i discovered there’s a shortage of keystroke to MIDI converters for mac so I made MIDIpress.  to use it…

1. Download MIDIpress
2.  select your keyboard from the menu on the left.  this might take some trial and error – when you find it the yellow button next to the menu will flash when ever you hit a key.  mine’s “Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad 4″.
3. choose your MIDI output settings.  “from midipress 1″ is a safe bet.
4. make sure your target application (ableton, FL studio etc.) has your chosen midi port active in it’s preferences.
5. set your velocity and note length.
6. do whatever! you can control any midi mappable parameters or jam as you type.

here’s the max patch for the nerdlingers

if you’re in melbourne, you can see these plugins in action along with some button pressing, singing and jumping around when i play live at plugnplay next thursday the 28th of april at the kent st cafe, 201 smith st, fitzroy.  i think i’m playing with vdmokstati, jean poole and others… bit short on details at the moment… but it’ll be awesome, i’m sure.  the day after that (friday 29th) i’m playing at the builders arms with time shield, the leafs and sun blindness.  i’ll also supplying visuals for the leafs and sun blindess.  check the fb event!  and the poster:

in other news, the dudes at projuice have thrown up a little write up about me which makes me feel a little warm and fuzzy.  projuice is a media creation showing airing on abc at the moment – it’s really great seeing tutorial style programming making the airways especially since it’s pretty much favorite sort of thing to watch on the interwebs.  that and videos of baby sloths.

in other, other news, i’ve been inspired by this, this and this and have decided to build a midi controller (i’ve undertaken a similar project in the past).  i’ll be using the guts from two korg nanokontrols and a usb qwerty keyboard and it should end up looking a bit like this:

can’t wait.

Practice

this is going to be the format of the new Zeal live set except expect some acoustic guitar, live sampling and words that sound nice but don’t mean much.

Download: VIZZable Modular VJ plugins for Ableton Live

UPDATE!

These plugins are completely compatible with the amazing V-module suite by Fabrizio Poce. These two projects have now merged to provide a comprehensive suite of video, effects and real-time graphics tools for Live. If you’d like to become involved in testing and developing these plugins please join us in this google group.

I’ve been getting asked for this keypad to midi patch a lot recently so I thought I’d upload it.  You can get it here.  You’ll also need the free max/msp runtime from cycling74.com.  If you’re on windows you’ll need loopbe too.

and remember – Zeal’s live Melbourne debut this Friday!

This’ll only work in ableton but there might be ways to do this using comprable vst plugins etc.

The new Zeal set is coming together and the first of many Melbourne gigs is lined up for April.  Oh yeah, and did i mention I have a new album ready for release?  next few posts should be bigguns…

zeal has been appearing in interesting corners of the blogosphere in the last couple of days.  there’s an interview at fiese falle about process and gear.  they’re the sort of things that interest me in interviews so maybe you’ll be into it.

also, there’s a write up about my guitar hero to midi app AXIS on one of my fav blogs – hack a day.

the post has drawn out some entertaining flames like: “Get a haircut and a real job.  Also, learn to play the real guitar. It’s a lot more fun, I promise.”

upon reading that i got a hair cut and a real job and learned to play the “real” guitar.  it’s not as fun.

speaking of fun – fun new things to buy appearing soon and even fun new ways to buy said fun new things.   but for now…

bob out.