KMid Help

What's KMid

KMid is a midi/karaoke player, that uses /dev/sequencer to play a midi file through an external synth (I hope to include FM, GUS, and AWE support in the near future). At the same time that the song is played, lyrics are displayed in a beautiful window so that the user can sing or just follow the letter :-). It has a powerful midi mapper that will make people with no general midi synths happier than ever :-).
It supports drag & drop so you can drop in kmid any midi file from a kfm window. You can also customize the font in which the karaoke text is displayed.

How can I open a song?

Hey that's easy, let's go to more difficult questions ! :-) ...

I am sure that this song has lyrics, but they aren't showed. What happens?

There are two methods to include lyrics in a song, by using "Text events" or "lyrics events", some songs use the first, some the second, some use both of them, and some don't include lyrics :-). There's no method to know which of them is using a song, so you must try both of them in the Options menu.

What's a Midi Mapper?

If you have a synthesizer that doesn't complain with the General Midi standard, and you play a midi file with it, you will hear a piano playing the track that should be played by a flute and a drum playing the track that should be played by a piano. So you need some method to map sounds to different ones, this is what a Midi Mapper does.

How do I play a song from a specified second?

Start playing it and then press with the middle button of your mouse on the slider

How can I use a mapper with my synthesizer?

There isn't a graphical tool to configure it (yet) so you should edit the config file by hand :-(, open the ~/.kde/share/config/kmidrc file and add two lines like these :


[Midimapper]
Loadfile=**absolute path to map file**

In my case I have :
[Midimapper]
Loadfile=/home/Antonio/prg/kmid/kmid/maps/yamaha790.map

So if you, like me, have a yamaha790 you are of luck, just use the included file. But if you have a different synthesizer that isn't General Midi compliant, then you will have to make your own mapper

To do so, you should copy the file yamaha790.map to work on it, without changing the original. Suppose that it is mysynth.map (though it should be "model of your synth".map) Then you should edit the kmidrc file as above, pointing Loadfile to this copy on which you will work. Now you are ready to start.

... but I'm not, this version is not finished so I don't think that anybody will notice a small lack of help ;-) So please, follow your instinct and if you have any question, send it to me at : antlarr@arrakis.es

And remember two things :
1.- You should encourage the author to continue working on kmid, because he's a good person, but he will stop programming kmid if nobody uses it :-)
2.- You can download the latest version at :
http://www.arrakis.es/~rlarrosa/kmid.html