kb-drums

Play drums with unnoticeable latency on your keyboard!

Installation

For pre-built binaries for your platform, visit the releases page.

To build kb-drums from source, keep on reading.

Building the Project

First, if you're on a linux system, make sure you have alsa dev libraries installed:

# debian and derivatives
apt install libasound2-dev

# RHEL and friends
dnf install alsa-lib-devel

You have two options:

Using git

git clone https://github.com/insomnimus/kb-drums
cd kb-drums
git checkout main
cargo install --path . --locked

Using cargo

cargo install --locked --git https://github.com/insomnimus/kb-drums --branch main

Requirements For Running The App

You only need a MIDI device running as a service/daemon. Windows devices come with a default MIDI device, but the quality is pretty bad so Virtual MIDI Synth or OmniMIDI is recommended.

On *NIX or OSX, Fluidsynth is very nice, although there are a lot of alternatives.

Fluidsynth also works on Apple devices.

Usage

kb-drums 0.6.1

Play MIDI drums from the command line.

USAGE:
    kb-drums.exe [OPTIONS] [SUBCOMMAND]

OPTIONS:
    -c, --config <config>       Specify a custom config file.
    -d, --device-no <device>    The MIDI device no. Defaults to the first available device.
    -h, --help                  Print help information
        --no-raw                Disable raw mode.
    -v, --volume <volume>       A number between 0 and 127, 127=max.
    -V, --version               Print version information

SUBCOMMANDS:
    default-config    Display the default configuration.
    drums             Show a list of available drum names.
    help              Print this message or the help of the given subcommand(s)
    keys              Show available key names used in the config file.
    list              List available MIDI output devices. [aliases: ls]

Key Mapping

You can specify a config file to kb-drums with the --config option. You can generate a default config file by running kb-drums default-config.

In the keys map, the keys are any letter keys (a-z) and the values are either a drum name (run kb-drums drums to see them all) or any valid MIDI note numbers (not strings, numbers).