When I'm fiddling with my keyboard I often come up with little riffs
that I'd like to record, but without the 5 min wait to boot up Cubase
or Rosegarden.  What I'd like is a tiny linux command line tool that
just lets me type 'midirec' or whatever, and /instantly/ records the
MIDI stream I'm playing into a .mid file.  Anyone know of such a tool?
  It would be fairly easy to write one but I'm sure it must have been
done before.

On 25 Apr 2005 03:14:19 -0700, charlesfox357@hotmail.com (Charles Fox)
wrote:

>When I'm fiddling with my keyboard I often come up with little riffs
>that I'd like to record, but without the 5 min wait to boot up Cubase
>or Rosegarden.  What I'd like is a tiny linux command line tool that
>just lets me type 'midirec' or whatever, and /instantly/ records the
>MIDI stream I'm playing into a .mid file.  Anyone know of such a tool?
>  It would be fairly easy to write one but I'm sure it must have been
>done before.

5 minutes?   What are you running on?  A 286?  :-)

Cubase comes up in 7 seconds on my system, from a single mouse click.
I suppose typing a command could be a few seconds quicker.  Is it
worth it?    Especially as you'd have to import the output of your
mini-program into something more useful.
   
   CubaseFAQ www.laurencepayne.co.uk/CubaseFAQ.htm
 "Possibly the world's least impressive web site": George Perfect

Charles Fox wrote:
> What I'd like is a tiny linux command line tool that just lets me
> type 'midirec' or whatever, and /instantly/ records the MIDI
> stream I'm playing into a .mid file.

arecordmidi
(should come with any distribution since about one year ago)


HTH
Clemens

Thanks -- that's just what I needed.

(I'm running linux with rosegarden here, I mean the total time to load
it, create a directory, create a file, wire up the midi inputs,
record, then save the track.  Only a couple of minutes, but enough to
be annoying if I just want to record a 2 bar keyboard doodle!)