getting a midi keyboard working under linux

i have a midi controller keyboard (incapable of making sounds by itself) attached to the soundblaster awe32 in my computer. i spent way too much time staring at it and wishing i could get it to make sounds when i pushed the keys down. it seems it would be a simple problem, but i tried jazz++, i tried fmplay, i tried little code snippets i found here and there, and none of them worked reliably. here's what finally worked for me:

http://member.nifty.ne.jp/Breeze/softwares/unix/plm-e.html

(just in case that site goes bye-bye, i'm keeping a copy of the code in this directory as well.)

now with this in /etc/rc.boot/local:

/usr/local/bin/plm -i /dev/midi00 -o0,/dev/midi01 &

any time i hit the keys, it plays!