Yoshimi Pi

[Martin Walker]

Ooh, thanks for this Will - being a total beginner at Linux, having an app to streamline the Yoshimi Pi update process could help bypass a world of pain

Looking forward to the official write up.

Martin

[James Perrett]

Our lad is now enjoying experimenting with Yoshimi. On the recommendation of a friend of mine we set up a Patchbox system on his Raspberry Pi 4. Patchbox is a slimmed down version of Raspbian specifically set up for audio with Jack and Alsa already configured. We then downloaded Reaper and, after a little bit of fiddling with Jack, we managed to record and play some Midi.

We then downloaded Yoshimi - it was actually very easy once you get used to using apt-get for every new bit of software.

He's just come in to tell me that he has his USB Midi keyboard talking to Yoshimi and he's set up the audio output to feed into Reaper so that he can record it. I can hear some interesting sounds coming out of his room.

[Folderol]

Well, that's good to know
Which version did you get?

[James Perrett]

I'll have to check tomorrow.

He was very chuffed to find that Yoshimi responds to the filter and resonance controls from his keyboard. However, it didn't seem to respond to the reverb control (controller 91) or chorus control (controller 93) - is there a configuration setting somewhere to set this up?

[Folderol]

Good to know he's getting into it. I'll be interested to know how deep he goes down the rabbit hole

Both Reverb and Chorus are effects that can have their controls MIDI-learned.
to do this, Right-click on the control you want to learn while holding down the Ctrl key, then wiggle the physical control you want to learn. Since V1.7.4 almost all controls can be learned, and most will affect playing notes not just next note.

There is a 'gotcha' with the MOD wheel. It only works on voice patches that have the AddSynth and/or PadSynth frequency LFO depth set above zero! However, the physical wheel can be learn linked to any other control (as can the pitch wheel)

If he gets stuck there is a link to a supplied user guide in the Yoshimi dropdown menu. This is quite heavy going for older versions, in which case, a more friendly one is here:
http://yoshimi.sourceforge.net/docs/user-guide

This is really for Versions 2.0 or later, but apart from the filer the majority of the info also applies to earlier versions.

Finally,
If in doubt hover the mouse over a button or control for info and hints.

[James Perrett]

Thanks Will,

That's all very helpful. He's using the standard SD card in there at the moment but we'll give this a try the next time he gets back to using the Patchbox SD card with all the music software on it.

[Folderol]

Just a note that Yoshimi Pi 008 and 009 are still unclaimed. From time to time I run these and keep the software updated so they always have a recent version of Yoshimi itself.

Price is negotiable! Also I have another one on special offer.

So for those interested please form an orderly queue of Priv. Mail

008 is pale green and 009 is mauve.

[Arpangel]

I was shocked today, my partner, who isn’t the slightest bit computer orientated, said, while I was driving the car "why aren’t we using Linux?" (nearly ploughed into the car in front) She does have this habit of going off on tangents that have nothing to do with what we’ve currently been talking about, I said "what!" what are you talking about!
She said, maybe I’d get on with it better than those other "things"

[Folderol]

Well there you go. Install Linux on a 'spare' machine and you can also install Yoshimi at the same time

Of course, just getting a Yoshimi Pi would be simpler for music

[MarkOne]

Just idly looking across the room at my Alesis Vortex keytar and wondered how small a synth could be made that tucked in a box on the back of the strap for dragging along to an open mic night. Could a Yoshimi fit the bill?

Could I for instance have a battery operated unit with a PI with16 programs on MIDI program change 1-16 and no other UI for performance ?

Would battery be a feasible power source?

Just kicking the possibilities around in my head

[BJG145]

+1, been wondering about a headless RPi running Yoshimi as a compact embedded synth engine; maybe on a compute module. It should be perfectly feasible for someone with the right skills. I'm not great with Linux so I've only had it running on a laptop so far.

