

KMidi has configurations files ready made for you for a number of common patch sets, such as the media patch set. All you need to do know is edit timidity.cfg and source the appropriate config files for the patch set/sets you downloaded. ( If you have a look at timidity.cfg it will be totally obvious what I am talking about)

That's it. Now you can go head an play the other midis that are in the KMidi distribution ( and any others of course)

Ocassionally you will see that K Midi can't find a patch for a particular instrument. ( Open the Info Window in order to see this information ) In that case, all you have to do is go out and get yourself the missing patch and install it by moving the patch into the /patch directory and editing the appropriate .cf file to tell K Midi that the new patch is available now.

Sometimes a particular instrument doesn't sound all that well. Just go out and get yourself a different patch from any of the Ultrasound archives and replace the not so optimal patch by a better one. As you can see, it is totally up to you how good every instrument will sound. You can even make your own patches with the pat2wav utility which is included in the KMidi distribution.


Previous Next Table of Contents