27 Jul
2021
27 Jul
'21
11:22 a.m.
Does anyone know of software that can generate MIDI messages from a touchpad?
The idea would be to send CCs to a sequencer or soft synth, but being able to
send it to an external hardware device would also be very useful.
--
Will J Godfrey
https://willgodfrey.bandcamp.com/
http://yoshimi.github.io
Say you have a poem and I have a tune.
Exchange them and we can both have a poem, a tune, and a song.
27 Jul
27 Jul
12:03 p.m.
Hi Will,
On 27/07/21 09:22, Will Godfrey wrote:
Does anyone know of software that can generate MIDI
messages from a touchpad?
If, as I understand it, you mean a latptop touchpad (i.e. thing used
instead of a real mouse with your finger :-) ) Pure Data can definitely
do it in many different ways.
The Pd 'vanilla' way would probably be using a canvas object(s) and
tracking movement as you 'drag' them around.
There are a bunch of Pd externals (i.e. libraries not included in Pd you
need to compile and install separately), which can also do this in
various ways. [1]
Once you have the touchpad detection / setting setup Pd has a set of
inclued midi sending obejects which are really easy to use to send CC,
notes etc.
The idea would be to send CCs to a sequencer or soft synth, but being able to
send it to an external hardware device would also be very useful.
MIDI objects receive/send alsa-midi so you can route them to any
sequencer, synth or hardware device which can receive alsa-midi.
Hope this helps.
Lorenzo.
[0] https://puredata.info/
[1] There is also a Pd 'distribution' which comes packed with many many
externals out of the box, Purr Data: https://www.purrdata.net/
12:33 p.m.
On Tue, 27 Jul 2021 10:03:33 +0200
Lorenzo Sutton <lorenzofsutton(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Will,
On 27/07/21 09:22, Will Godfrey wrote:
Thanks for all of this Lorenzo. I had been hoping for something lightweight,
however if I can find that round tuit I seem to have lost, this is certainly an
interesting (and potentially flexible) way of solving the problem.
Will.
--
Will J Godfrey
https://willgodfrey.bandcamp.com/
http://yoshimi.github.io
Say you have a poem and I have a tune.
Exchange them and we can both have a poem, a tune, and a song.
Does anyone know of software that can generate
MIDI messages from a touchpad?
If, as I understand it, you mean a latptop touchpad (i.e. thing used
instead of a real mouse with your finger :-) ) Pure Data can definitely
do it in many different ways.
The Pd 'vanilla' way would probably be using a canvas object(s) and
tracking movement as you 'drag' them around.
There are a bunch of Pd externals (i.e. libraries not included in Pd you
need to compile and install separately), which can also do this in
various ways. [1]
Once you have the touchpad detection / setting setup Pd has a set of
inclued midi sending obejects which are really easy to use to send CC,
notes etc.
The idea would be to send CCs to a sequencer or soft synth, but being able to
send it to an external hardware device would also be very useful.
MIDI objects receive/send alsa-midi so you can route them to any
sequencer, synth or hardware device which can receive alsa-midi.
Hope this helps.
Lorenzo.
[0] https://puredata.info/
[1] There is also a Pd 'distribution' which comes packed with many many
externals out of the box, Purr Data: https://www.purrdata.net/ 
12:42 p.m.
On 27/07/2021 09:33, Will Godfrey wrote:
On Tue, 27 Jul 2021 10:03:33 +0200
Lorenzo Sutton <lorenzofsutton(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Anyone with a bit of programming skill could knock together something
that would
send a CC event via the Jack interface - I've done stuff like this in
the past.
You'd also need some familiarity with Xlib to get the keypad events.
Bill
--
+----------------------------------------+
| Bill Purvis |
| email: bill(a)billp.org |
+----------------------------------------+
Hi Will,
On 27/07/21 09:22, Will Godfrey wrote:
Thanks for all of this Lorenzo. I had been hoping for something lightweight,
however if I can find that round tuit I seem to have lost, this is certainly an
interesting (and potentially flexible) way of solving the problem.
Will. Does anyone know of software that can generate
MIDI messages from a touchpad?
If, as I understand it, you mean a latptop touchpad
(i.e. thing used
instead of a real mouse with your finger :-) ) Pure Data can definitely
do it in many different ways.
The Pd 'vanilla' way would probably be using a canvas object(s) and
tracking movement as you 'drag' them around.
There are a bunch of Pd externals (i.e. libraries not included in Pd you
need to compile and install separately), which can also do this in
various ways. [1]
Once you have the touchpad detection / setting setup Pd has a set of
inclued midi sending obejects which are really easy to use to send CC,
notes etc.
The idea would be to send CCs to a sequencer or
soft synth, but being able to
send it to an external hardware device would also be very useful.
