ORCA & MIDI on DevTerm

DevTerm
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If you’re just wanting to test that ORCA is working (or you don’t own any external MIDI devices), you could install and use FluidSynth

# install the fluidsynth midi synthesizer
# this should also install the fluidsynth-soundfont-gm package too
sudo apt install fluidsynth

# start fluidsynth, using the soundfont that installed with it:
fluidsynth --audio-driver=alsa /usr/share/sounds/sf2/FluidR3_GM.sf2

If you want to launch FluidSynth in the background you can use the -i flag.

Next you need to start ORCA and set it to output to the fluidsynth MIDI output device:

  1. Press Ctrl+D in ORCA to bring up the menu
  2. Go to “Midi Output”
  3. Select “Synth input port (xxxx:0)”

Channels 0-8 should be piano, and 9 is a drum kit.

That’s the setup I use with ORCA on my Pocket CHIP anyway, it should work here too!

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