[fluid-dev] Best way for an app to use fluidsynth?

[Stephen Cameron]

Hi,

I wrote a MIDI drum machine thingy for linux
called Gneutronica ( see http://gneutronica.sourceforge.net )

Right now, I can only use it with "real" MIDI devices, so far as I know.  It 
opens up (by default)
/dev/snd/midi1 and writes MIDI stuff in there.  It's very simple minded in that 
respect, I am
pretty new to MIDI programming.

I just found fluidsynth, and it seems like it would be pretty easy to get 
Gneutronica to do sample
based playback by using fluidsynth, which would make it useful for a lot more 
people, since most
people don't have "real" MIDI gear sitting around, not to mention the available 
samples would
likely be better and have more variety than what you can get out of a Boss drum 
machine.

I'm wondering what's the best way for my app to use fluidsynth?  It looks like 
it would be easy to
embed fluidsynth in my app, and I think this would work well.  I also saw some 
mention of a socket
based interface, which seems (from a programmer's persepctive) more natural and 
maybe even easier.
 I'm thinking maybe I can swap out this socket to fluidsynth with my 
/dev/snd/midi1, and maybe
just write the same stuff I'm already writing out there?  However, maybe 
linking fluidsynth in and
just calling the functions would be better (less context switching, etc.) and 
maybe the protocol
to talk to fluidsynth via socket is nothing like talking to /dev/snd/midi* ?

It *seems* like there should be some way to route the stuff I'm already writing 
to /dev/snd/midi*
into fluidsynth without either program knowing about the other.
(And I think if Gneutronica knew about JACK, then maybe that would be my 
answer, but JACK is, so
far, too complicated for me. )

But maybe I'm just trying too hard to be lazy and the better answer is to just 
link with
fluidsynth and call into it directly?

What would you recommend?

Thanks,

-- steve



                
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