Generic MIDI foot controller with SAC?

[AntonZ]

Tonight I met Jan, the only other dutch SAC user that I'm aware of. He provided sound for a festival in my home town. We had time to talk SAC, as someone else was running FOH. He brought up an interesting idea for a great control surface option, for people like me.

Jan runs sound for a living, does FOH/monitor mixes and studio work, among other things. I'm a weekend warrior. My band cannot afford to hire a dedicated sound guy. So it's me or another band member to play and run the board simultaneously. I play bass. Need two hands while playing. So I cannot grab a mouse or fader mid song. It would be very nice to use a generic Midi foot controller for this. Just 8 or 10 big buttons. Assign arrow left, arrow right, arrow up, arrow down so I can select channels and adjust levels. The remaining buttons for some F-keys or scene selection.

There must be more people like me, band member running sound. Has anyone thought about this option? Any suggestions on how to make this work? Or reasons why it couldn't possibly work? I'm not particularly fluent in Midi, so could use some suggestions if this needs special tweaks in Midi, software or SAC.

[Bob L]

It would require a new template be compiled that matches one of these types of footswitches... just like creating a special template for a new midi controller.

Or... you would need some kind of midi message converter that translates midi control info into keystrokes.

Bob L

[AntonZ]

Yep, I was thinking the latter (unless there's plenty of other people jumping up and calling for a Behringer FCB 1010 template all of a sudden). There are most probably midi utility programs that convert midi control info into different midi signals or keystrokes or whatever it takes. Curious to learn if other people have been thinking along these lines already. If not, I will have to get my feet wet in midi I'm afraid.

[Craig Allen]

I play bass and mix. I just hammer on notes while I make quick adjustments or do it in between songs. Or you could try a BCF on the floor and see how well you could control it with your foot.

[RBIngraham]

Yep, I was thinking the latter (unless there's plenty of other people jumping up and calling for a Behringer FCB 1010 template all of a sudden). There are most probably midi utility programs that convert midi control info into different midi signals or keystrokes or whatever it takes. Curious to learn if other people have been thinking along these lines already. If not, I will have to get my feet wet in midi I'm afraid.

Look at Brome's MIDI Translator. It can accept MIDI commands and turn them into Keystrokes. I have used it to fire off scenes in SAC via MIDI from other software/computers and it's worked well. I only use it to "push the space bar" via MIDI. But I see no reason you couldn't use some functions for arrow keys as well.

If you are not using any other controllers, you could use the General MIDI template in SAC to set up a generic MIDI controller. That could allow you to use a foot pedal for something like a DCA or Submaster that you use for a Master out of some kind. But you would probably also want to figure a way to limit it's range so you didn't take the level down too low or up to high.

[Doug_Danforth]

Curious to learn if other people have been thinking along these lines already. If not, I will have to get my feet wet in midi I'm afraid.

This would be very useful to me. We do have a FOH sound person but I do most of the stage mixing while playing bass. I would love to be able to adjust my levels as well as the guitarist's.

Also, since I am the only member playing an instrument that doesn't have a pedal board, sustain pedal, kick drum, etc., I feel podiatrically inadequate.

Doug "IDoDanceSometimes" Danforth

[Doug_Danforth]

Been thinking about this some more. Might something like these work?

http://www.tomtop.com/usb-game-foot-...pedal-hid.html

http://www.fentek-ind.com/FootPedal.htm

Seems like all we want to do is control the arrow keys. Not sure why we need to fuss with midi.

Doug

[Bob L]

A simple onstage netbook is all you need... most likely you can easily reach over to make an adjustment during a certain part of a song or between songs.

And... if you create some scenes, you can use a simple usb footswitch to emulate the spacebar and step thru a sequence of scenes.

Bob L

[Naturally Digital]

http://www.fentek-ind.com/FootPedal.htm
Seems like all we want to do is control the arrow keys. Not sure why we need to fuss with midi.

I would go for this fentek or if not, then an xkeys footswitch. It looks to me like the macro software on the fentek is in firmware... same as most of the xkeys devices. This means not having to run a macro utility in the background to emulate the keystrokes.

So yeah, that fentek looks nice. Might be good combined with the AlphaTrack.

... actually, I just noticed this "Triple Action Foot Switch with one Input Jack for optional hand trigger or 4th pedal"...

so, I guess it's possible to emulate all four arrow keys by adding a 4th pedal.