Getting Started with MIDI on Linux

Like many computer people, I tinker around with music. I noodle around on the guitar, and sometimes want to lay down a bass track for accompaniment, or transcribe some music. When I bought a MIDI keyboard for the family a few years ago, I took the easy option and picked up a Windows music-editing application, but this always rankled. However, like many Linux users, I found that MIDI didn't seem to work on my system; and with lots of other things to work on, figuring out MIDI became a fairly low priority. But I finally found time to get it all sorted out, and now the musicians in our family are enjoying synthesized drums and other backing as they practice.

Whenever I investigated MIDI and read articles on various web sites, I always felt as though I'd come in half-way through a movie; everyone else seemed to know what was going on, but I was completely lost. In this article, I'll try to provide an overview that puts the details (found on various referenced websites) into perspective and gets you going fairly easily. The goal here is to get a minimal working setup which you can use as a basis for further exploration.