Computer music notes

These are notes about creating music on computers. Some of these notes are general, and some are specific to Linux of Mac OS X.

Pure Data

Pure Data (Pd) is a real-time software system for live music performances.

First, I'll assume that basic sound is working. On most modern Linux distros, that would be ALSA.

MIDI synthesizers are the things that generate actual sounds. These come in three varieties:
- external (hardware) synthesizers, like a keyboard which connects via MIDI or USB
- sound cards with built-in hardware synthesizer
- software synthesizer, such as fluidsynth
Sound fonts are the pre-recorded source sounds used by the synthesizer. These are either recorded sounds from real instruments or electronically generated recorded noises.
MIDI players are the things that send the MIDI control commands to the synthesizer. This could be a hardware MIDI keyboard controller for example. There's a Linux software keyboard called vkeybd.