Hello,

I have just purchased Sibelius 5 and VDL 2.5. I have read the VDL Sibelius Template v1.0.5 readme and I am very impressed and excited at the capabilities I will soon have.

I am trying to work out a way to give Sibelius MIDI input the way I want. I own a Multi-Function Panel from CH Products. This is a customizable, programmable, 50-key input device, with the unique capability of putting the keys wherever you want (they stick on via adhesive and can be moved around). Normally this product is used for computer simulations (usually flight sims), but it's great whenever you need a custom key layout. Here are some images.

[img]http://www.gamingnexus.com/Images/news/CHMFPb.gif[/img]

[img]http://www.sim-reviews.com/hardware/bard/chmfp/mfp2.jpg[/img]

I thought it would be neat to lay out these keys in the same spatial relationship that we have with real marching percussion, in order to offer more intuitive input. To do this I need a program that will take keyboard keystrokes or joystick buttons (which can be programmed on the MFP) and convert them to MIDI. Google gives me lots of solutions that go the other way, but I haven't found what I'm looking for yet.  Any ideas?

Something like this: http://www.granucon.com/vmk.html should be able to do what you need. Search for ";virtual midi keyboard";, you'll find a few different options.

Let us know how it goes, that looks like a very interesting input method, and could potentially be much more intuitive than drumming on a keyboard.

Well, I feel somewhat stupid. I didn't realize that Tapspace's two recommended programs for Windows MIDI via mouse also worked with keystrokes.

It actually looks like the other suggested program, Bome's Mouse Keyboard, is going to work better. The reason is that corded keystrokes (e.g. CTRL+x) do not activate the MIDI key in Bome's program, but they do in the Granucon program. If I am going to set up my programmable MFP to send keystrokes, I will need to remap a number of Sibelius keystrokes. Having to remap all of the corded keystrokes as well as the basics would be very undesirable.

I will keep this post updated as to my progress, and at the very least set up a test to see if this is technically feasible once my copies of Sibelius and VDL arrive. If anyone knows of a program that allows full remapping of the keystrokes, I'm still very interested. Bome's program allows you to move the starting position of the row of white keys and the row of black keys (e.g. ";x"; can be the C key instead of ";z";) but you can do no more than this. For applications where one maps keystrokes to labeled buttons, doing the mapping on obscure keys (and key combos) is ideal in order to leave the basic keypresses unmolested.