Hi,

I've found a very nice combination of mapping tools that allows me to
use nearly all possibilities of my joystick.

Required: VMidiJoy (2.6.2), Bome's Mouse Keyboard 2 Beta, VKeys and
MIDI-OX and of course a joystick (I'm using the Saitek evo, it has many
buttons, is usable with the left hand while playing with the right one
on a keyboard and has some useful programming facilities).

The individual steps:

* Bome's Mouse Keyboard: This software has the advantage that you are
able to map different midi events to the X and the Y axis depending on
the state of up to four buttons. So you can sent e.g. modulation and
pitch if no button is pressed, portamento and balance if button one is
pressed and pan and expression for button two. A nice bonus: You can
press multiple buttons at once in order to stack their functionalities.
(the x-axis would control portamento and pan and the y-axis balance and
expression if one would press button one and two simultanious in our
example - ok I admit it's a stupid one) Theoratically one should be able
to use the z-axis, too but that didn't work with my joystick. So the x-
and y-axis and the buttons 1 to 4 are assigned to BMK.

* VMidiJoy: The problem I described in a former mail
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vmidijoy/message/82) is still existent.
So I have to click the "full range" button for every axis I want to use
with VMidiJoy once in order to calibrate it and I'm not able to use the
VMidiJoy Prog Change functionality because that would decalibrate them
again. Now I assign the Z axis, the RZ axis and the buttons 4 to 8 to
VMidiJoy. So I have two additional axis that control the same midi
parameter all the time (in contrast to x-y which change it's
functionality corresponding to the buttons 1 to 4) and four buttons that
can be used for toggle values like sustain, sustenuto, soft, arpeggios etc.

* VKeys: As a first step you have to configure the joystick in a way
that it's coolie hat controlls the mouse coordinates. (That's easy with
the SST profile editor that is delivered with the evo. You've to look
how that can be acomplished with your one - perhaps there is some sort
of generic program for that purpose, I haven't done a research
though...) Now you can use VKeys to assign two additional ranged
midi-controllers to the mouse coordinates.

All in all we have control over 14 slider values and 4 buttons with that
configuration. (One can get more buttons if one sacrifices some sliders
in the BMK setup), With some practice one should be able to use the
feature to controll many values at the same time completely blindfolded
with one hand to one's advantage. Could be a very interesting tool for
"organically" controlling complex live synths...

* MIDI-OX: In my previous posting I hadn't figured out the existence of
the patch map editor in MIDI-OX that allows you to change data-maps
depending on program change events. So people like me who have problems
with the VMIDIJoy Program Changes could use this to build complex
programmings. (E.g. a kind of dialing system with the buttons that could
adress all the hundreds of sliders a modern synth has to offer). But
I'm sceptical about the usefullness of that approach: So many options
would be difficult to remenber and at least I can't imagine to play that
on the fly. So I wouldn't call it an instrument, that's more a kind of
sound engineering tool. For live performance it seems to be more
feasable to select a few interesting parameters in my optinion. So I'll
let MIDI-OX alone for the moment and concentrate on the possibilities
that are offered by the rest of these mapping tools. But it's an
interesting option if one reaches the limits.

Perhaps someone finds that interesting, too.

Have fun,
Ferdinand

P.S.: Links to the programs:

VMidiJoy: http://vellocet.com/software/VMIDIJoY.html
Bome's Mouse Keyboard: http://www.bome.com/midi/keyboard (it's not
freeware but "postcardware")
VKeys: http://www.tml.hut.fi/~pjhamala/vkeys/
MIDI-OX: http://www.midiox.com/ (free for personal use)