AKAI LPK25 MIDI Keyboard

The three kings were good (and very musical) to me this year. One of the things that they brought me was a small MIDI keyboard (AKAI LPK25). This is a very small keyboard, but very convenient for quick note entry (the computer keyboard feels very awkward for this).

Quickly after unwrapping it I set it to try it in my laptop, which has Ubuntu Studio 10.04 (64 bits) installed. For me, the most important feature is just to be able to quickly "type" a music score into a music notation software, so I decided to try with MuseScore. The section MIDI keyboard in the MuseScore documentation looked like I would have no problems, but though the keyboard was recognized and note entry was possible in a contrived way, it was not as expected. The blame was on the version of MuseScore, which in this version of Ubuntu Studio was 0.9.6 (revision: 2613). Luckily, Toby Smithe maintains a PPA with a more recent and stable version of MuseScore. Following the instructions in the PPA page and upgrading (via Synaptic the packages musescore-soundfont-gm, musescore and musescore-common), brings MuseScore up to verion 0.9.6.2 (revision: 3400), and with it note entry with my LPK25 is as advertised in the documentation. Now it is time to do some music with it...