Using A Games Joystick As A MIDI Controller

MIDIJoys can convert a game joystick, mouse, trackball or trackpad into a dual-axis MIDI controller.

Given that so many musicians these days are using hardware MIDI controllers to provide them a real-time, hands-on softsynth experience, I'm surprised that so few seem to be pressing other controllers — such as those used with games — into service. Many PC musicians already have a suitable interface for such controllers, in the form of the 15-way game-port connector found on many motherboards, and also on many consumer soundcards, such as the SoundBlaster range. Games controllers also tend to be very inexpensive.

Granted, many games machines employ digital joysticks that simply send left/right/up/down messages (plus the essential 'fire' message, of course!), and these are not as useful to musicians as fully variable controls, but game-pads that employ a group of discrete switches could still be utilised as a remote transport bar with controls such as Play, Stop, Record, Fast Forward, and Rewind. All you need is a software utility to convert their data into a suitable format.

Even easier to use for the same purpose is a dedicated PC keypad (these are often available as extras for laptops), since many modern MIDI + Audio sequencers already use the appropriate keypresses for their default transport co

PC Snippets     After officially abandoning it for several years, Sonic Foundry have surprised us all by relaunching the wonderful CD Architect Red Book pre-mastering and CD-burning application. Version 5.0 includes the same comprehensive PQ and Playlist editing as ever, but now also offers support for up to 32-bit, 192kHz source material, high-quality on-the-fly resampling for non-16-bit/44.1kHz files, dual monitor support, real-time DirectX effects for individual regions and the master bus (20 DirectX effects are bundled with the package), event normalisation, and audio scrubbing. By the time you read this, it should be available as a download purchase only, at a price of $299. www.sonicfoundry.com September saw the release of a 2.8GHz Pentium 4 processor, but Intel are also apparently working on a new version of their Pentium 4 chip, codenamed Nehalem (no, I don't know what it means either), which will be released in 2005. As you might expect, it will include a new architecture and features that will make it as different from the current P4 as that was from the P3 — so it doesn't sound like a P4 at all. However, an updated P4, codenamed Prescott, should be released sometime next year, and this will be closer in concept to the existing P4, apart from a new security system and the use of 'strained silicon' to speed up operation. www.intel.com Meanwhile, AMD have announced the Athlon XP 2700+ and 2800+, featuring an advanced 333MHz front side bus that runs synchronously with the memory clock, resulting in significantly faster performance. Although it's technically a 'paper' launch, since you can't buy the products yet, both should be available by the time you read this. Most of the publicity material I've seen refers to the impressive performance of the new processors with games. Perhaps people have finally realised that office applications will still run fine on last year's PCs? However, musicians never seem to have enough CPU power, so I'm sure these new models will sell well in this field once their 'cutting edge' price drops a little, especially since from the lower-level 2200+ model onwards they use AMD's new 0.13 micron core for cooler operation (and can therefore use quieter fans). www.amd.com Tascam have announced the release of a four CD-ROM tutorial guide entitled Gigastudio Mastery, written by Dave Govett, whose name will already be very familiar to most GS users. Originally part of the Nemesys team before they were acquired by Tascam, Dave has extensive knowledge and reveals it in multimedia tutorials featuring audio narration, active screenshots, and streaming video. All aspects of installing, using, and getting the most from the GigaStudio player and Instrument Editor are covered in the guide, which I hope to be reviewing shortly. The official place to find more information is Tascam's web site, but you can download a small demo from Dave's own web pages, at www.davidgovett.com. www.tascam.co.uk Software Technology have released a free upgrade for existing users of the VAZ Modular softsynth. Still resolutely PC-only, version 2.5 can, like its predecessor, be run as a stand-alone softsynth, but you can now also launch it as a VST or DX Instrument inside a suitable host application, to bring it in line with new product VAZ 2010. www.software-technology.com Not content with giving us his Impulse Modeler software (PC Notes October 2002), Alexsey Vaneev has now released a "high-quality freeware sample-rate converter tool". It can process both mono and stereo WAV files of any bit depth and convert between different bit depths using noise-shaped dithering. Batch processing is also supported. www.yohng.com/r8brain

There are also plenty of analogue joysticks available. These are popularly used for flight simulator-style games, and many have a rather more 'precision' feel to them than the digital variety, as well as being far less flimsy. I've found analogue joysticks really useful for music purposes, since you can modify two parameters simultaneously, for wonderfully expressive possibilities. Part of my interest in doing this is due to my Korg Wavestation SR. Many of its sounds respond to MIDI controllers 16 and 17 but, unlike the other Wavestation models, it doesn't have a built-in joystick to generate the controller data. You may not have a Wavstation SR, of course, but you should be able to assign the X and Y joystick axes to two suitable parameters on nearly all software or hardware synths.

