In recent times, when I dedicate any thinking to the problem of how to arrange controls for live performances, one of the things that my brain tells me is 'footswitch'.
Because I'm generally using Max/MSP or Ableton Live, or ChucK, I can use a variety of on/off signals and get them to do useful things; MIDI notes, keystrokes, mouse-clicks are all fine.
I thought it wouldn't be that difficult to find a cheap but durable momentary footswitch that 'spoke' one of these signals. Unfortunately it not as easy as I thought.
The money-cheapest solution I came across was Matt Meshulam's passive footswitch hack, inspired by MOTU's Volta system. A battery is soldered into a standard passive analogue footswitch. The switch is then plugged into one of your soundcard inputs, and a max patch (or similar) repeatedly checks the DC input signal. When it detects a change, a MIDI event or keystroke is generated, which can finally be used to manipulate the parameter you want to be controlling. I think this is ingenious but, for my intuition at least, the audio polling involved seems like a waste of processing power.
Searches for MIDI footswitches turned up products that do too much compared to what I need.
Searching instead for keyboard and mouse replacements in stores specialising in accessibility brought up some interesting devices that I hadn't seen before (see the 'puff', and 'sip' breath switch), but tended to be more expensive than I thought was necessary too.
Searching from a more gaming-related angle I found the Stealthswitch II. Among other things it's a keystroke emulating USB footswitch. Conveniently, extra passive footswitches can be plugged into it, and addressed by its software. I ordered this one, and will post back once I've had a change to test it a bit. (NB. don't confuse the Stealthswitch II with the identical looking original Stealthswitch, a secretly-play-games-at-work aid which doesn't have keystroke emulation).
Please post in the comments if you have any thoughts on footswitches for musical control purposes.
Also, because of a domain name expiry blunder the new Basement Hum url is http://basementhum.blogspot.com/
Posts
1 comments:
You could use a footwitch plugged in to a midi keyboard. A momentary switch is the same as the regular cheap sustain pedals aren't they?
Also, the eowave footcontrol will give you midi for up to four footswitches/expression pedals.
Post a Comment