MIDI objects receive/send alsa-midi so you can route them to any
sequencer, synth or hardware device which can receive alsa-midi.
Hope this helps.
Lorenzo.
[0] https://puredata.info/
[1] There is also a Pd 'distribution' which comes packed with many many
externals out of the box, Purr Data: https://www.purrdata.net/ 
4:54 p.m.
I have another pd method (using purr-data) for you which might be a tiny
bit simpler than using |hid|:
In purr-data, you can use the object |legacy_mousemotion| which will
then output x and y position of the mouse for the pd current window.
If you like using pd-l2ork 1.0 instead, you can actually use cyclone's
|MouseState| object, which gives you a similar feature set (although I
like |MouseState| better, it seems to work smoother).
You could then use these to make midi messages inside pd and output it
through purr-data/pd-l2ork's midi output.
Brandon Hale
On 7/27/21 4:33 AM, Will Godfrey wrote:
On Tue, 27 Jul 2021 10:03:33 +0200
Lorenzo Sutton <lorenzofsutton(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Will,
On 27/07/21 09:22, Will Godfrey wrote:
Thanks for all of this Lorenzo. I had been hoping for something lightweight,
however if I can find that round tuit I seem to have lost, this is certainly an
interesting (and potentially flexible) way of solving the problem.
Will.
Does anyone know of software that can generate
MIDI messages from a touchpad?
If, as I understand it, you mean a latptop touchpad
(i.e. thing used
instead of a real mouse with your finger :-) ) Pure Data can definitely
do it in many different ways.
The Pd 'vanilla' way would probably be using a canvas object(s) and
tracking movement as you 'drag' them around.
There are a bunch of Pd externals (i.e. libraries not included in Pd you
need to compile and install separately), which can also do this in
various ways. [1]
Once you have the touchpad detection / setting setup Pd has a set of
inclued midi sending obejects which are really easy to use to send CC,
notes etc.
The idea would be to send CCs to a sequencer or
soft synth, but being able to
send it to an external hardware device would also be very useful.
MIDI objects receive/send alsa-midi so you can route them to any
sequencer, synth or hardware device which can receive alsa-midi.
Hope this helps.
Lorenzo.
[0] https://puredata.info/
[1] There is also a Pd 'distribution' which comes packed with many many
externals out of the box, Purr Data: https://www.purrdata.net/ 
9:08 p.m.
One beautiful thing about pd is the “-nogui” flag, which can make pd feel like (and be) a
much more lightweight solution for these kind of “glue code” tasks.
Best,
-Matt
--
CCRMA Technical Director
https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~matt
650-723-4971 x304
Pronouns: he, his, him
On Jul 27, 2021, at 5:54 AM, Brandon Hale
<bthaleproductions(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I have another pd method (using purr-data) for you which might be a tiny bit simpler than
using |hid|:
In purr-data, you can use the object |legacy_mousemotion| which will then output x and y
position of the mouse for the pd current window.
If you like using pd-l2ork 1.0 instead, you can actually use cyclone's |MouseState|
object, which gives you a similar feature set (although I like |MouseState| better, it
seems to work smoother).
You could then use these to make midi messages inside pd and output it through
purr-data/pd-l2ork's midi output.
Brandon Hale
On 7/27/21 4:33 AM, Will Godfrey wrote:
On Tue, 27 Jul 2021 10:03:33 +0200
Lorenzo Sutton <lorenzofsutton(a)gmail.com> wrote:
_______________________________________________
Linux-audio-user mailing list
Linux-audio-user(a)lists.linuxaudio.org
https://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user
Hi Will,
On 27/07/21 09:22, Will Godfrey wrote:
Thanks for all of this Lorenzo. I had been hoping for something lightweight,
however if I can find that round tuit I seem to have lost, this is certainly an
interesting (and potentially flexible) way of solving the problem.
Will.
Does anyone know of software that can generate
MIDI messages from a touchpad?
If, as I understand it, you mean a latptop touchpad
(i.e. thing used
instead of a real mouse with your finger :-) ) Pure Data can definitely
do it in many different ways.
The Pd 'vanilla' way would probably be using a canvas object(s) and
tracking movement as you 'drag' them around.
There are a bunch of Pd externals (i.e. libraries not included in Pd you
need to compile and install separately), which can also do this in
various ways. [1]
Once you have the touchpad detection / setting setup Pd has a set of
inclued midi sending obejects which are really easy to use to send CC,
notes etc.
The idea would be to send CCs to a sequencer or
soft synth, but being able to
send it to an external hardware device would also be very useful.
MIDI objects receive/send alsa-midi so you can route them to any
sequencer, synth or hardware device which can receive alsa-midi.
Hope this helps.
Lorenzo.
[0] https://puredata.info/
[1] There is also a Pd 'distribution' which comes packed with many many
externals out of the box, Purr Data: https://www.purrdata.net/ 
1:21 p.m.
