Setting up Roland A-88 with QJackCtl + QSampler in Linux Mint 13

Since I started to try improving on developing my relative pitch using the CDs of David Lucas Burge's The Relative Pitch Ear Training SuperCourse, I needed Asahi, my Roland A-88 to be fully functioning again. I took a break trying to learn and memorize playing Moanin' in piano (Sakamichi no Apollon version) and thought it's best I get back to basics by trying to improve and develop my relative pitch and absolute pitch. 

Anyway, I tried setting up Asahi to my Linux Mint 13 64bit Xfce partition of Ahim, my laptop and it took awhile for me to tweak so that the MIDI output of Asahi will be heard from the speakers of Ahim. This post is a walkthrough how I did it.

First, I installed the KXStudio from the repositories.

# Cleanup previous installations if needed
sudo rm -f /var/kxstudio/*
sudo apt-get purge kxstudio-repos

# Install needed tools
sudo apt-get install software-properties-common wget

# Enable KXStudio repo (press 'Enter' once asked)
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kxstudio-debian/kxstudio

# Update software sources
sudo apt-get update

# Install kxstudio-repos
sudo apt-get install kxstudio-repos

# Update software sources again
sudo apt-get update

After installing, I installed QJackCtl, LinuxSampler & QSampler:

sudo apt-get install qjackctl linuxsampler qsampler

I then downloaded the Salamander Grand Piano Sound Font by rytmenpinne which is needed for QSampler and will make the natural sound of the Piano whenever I play Asahi.

Since Linux Mint 13 is based from Ubuntu 12.04, the default Linux kernel is old (3.2.0-23). It didn't detect Asahi as a MIDI device. I researched and found out that starting only from Linux kernel 3.11 and the newer kernels, it can detect Roland A-88 devices. I then installed a newer Linux kernel, 3.18.1-031801 and rebooted Ahim.

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.18.1-vivid/linux-headers-3.18.1-031801_3.18.1-031801.201412170637_all.deb
wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.18.1-vivid/linux-headers-3.18.1-031801-generic_3.18.1-031801.201412170637_amd64.deb
wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.18.1-vivid/linux-image-3.18.1-031801-generic_3.18.1-031801.201412170637_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i linux-headers-3.18.1*.deb linux-image-3.18.1*.deb

After the reboot, I checked if Ahim can now detect Asahi.

$ lsusb
...
Bus 002 Device 006: ID 0582:0156 Roland Corp.
...

$ cat /proc/asound/cards
...
 1 [Keyboard       ]: USB-Audio - A-Series Keyboard
                      Roland A-Series Keyboard at usb-0000:00:1d.0-1.1, full speed

Now, I start up QJackCtl. I then clicked "Setup" and used these settings in the "Settings" tab:

I clicked OK and that closed the Setup windows. I then clicked "Start", then I clicked "Connect" from the main window.

I then started to ran QSampler. I pressed F11 / View > Devices. Clicked Audio Devices, used JACK as the driver and pressed "Create".

If you noticed, in the Connections window, Audio tab of QJackCtl, LinuxSampler is now showing. I then connected "LinuxSampler" from the Readable Clients / Output Ports to "system" of Writable Clients / Input Ports.

Going back to QSampler, I added a new Channel (Ctrl+A / Edit > Add Channel). The above picture is the settings I made.

You will now notice that in the ALSA tab of the Connections window of QJackCtl, "LinuxSampler" showed up in the Writable Clients / Input Ports. I then connected the Asahi / A-Series Keyboard from Readable Clients / Output Ports to LinuxSampler.

I can now play Asahi with Salamander Grand Piano sound font in Ahim's speakers :D

If you have suggestions on how to improve this setup, or have other comments, kindly post at the Disqus comment section below. Thanks!