I already have timidity installed but i don’t have midi sounds on guitar pro :S
i can’t even choose timidy has midi port on gp.
Help please.
You have to provide Timidity with instrument definitions, or provide a path to a soundfont file via the* /etc/timidity.cfg* file which itself contains a path to /usr/share/timidity/timidity.cfg configuration file. Have you attempted to do that so far?
It’s been a while since I did it. So I will revisit my archives and the system where I have timidity installed and working. Will get back to you depending your answer.
If “guitar pro” is an app, I don’t use it so cannot help with that.
no i haven’t done that. Can you explain to me?
Guitar pro it’s a similar app to tuxguitar but is for windows.
on tuxguitar i can’t set timidity has midi port too :S
Hi @goncalo_c, sorry for the delay in responding. This is what the ALSA wiki has to say about Timidity:
TiMidity is a MIDI to WAVE converter and player that uses SoundFonts and Gravis Ultrasound compatible patch files to generate digital audio data from general MIDI files. It usually comes packaged with modern linux distros but also requires a 10Mb plus set of patch files or SoundFonts to be usable.
Basically, Timidity is useful for playing MIDI files (.mid) from the linux command line or a file manager. For example:
timidity ~/path_to_file/filename.mid
The quality of sound is ok for practicing or messing about but it’s not great. The simplest way to get sound from Timidity is to reference a SoundFont file (see Wikipedia here), and that is how I always used it. The quality of sound is dependent on the quality and size of the SoundFont file. You can download free SoundFont files of varying quality, for example hammersound.net and resonance.org.
I can/will explain setting up timidity.cfg, but I don’t think it will help you with your guitar pro. It sounds to me that you are trying to use Timidity as a kind of software synthesizer (soft-synth) to be played directly from guitar pro. This would probably need either timidity support in guitar pro and/or a development patch for Timidity. Even if there is some obscure way to be found, IMHO you can bet it will involve several arcane incantations to make it work using ALSA. New development of timidity seems to be in limbo right now, documentation is poor, and several of the old googled links now fail.
There are alternative soft-synths to Timidity, that can be driven by MIDI and use SoundFont, such as Fluidsynth used with Qsynth (GUI for easier setup). For example I use them in conjunction with JACK which provides real-time, low latency audio and MIDI connectivity. That enables me to use RoseGarden as a serious MIDI and audio sequencer (similar to Cakewalk on Windows). Is guitar pro a JACK aware application?
To help progress your problem further, and/or help you setup timidity.cfg, I will need to know at least the following:
Running on openSUSE? What version? KDE or Gnome? Briefly, what are you trying to connect and apply, if looking for alternative linux apps? 
i said guitar pro but i can use tuxGuitar , it’s almost the same thing. My problem is that i can’t set timidity as midi port on tuxguitar or guitar pro. So i don’t have sound on the app.
I’m using OpenSuse 11.2 KDE
Thanks for the help
I note from Guitar Pro’s website that GP6 has a new linux version (not free), but I don’t know if it will use Timidity as a soft-synth. From a very quick look at TuxGuitar, it may be possible to get MIDI sound working with Timidity and ALSA, but it may require some more fiddling with config files. I also note that version 1.2 has a plug-in for JACK, which is useful for my own setup. I assume you will install version 1.2 from packman’s repo.
Hope you have a SoundFont file downloaded as described above. Then setting up timidity.cfg is the next step.
Apply your favourite editor, with root privileges, to /usr/share/timidity/timidity.cfg file. On openSUSE 11.2 that is actually a link to the minimum.cfg file in the same directory where the edits end up.
Find these lines and change the two source statements into comments:
##############################################################################
# This sets up the default patches
source piano+guitar.cfg
source drums.cfg
Like this:
##############################################################################
# This sets up the default patches
#source piano+guitar.cfg
#source drums.cfg
Add this statement substituting your own path/filename to the downloaded soundfont file (.sf2):
soundfont /path_to_soundfont_file/soundfont_filename
This section could now look like this:
##############################################################################
# This sets up the default patches
#source piano+guitar.cfg
#source drums.cfg
soundfont /path_to_soundfont_file/soundfont_filename
Save and exit. If you have a midi file (.mid) ready for playing, from a terminal (best for the first run of timidity) as ordinary user, you can execute this command:
timidity /path_to_midi_file/midi_filename.mid
You should hear it play and get some information on the terminal. If you do, that means timidity is working. Post back here with the result. 
timidity is playing midi files
so basickly i have to download the files that have the instruments sound right?
and put the location on that file?
thanks for the help.
