Griode lets you play music using a LaunchPad or a similar controller.
You need:
- Python 3
- FluidSynth (to generate sounds)
- at least one SoundFont (instrument bank used by FluidSynth)
- a LaunchPad or similar MIDI controller
On Debian/Ubuntu systems, you should apt-get install python3-dev libasound2-dev libjack-dev.
Then you can pip install -r requirements.txt.
If you get compilation errors, you might need extra packages (libraries or headers).
Note: if you have problems related to the installation of python-rtmidi,
you might be tempted to try to install rtmidi instead. DO NOT! The two
packages are slightly incompatible; so after installing rtmidi, perhaps
Griode will start, but you will get another bizarre error at a later point.
On Debian/Ubuntu systems, apt-get install fluidsynth will do the trick.
Go to the soundfonts subdirectory, and run the script download-soundfonts.sh.
Alternatively, you can download your own soundfonts, place them in this directory,
and create a symlink default.sf2 pointing to the soundfont you want to use.
Note: Griode only supports one soundfont at a time right now, but this will change in the future.
SoundFonts are instrument banks used by some audio hardware and by FluidSynth
to generate notes of music. The typical extension for SoundFont files is .sf2.
There are many SoundFonts available out there. Some of them are tiny: the Sound Blaster AWE32 (a sound card from the mid-90s) had 512 KB of RAM to load SoundFonts, and there are SoundFonts of that size that offer the 100+ instruments of the General Midi standard! And some SoundFonts are huge: I saw some 1 GB SoundFonts out there with just a couple of piano instruments in them, but in very high quality (i.e. using different samples for each note and for different velocity levels.)
Here are a few links to some SF2 files:
After installing the dependencies as described above and ensuring your Launchpad
is plugged into your machine, run ./griode.py.
Set LOG_LEVEL environment variable to DEBUG for verbose output.
I develop Griode with a LaunchPad Pro connected over USB.
I want to support other LaunchPads and possibly other grid-like instruments as well, but I only have access to a LaunchPad right now.