I see the Vortex has MIDI DIN as well as USB. There's a tiny synth called the HPi Flash that runs on a MIDI DIN plug. I'm not aware of anything similar for USB MIDI.

(I thought there was some other (analogue?) synth running on something not much larger than Flash that I saw reviewed in SOS once; can't find it now. Maybe it was the Flash.)

Synths don't need the bulk of the controls for a UI, and could be configured by a mobile or web app. Warbl is a great example. (Not seen another online configuration utility quite like it.)

https://warbl.xyz/configure.html

[James Perrett]

My son has a Pi Zero in a robot car which runs from 2 18650 rechargeable batteries. I'd guess that there is a power supply between the batteries and the Pi in order to give a constant voltage for the Pi. I reckon, with a Pi Zero and similar sized DAC, you could probably get 4-6 hours life out of a pair of 18650s. The batteries are going to be the physically largest thing in the system.

My son controls things using either VNC or Remote Desktop so you could control it from a phone or tablet running those. It would probably be simplest to use the Vortex's USB MIDI output - Yoshimi seems to work fine controlled by my son's USB equipped Yamaha keyboard.

[Folderol]

There are quite a few Yoshimi controls that can be tweaked over MIDI including some NRPNs for detailed access into it. They are listed at the end of the HTML user guide. Yoshimi is also quite happy running headless.

One of our blind users is perfectly comfortable using the command line. I don't think there are any controls that can't be reached that way - even things like MIDI learn can be set up.

If memory is tight, it can also be built headless - although its footprint it surprisingly small for what it can do.

The Yoshimi Pi was originally intended to be able to run that way too, but changes in the OS put the mockers on that, and with interest having dried up I haven't been exactly motivated to find a work-round

[Folderol]

I finally got around to looking at re-instating this, and it is if fact do-able - that is to say, run full-fat Yoshimi without any video connected at all while still having the one-button managed start and stop.

The 'Start' and 'Run' are sorted by going back to an older style of linux initialisation, but 'Stop' is being a bit difficult at the moment

[Folderol]

The good news is that, I have one of the units here that will now work quite correctly with no monitor plugged in, so is truly headless in operation, and it's managed entirely within software, so no hardware changes needed.
This means, as soon as the green light comes on you can send ordinary MIDI messages to run, and you can change programs etc. via MIDI messages. You can also instruct it to shut down via a specific NRPN (described in the user guide).

Also, while the unit it running without video you can still type in commands, although you need to be more careful as you can't see the results! You can shut down from there too with 'ex fo<return>' {exit force}.

Startup time is the same as before, just under 35 seconds.

If you are confident you can follow the directions to the letter, I can give you detailed instructions on what to do.
There are four files that need to be edited, then a program that has to be deleted.

[BJG145]

Great work! I'd be interested to know how you pull off that trick.

[Martin Walker]

Wow - that's an impressive achievment Will - well done!

[Folderol]

It was mostly down to display management.
I had a vague recollection of the time when you had to set this up yourself if you wanted a full graphic interface, rather than just a terminal entry, so had a dig around in my very old notes from when I first started using Linux.

Fortunately this basic subsystem is still there for (at least) debian derived distros, and doesn't care whether a display is attached or not, so the answer is the remove the display manager (scary so that's actually done last).

You then run as a terminal which tries to start the display manually. If that works you stop there. Otherwise you go on to run Yoshimi set for no GUI, also manually setting up the power controls we use for the Pi.

The one downside is that as you are calling the display from a terminal, you can't then open a terminal window without strange and unpredictable consequences, so I've removed the entry from the desktop.

When setting this up there are a number of steps that have to be taken in the right sequence otherwise you can easily end up locked out completely.

I'm currently updating the Yoshimi Pis I have here - two done, one to go.
At the same time, I've been testing out a 'moderate' overclocking scheme. This seems to make a significant improvement all round, and even after quite heavy runs, I'm not seeing core temperatures above 60deg. Throttling occurs at 80.