Windows has directly supported both analogue and digital game controllers for many years. All you need, as mentioned earlier, is a small PC software utility to convert the incoming game-port information into MIDI continuous controller data, to pass on to your softsynth or sequencer application. One example is Vellocet's VMIDIJoY (http://vellocet.com). This was originally written in 1998, but was most recently updated in 2000 — although it seemed to work in the more recent Windows XP when I tried it. It converts joystick X, Y, and even Z axis movements into your choice of MIDI controller data, and also supports up to four buttons, which can be defined as MIDI pedals or notes. It even has some rudimentary arpeggiation features.

MidiJoys, from SoundTower (www.soundtower.com), is rather more ambitious but even older, being originally written in 1997. Again, though, it seems to work inside Windows XP. MidiJoys not only supports one or two game joysticks, but also standard mice, trackpads and trackballs. Amongst other facilities, it provides three extra windows with software sliders dedicated to volume, pan, and your choice of additional controllers.

Both utilities can output data directly to any of your existing MIDI ports, and you can use Hubi's Loopback or a similar routing utility to send this data directly to your sequencer for recording purposes. Although I've heard some grumbles that the joysticks aren't scanned fast enough to cope with fast sweeps without jumping, I haven't found this to be the case.

If you don't have a suitable joystick but you're into a bit of soldering, you can create your own hardware controller. Each game-port supports up to four rotary or slider controls and four buttons, giving plenty of scope. Tomi Engdahl has an excellent web page detailing all the ins and outs of the PC analogue joystick interface, both from the hardware and software points of view. Go to www.epanorama.net/documents/joystick/pc_joystick.html.

Other pages at this site detail the wiring of a huge variety of analogue and digital game controllers, but if you want to build your own, essentially all you need are some switches and 100K potentiometers. Skot McDonald of Vellocet shows one user's ra

Want a reasonably powerful word processor for your music partition that doesn't bloat your Registry or install unwanted background routines? Take a look at Abiword.

It may seem to strange to be introducing a word-processing application — which Abiword is — here, but I make no apologies, since what I'm about to discuss is actually more relevant to music making than you might think. Most musicians now accept that it's best to keep their music partitions as streamlined as possible, installing only those applications they need for their music making. Taking this approach means that there are fewer opportunities for conflicts, no unwanted background tasks, and a significantly greater likelihood of audio recording and playback running as smoothly as possible. However, while working in my music partition I've often found it useful to be able to create documents with an application somewhat more capable than Microsoft's Notepad, or even WordPad, despite the many enhancements in its XP incarnation.

Some of you may remember my run-in with Microsoft's Word (reported in PC Notes June 2001), when it suddenly began posting error messages instead of booting up, even after a total uninstall and clean reinstall. Word has also caused its fair share of pr

Tiny Tip: BIOS Beep Codes     In SOS June 2002, as part of my PC Musician article on Fault Finding, I covered BIOS Beep Codes and stated that you should refer to your motherboard manual for the particular sequence of beeps relevant to your PC. However, I thought it would be useful to provide a short list of the most common ones for IBM/Award PCs, neatly gathered together. No beeps: no power, faulty motherboard or CPU, or badly seated peripherals. One short beep: Everything is normal (you should hear this every time you boot up, after the POST routines). Two beeps: POST or CMOS error (perhaps your battery has failed). One long beep, then one short beep: Motherboard problem. One long beep, then two short beeps: graphics card not properly seated or faulty. One long beep, then three short beeps: similar to above, but may indicate faulty video RAM. Three long beeps: faulty keyboard. Continuous long beeps: badly seated or faulty RAM. Continuous high/low beeps: overheated CPU. These codes should account for most PCs, except for those with AMI BIOS chips (seemingly far less common than those fitted with Award chips), and those with older Phoenix BIOS chips, which featured a complex system of four sets of short beeps interspersed with pauses. However, how that Award Software and Phoenix Technologies have merged, we can perhaps expect to see the simpler Award scheme take over.

Enter AbiWord (www.abisource.com), an 'Open Source' application that is not only distributable as freeware, but is developed in a public fashion by people all over the world, to run on Windows 95, 98, NT 4.0, XP, Linux, and other operating systems. I discovered it after an extensive search for freeware word processing applications, and it's proved ideal for me — it loads many more file formats than WordPad, and also provides an invaluable word count function. However, for me one of its best features is the lack of 'bloat': the latest preview version 1.0.3 is a tiny 3.86Mb download, and, apart from half a dozen new file associations, it seems to place next to nothing in the Registry either.

I've been using AbiWord almost exclusively for over a month now, and apart from a couple of rough edges, and very limited table functions, it suits me down to the ground. Best of all, I've even been able to install it safely on my music partition, safe in the knowledge that it won't interfere with my audio performance or bloat my Registry. Highly recommended!

Home | Search | News | Current Issue | Digital Editions | Articles | Forum | Subscribe | Shop | Readers Ads

Advertise | Information | Links | Privacy Policy | Support