Reaper gamepad wah-expression-pedal!

[glokraw]

Reaper has some joystick support to be activated in it's midi preferences.
To make a long story short, I have a decade old two-pole Logitech usb gamepad,
chosen as a Reaper midi device, with joystick support added. Using U-he Hive 2 synth,
which has extensive control mapping on many of it's presets, the gamepad joysticks
became thumb controlled wah/expression pedals for whatever is mapped by default,
which is often a lot.

The up-down of the left stick is often moving filters, or the mod-wheel,
with the left-right changing pitch by a whole step. The right stick offers different controls in many cases, sound-designer-dependant, so a decent gamer or instrumentalist should have great fun.

Eight and sometimes ten of the buttons trigger sounds from a chromatic range,
so it's easy to add to chords played on the main keyboard. And midi-learn is always a possibility

The pic shows the midi prefs panel of the windows reaper running in wine, so yours will likely look different

I've mounted the gamepad where it's easy to reach with the left hand, and glad it's the weekend!

reaper-joystick-prefs.png

The poles are spring-loaded, and for some things, a joystick that holds it's position would be preferable, and I'll get one and add it to the setup. Alchemy has a nice XY
pad, need to check that soon.

[glokraw]

I added a Korg Nanokontrol2, which in windows Reaper in linux/wine-staging,
works together with the joystick, so the learned knobs and sliders can establish
a parameter start-point, from which joystick takes over, when both are controls are mapped to the same parameter. Great fun, but tricking me into learning what all those synth controls actually do