Hi Will,
as others have said this is very easy with a Pd patch. Use Pd from here,
preferably over other distributions:
http://msp.ucsd.edu/software.html
Install the [hid] external using the "Find externals..." menu entry.
Write a patch that loads this external library into pd, for example by
creating an object
[declare -lib hid]
More help at the Pd mailing list at
https://lists.puredata.info/pipermail/pd-list//
Eventually you will have to change the permissions on the
/dev/input/deviceXX file to have Pd read from it directly.
Oh, I found it handy to disable the pointing device I am querying in Pd
in the xserver so I don't click somewhere by accident and can still use
another mouse to point and click:
List all X input devices
xinput --list
filter for numeric ID of "USB Optical Mouse"
xinput --list | grep "USB Optical Mouse" | cut -d "=" -f 2 |
cut -f 1
get the number for the "Device Enabled" parameter of that mouse
xinput --list-props `xinput --list | grep "USB Optical Mouse" | cut -d
"=" -f 2 | cut -f 1`
which in my case was 164. Then change its value to 0 or back to 1
xinput --set-prop `xinput --list | grep "USB Optical Mouse" | cut -d
"=" -f 2 | cut -f 1` 164 0
xinput --set-prop `xinput --list | grep "USB Optical Mouse" | cut -d
"=" -f 2 | cut -f 1` 164 1
best, P
29 Jul
29 Jul
11:27 a.m.
Hi Will and list,
Am Dienstag, 27. Juli 2021, 09:22:33 CEST schrieb Will Godfrey:
Does anyone know of software that can generate MIDI
messages from a touchpad?
The idea would be to send CCs to a sequencer or soft synth, but being able to
send it to an external hardware device would also be very useful.
I'm a bit late but I have two different solutions, both via ALSA seq API:
1. kontroll by Florian Paul Schmidt https://github.com/fps/kontroll[1]
a small gtk/glade GUI program from 2006 that translates mouse position to MIDI CC or OSC.
The original page at tapas.affenbande.org is gone but the github code still compiles and
works. I just tested and it emits chosen MIDI CC as soon as the mouse pointer moves.
2. QLC+ http://www.qlcplus.org/[2]
a program to control lighting for clubs, theater etc.
It features a virtual console, i.e. a canvas to place widgets like sliders, knobs etc.,
including an X/Y area to control moving lights.
It can be configured to send MIDI data instead of DMX, but might be tricky to set up if
you're not familiar with the program.
I can assist in getting this to work if you're interested, publically here on the list
or via private mail.
Edgar
--------
[1] https://github.com/fps/kontroll
[2] http://www.qlcplus.org/
6:26 p.m.
On Thu, 29 Jul 2021 09:27:54 +0200
Edgar Aichinger <edogawa(a)aon.at> wrote:
Hi Will and list,
Am Dienstag, 27. Juli 2021, 09:22:33 CEST schrieb Will Godfrey:
Thanks to everyone for the further suggestions.
kontrol looks as if it will turn out to be the most lightweight way of doing
this, so thanks a lot for that Edgar.
I'm up to my eyeballs in realtime stuff (the garden) at the moment, along with
the 'little' synth project, but this will go at the top of my list.
--
Will J Godfrey
https://willgodfrey.bandcamp.com/
http://yoshimi.github.io
Say you have a poem and I have a tune.
Exchange them and we can both have a poem, a tune, and a song.
Does anyone know of software that can generate
MIDI messages from a touchpad?
The idea would be to send CCs to a sequencer or soft synth, but being able to
send it to an external hardware device would also be very useful.
I'm a bit late but I have two different solutions, both via ALSA seq API:
1. kontroll by Florian Paul Schmidt https://github.com/fps/kontroll[1]
a small gtk/glade GUI program from 2006 that translates mouse position to MIDI CC or OSC.
The original page at tapas.affenbande.org is gone but the github code still compiles and
works. I just tested and it emits chosen MIDI CC as soon as the mouse pointer moves.
2. QLC+ http://www.qlcplus.org/[2]
a program to control lighting for clubs, theater etc.
It features a virtual console, i.e. a canvas to place widgets like sliders, knobs etc.,
including an X/Y area to control moving lights.
It can be configured to send MIDI data instead of DMX, but might be tricky to set up if
you're not familiar with the program.
I can assist in getting this to work if you're interested, publically here on the list
or via private mail.
Edgar
--------
[1] https://github.com/fps/kontroll
[2] http://www.qlcplus.org/
1168
days inactive
1170
days old
linux-audio-user@lists.linuxaudio.org
8 comments
7 participants
participants (7)
-
Bill Purvis -
Brandon Hale -
Edgar Aichinger -
Lorenzo Sutton -
Matt Wright -
Peter P. -
Will Godfrey