How to use a Raspberry PI as a synthesizer

Published on Dec 10, 2019 Floyd Steinberg

"How to use a Raspberry PI as a synthesizer. Table of contents below! The Raspberry PI is a popular card-sized computer. In this video, I show how to set up a Raspberry PI V3 as a virtual analog synthesizer with keyboard and knobs for realtime sound tweaking, using standard MIDI controllers and some very minor shell script editing. The result is a battery powered mini synth, creating quite impressive sounds! There's a demo at the start of the video showcasing some sounds I came up with.

This video is not about Pure Data or DSSI - that's a topic for a separate video.

Table of contents
00:00 demo (Synth V1 App, realtime tweaking of sounds)
02:48 hello
03:23 required / optional hardware
04:47 required / recommended software downloads
05:18 installation instructions
06:15 enabling remote access to your PI
06:40 installing music software
07:19 you don't know JACK... (and you don't know ALSA)
08:55 Bristol synthesizer - DX7 emulator
09:19 Bristol synthesizer - Korg polysix emulator
10:01 synth v1
10:32 XRUN callbacks?
11:32 lol, Linux
11:38 setting up a patch bay in qjackctl for reusing setups
12:29 setting up synth v1's control scheme for external midi gear
13:30 creating a boot script for launching your setup after switching on
14:25 conclusion"