How to Use USB-Midi-Keyboards in Ardour

The other day I was trying to get my USB MIDI Keyboard (M-Audio Keystation Mini 32) working in Ardour 4.2. Here's how I did it.

• Start Ardour and in the Jack setup window select the ALSA Legacy Sequencer as midi system.

• Start a2jmidid:

a2jmidid -j default -e

• Create a MIDI track and connect the input of the track to the MIDI Keyboard Output in the gouting grid.

• Confine all MIDI input and output to channel 1.

By now you should be able to see that the track receives MIDI events when pressing keys on the keyboard. If you're not hearing any sound, try enabling the "in" button on the MIDI track and arming the record button.