Working with Producer from PC keyboard

I'm a visually impaired music teacher from Czech Republic. I can still work with computers visually, so I'm not using any screenreaders, and only a very simple magnifier for enlarging the surroundings of the mouse pointer.

Cakewalk products are very accessible compared to other products, so I chose X1 producer as a tool for my music creation experiments. Constant hunting for mouse pointer required for intensive mouse usage is very exhausting for my eyes, and I can't be bothered by this when focusing on working with music.

So here are my questions:

- Is it possible to enter events (MIDI notes, other MIDI events, automation, etc.) using only PC keyboard? I tried to edit entries in the event list, but this doesn't seem to work. I was hoping I'd be able to use event list in similar way as a spreadsheet, as it was possible in Yamaha's XG Works, which is outdated and no lenger in development now. And speaking of event list, I really miss the ability to set font size in this view. Step recording seems to rely on an external MIDI keyboard, I'm missing the feature present in almost every tracker program, where there is an alphanumeric part of a PC keyboard mapped into 1 or two octaves of musical keyboard for entering notes, along with octave shift keys. So the easiest way to input notes into SONAR is using a notation software such as MuseScore for creating short clips (4 to 8 measures in average), export them into a MIDI file and dragging that MIDI file from browser to track view. Pretty clumsy way considering Producer's price ...

- Is it possible to focus individual clips in clip pane of track view using only a keyboard? I'd like to be able to arrow left/right among clips on a track and up/down to clips on neighboring tracks and/or layers. It would be also great if I could shift-arrow to select clips, as is usual with letters in text editing or cells in spreadsheets.

- Is it possible to audition contents during fast forwarding/rewinding within a project, or audition a clip upon selection?

All these things would help me to save my poor eyes.

Well, as I said, I'm visually impaired, and my screen is some 5 cm (2 inches) away of my eyes. If it was a touchscreen, clip zooming would solve my problem. Now, however, the biggest problem is a mouse pointer hunting.

Since I'm that near to a screen, I can't effectively work both on PC keyboard and a MIDI controller (my Yamaha Tyros sits right next to me). I already mentioned in my original post what's the easiest way to step-ůenter the music - switching back and forth from a notation program to Sonar is still more comfortable than stretching myself away from PC keyboard to play notes on my synth - and I'm away of screen too, which disables me from checking what I've entered so far.

I bet you Panup on this forum could create a custom mod for you that is high contrast or something that would help you see it easier.

You can reach him here, or over at his site sonarmods.com

Check out his site. Very cool.

I like the sound of that

Maximum Contrast 1.0

I just found a very old thread about VST virtual MIDI keyboard Trollo. It doesn't seem to be available anymore though. Anything similar to that?

TomVal


I just found a very old thread about VST virtual MIDI keyboard Trollo. It doesn't seem to be available anymore though. Anything similar to that?

Maybe this: http://vmpk.sourceforge.net/ ?

UnderTow

TomVal


No, since working with mouse means:

This was the bit that caught my attention:

"Another customization that you may want to tweak is the keyboard mapping. The default layout maps about two and half octaves for the QWERTY alphanumeric keyboard, but there are some more definitions in the data directory, adapted for other international layouts. You can even define your own mapping using a dialog box available in the Edit->Keyboard map menu. There are also options to load and save the maps as XML files. The last loaded map will be remembered the next time you start VMPK. In fact, all your preferences, selected MIDI bank and program, and the controller values will be saved on exit, and restored when you restart VMPK the next time."

It seems you can use your PC keyboard to control it.

EDIT: I see you were responding to my other post.

UnderTow