[freepats] Freepats 2.0

[ml at distasis.com]

John Lewis wrote:
> I would like Freetpats 2.0. I have quite a few suggestions.

Nice to see some activity on the Freepats list.

> 2. Make it easy to use new Freepats sound fonts.
>
> It would probably follow from one just from putting things in version
> control. The distributions will start packaging it.

I think a lightweight sound font set for netbooks and older machines would
be a useful package.  So far, all I've been able to dig up are larger
sound fonts with better quality.  Of course, that's useful for machines
with more memory and for creating your own music.

> 3. Better documentation.
>
> https://github.com/psi29a/unsf is the only way I know how to make a GUS
> patch. I don't know how to set a system soundfont/gus patch in pulseaudio.

I was going through command line tools for audio programs.  I'm sure I've
seen some other tools for gus patches and sounds fonts.  Not sure how well
they work though.  I can check through my links and packages if you're
interested.

I have some documentation I wrote on using ABC notation to create midi
files at http://www.distasis.com/recipes/music.htm

> 4. More Demos.
>
> I would like to see the new capabilities of software midi. I understand
> that at this point, I would probably doing a lot of tedious trail blazing
> at this point, but I still want to see it.

I've been looking for a decent lightweight midi Karaoke player with no
luck.  Ran across an interesting article on using some midi Karaoke
libraries including Timidity++.  Wanted to look into writing a SDL or
PDCurses front-end that did a better job of displaying Karaoke lyrics with
the midi music.  Haven't had much time to work on it though.

> I probably am going to start doing more with freepats soon, because I
> need to bring something to maker Faire Pittsburgh this year.

Will definitely be interested in seeing what you come up with.  At this
point, I'm interested in lightweight, cross-platform music software that
doesn't require a lot of dependencies to build.

Sincerely,
Laura
http://www.distasis.com/cpp