beets

I've started on a project for my uni course which involves creating my own Midi controller and using MaxMSP create a working Midi controller that I can use as an instrument or a controller for triggering samples etc.

I come from a background of music technology and understand the concepts of sending midi information to and from devices, its just the MaxMSP side I'm having difficulty with.

Having browsed the forums and youtube for a couple of weeks while building the controller, and having had a go at the tutorials I'm still not very confident with creating the patch.

With regards to the sounds I will be playing, I've got several samples recorded ready for the device and have started to get my head round the 'readfile' and 'asdr' when triggering samples - I'm just looking for some more guidance and any advice or links people could give me to help me figure out what to do - there's so many tutorial videos and such online I'm struggling to find relevant ones.

The device itself consists of 8 sensors (using Phidgets pieces and an 8analog in/8 digital in board) and it has a USB out. These components don't send out midi information, making my other hurdle converting the output (I assume it will be a voltage or something) into Midi information.

Not asking for people to complete this for me - just a nudge in the right direction would be awesome!

Having browsed the forums and youtube for a couple of weeks while building the controller, and having had a go at the tutorials I'm still not very confident with creating the patch. 

Not asking for people to complete this for me - just a nudge in the right direction would be awesome! 

creating-my-own-midi-controller

What's the board you're using? That would make all the difference. If it's USB then probably the voltage etc. measuring is done for you internally, and the data (in some fashion) is sent to the computer. So you'll need to have something in the patch to read what's coming from the USB.

Some boards come with dedicated Max objects to do just this, for others you'll probably need to use the [serial] object to spit the data into your patch. The issue then becomes parsing the 8 sensor values: hopefully they come in as [index, value] pairs. If so, you just use [route 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8] if the indices are 1-8, and you're done. Then the fun part---whatcha want it to DO? :)

http://www.phidgets.com/products.php?category=0&product_id=1018

Im using an 1018 - PhidgetInterfaceKit 8/8/8, and (/derp) I've just seen that the website includes a wide variety of example MaxMSP patches for download showing different ways to use the device, and from what I've read so far using the [serial] object is the way forward.

Thanks very much for the help! Firstly I'm going to set it up so it triggers the samples I've got ready :).

For those interested: I recorded the notes played by Link in 'Zelda : OOT' - the device I'm making is a midi-ocarina so it seemed the obvious route to take :D but with MaxMSP being how it is I'll probably end up setting up several different patches with different sounds etc.

Creating my own Midi Controller