Good news. Just to be sure, did you achieve that before or after editing timidity.cfg?
Download the best SoundFont file you can. You can also purchase better ones - if you google for the sites. Eventually, you need a file that includes as many instruments as your midi file collection may need. Why use SounFont? 1. To improve on the default sound when you play midi files, and 2. It’s easier to use the “soundfont” statement in the .cfg file, than mess about with patching individual instruments (IIRC, there are 127/8 different ones).
The location of the downloaded SoundFont file goes into the “soundfont” statement in the .cfg file as I showed you. Then test Timidity on a .mid file, before trying to get TuxGuitar working. Post back here with the result.
I installed TuxGuitar and it played a .mid file, but using it’s own default plug-in synthesizer that was installed automatically along with many other plug-ins. The sound was ok, but not good. I’m pretty sure it didn’t use Timidity because the sound and quality was different to my SoundFont (8MB in size). I also managed to get TuxGuitar working with Fluidsynth and Qsynth (after installing the two packages with Yast). That definitely used my SoundFont file with the better quality instruments.
i did that before i edit the file.
in tuxguitar, i have sound but it’s not good, it doesn’t even has a normal guitar sound :S
Ok, I guessed it was before any edit.
When you get a decent SoundFont file, Qsynth is the way to go with TuxGuitar. Qsynth has a proper GUI with knobs to change its soft-synth settings and a setup function to browse to the soundfont file. TuxGuitar picked up the presence of Qsynth/Fluidsynth and provided a selectable setting in in Tools>Settings (or was it Preferences).
Anyway, glad you are making progress. BTW Guitar Pro 6 looks good on its website.
i just need a nice guitar soundbank, which one do you recomend?
That’s a big question, and difficult to answer for anyone that doesn’t know the types of music and guitar that you are interested in.
I took a fresh look at those two websites that I suggested in a previous post. I found Resonance DB offers the better experience for choosing and downloading soundfont files. Hammersound is one of the oldest sites, but I failed in several attempts to download yesterday and several of their links failed. I noticed that some of the notable authors’ GM soundfonts were listed on both websites.
Assuming you select the site at Resonance DB. You then need to choose a soundfont file for a first try, but without knowing your taste, I can only give you these hints for a process of elimination:
You will probably find more soundfonts for electric guitars than for acoustic and classical (nylon strung) guitars. If you choose electric, you can eliminate bass guitar if not interested. You can get some idea from the file name.
After that, you have a choice based on style or genre e.g. Jazz, Rock. Heavy Metal, etc., along with appropriate guitar effects e.g. clean, overdriven, distortion, etc. Also you can consider those fonts which emulate a particular brand name of guitar.
If you click on the name of the soundfont file you will get more information for that file. This may include the date when the soundfont was produced, and some go back to the mid 1990’s when many of the soundfonts produced then were less realistic. This was particularly true for guitar and other stringed instruments, because the technology originally was based on simpler keyboard instruments with less complicated sound modelling. Let’s look at an example of mine to illustrate progress.
A General Midi (GM) soundfont can contain 128 different instruments. Over ten years ago I had an SB AWE64 Gold soundcard which had the advantage of being able to load E-MU’s 8MB GM SoundFont Bank of sampled musical instruments. That was considered high quality at that time. Although I don’t use that soundcard now, I can still use the 8MB SoundFont file with Timidity or Qsynth and it sounds much better than TuxGuitar’s default soft-synth. However, recently I downloaded one of Resonance’s seemingly most popular GM files of 140MB approx, dated 2007. The instruments (standard GM - 128) were noticeably more realistic and better quality of sound, because the file contains much more detailed sound modelling. This was particularly true for basic classical, acoustic, and electric guitar instruments included - usually about eight not including bass.
Having eliminated those files that don’t interest you but you still cannot decide by date or filesize, you can see which are the most popular SoundFonts, as each files download count is shown. Why not just chose the most popular download, for a first try?
Please note that if you are playing midi files created by other people, you may get strange results or silence if your instrument patch numbers don’t match those stored in the .mid file e.g. if you are only using a small bank of guitar patches. For that reason I use a complete GM SoundFont bank of instruments on first playing midi files authored by others.
i don’t know but i can’t find the resonance bd site :S
It was definitely there when I posted. Now I get this error in firefox “Server not found”. Hmm. Your guess is as good as mine as to why or what has happened.
That leaves us with hammersound which seems to be having problems with some of it’s links. You will have to google for soundfonts. You might also consider buying one as you are only looking for a smaller font with guitar sounds exclusively. :\