NoCrazyDots

(c) 2017-2018 Antonio Bonifati aka "Farmboy" GPL 3+

NoCrazyDots is many things... a convenient text-mode music notation, a MIDI player, an electronic band providing auto-accompainment for you, making easy for a single artist to perform. NoCrazyDots is the only small program a composer and artist needs to break into the world of electronic music.

I am a minstrel and poet, check out my free music at http://farmboymusicblog.wordpress.com You can support me and this free software project by donating new and used instruments and equipment.

COMPILE FROM SOURCES

If you do not have Linux, go download and install one even an abandoned old PC will do (choose a lightweight linux distro for that)

Then run:

$ make

to compile NoCrazyDots.

And:

$ sudo make install
or
$ su -c 'make install'

to install it for use outside of the building directory or multi-user use.

USAGE

The nocrazydots executable accepts the following parameters, in no particular order:

• a single tag character to select the part to be played for the auto-accompainment feature.

• a path to the data dir which contains definition of the voice list and drumkits. Must end with a / to tell it apart from a score file to play

• a -d or -dump option to dump the raw MIDI protocol bytes, mainly useful for debugging purposes

• a percentage of randomization for note velocities

• a + or - followed by the number of semitones to transpose

Score files should be either typed in or loaded using the shell input redirection (<) or pipes (|) or just named on the command line:

$ nocrazydots /usr/share/nocrazydots/sample_scores/twinkle.txt

If you run nocrazydots without arguments, you can write a one-off score on stdin, ending with the end-of-file character (ctrl-d). This is useful to try out a piece of a larger score you copy and paste and/or for testing/learning purposes.

By adding a second file argument with a .mid extension, instead of playing the score through a synth, you can generate a MIDI file. E.g.:

$ nocrazydots /usr/share/nocrazydots/sample_scores/twinkle.txt twinkle.mid

Please wait for all the duration of the piece for complete MIDI generation, although you can not hear anything.

After that the MIDI file can also be converted into a WAV by using a soft synth, e.g.:

$ timidity -Ow --output-mono twinkle.mid -o twinkle.wav

Reading and writing NoCrazyDots scores is simpler than the traditional notation. Just look at the sample_scores dir and you will understand anything by yourself.

TROUBLESHOOTING

NoCrazyDots requires a MIDI keyboard equipped with speakers. After making the USB connection to your computer, wait a few seconds for the keyboard to initialize. NoCrazyDots should find your keyboard automatically. If not, you will see the error:

"No MIDI keyboard detected. Try to specify a device name"

and you will have to find out what the device name of the keyboard is. Simply compare the output of the following command before:

$ arecord -l
**** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices ****
card 0: USB [Plantronics .Audio 478 USB], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 2: Generic [HD-Audio Generic], device 0: ALC233 Analog [ALC233 Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 3: Keyboard [Digital Keyboard], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

and after having connected your keyboard:

$ arecord -l
**** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices ****
card 0: USB [Plantronics .Audio 478 USB], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 2: Generic [HD-Audio Generic], device 0: ALC233 Analog [ALC233 Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 3: Keyboard [Digital Keyboard], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

E.g. in my case the device name is hw:3,0,0 This is the parameter to be passed to NoCrazyDots.

Although not mandatory, it is recommended you run NoCrazyDots as a user with access to higher ulimits, in order to reduce latency. If you see a warning like this:

nocrazydots: warning: cannot gain realtime privileges. See README.md

you should take action. In most Linux distro it suffices to add your user to in a group with the highest rtprio rlimit. You can find it out whether such a group exists with this command:

$ grep -ri rtprio /etc/security
/etc/security/limits.d/99-realtime-privileges.conf:@realtime - rtprio 98
/etc/security/limits.conf:#        - rtprio - max realtime priority

e.g. in this case you see the name of the group is realtime. Else it must be created and defined similarly, e.g. directly in /etc/security/limits.conf In Arch Linux, which BTW is my Linux Distro of choice, you just have to install the realtime-privileges package, which will create the realtime group for you.

You can then add your user to this group with this command:

$ sudo gpasswd -a YOUR_USERNAME GROUP

Then logout of your user and login again to make this effective, or just reboot and try to run nocrazydots again.

If your computer is old and slow, it is advisable to not do anything else with it while nocrazydots is playing complicated scores, in order to not introduce latency.