Wmidi

The Wmidi application was designed to transform your graphic tablet into a musical instrument and a MIDI controller. It is able to generate notes, but also control change messages depending on the position, pressure, Z angle and tilt of the stylus on the tablet. It was initially written and tested for Wacom tablets but since it is using the WinTab API, it should be compatible with all kinds of tablets.

The colored area corresponds to the graphic tablet. The position of the stylus on the tablet is represented by a cross. A line is drawn to show the orientation of the stylus, as well as a plain circle, which corresponds to the pressure.

In order to generate music that does not sound totally random, Wmidi only plays notes from a chosen scale (amongst a list of 270 available scales). The notes are automatically triggered while moving the stylus on the tablet. If your stylus has an eraser, you can use it to trigger chords instead of single notes (24 types of chords are available).

If you click on the first button of the stylus, the current note or chord is locked and moving the stylus on the tablet will send control change messages. Control change numbers can be selected for the X and Y coordinates, the pressure, the angle and the tilt of the stylus. For each of them, you can also specify the range of values that will be generated, and a mapping curve.

Starting with version 1.3 of Wmidi, it is possible to load a background picture. When moving the stylus on the tablet, the color of the pixel under the cursor will be analyzed. Then the corresponding control change messages will be sent for the hue, saturation and brightness or the red, green, and blue components. There is plenty of room for experimentation. For example, you could load a stone / rocky texture, and use the brightness to drive the friction parameter of a physical modelling synthesizer.