Is it possible to Start and Stop Cakewalk playback with a foot pedal?

[tdehan]

Is it possible to Start and Stop Cakewalk playback with a foot pedal?   I use both a Microsoft Surface Pro with Cakewalk and a dedicated sequencer (Kawai Q80) during live performances.  Is there a way to start and stop playback of a Cakewalk sequence on my Surface as I can with a foot pedal connected to the Kawai Q80?

I use an AirTurn Bluetooth foot pedal to turn music pages on my Surface during a performance and am wondering if there is such a thing that will also start and stop the Cakewalk sequence?

[msmcleod]

If your Q80 sends out MIDI start/stop messages, then you should be able to get it to control Cakewalk. You probably don’t want it to send tempo or song pointer information though, so make sure these are filtered out in Cakewalk’s prefs,

[tdehan]

Perhaps I should clarify further.  I use both Cakewalk on my Surface and my Q80 to play sequences in a live performance.  The Q80 is not driving Cakewalk on the Surface.  I want to be able to start and stop Cakewalk playback on the Surface when I am using it to play a sequence just as I do with the Q80 when it is playing the sequence.

[Kurre]

Hmm...am i missing something?

Why can't you tap the spacebar?

Or make a trigger for that key.

[tdehan]

tapping the space bar means I would have to tap the screen.  However, with that said, should I be able to start play back from tapping the space bar?  If so, it doesn't work.

With that said, my question is about starting playback from a pedal...not by tapping the screen.  If I am going to tap the screen I would simply reach up and press the PLAY button.

 

[Kurre]

Ok. Sorry for that.

Your bluetooth pedal, does it have some software to control different things?

Maybe use the control software to use shortcut keys?

[scook]

Short answer...yes.

There are several threads in the old forum about it. Here area a few links -

http://forum.cakewalk.com/USB-Foot-Control-m3735786.aspx

http://forum.cakewalk.com/I-would-like-to-set-up-a-foot-switch-to-punch-in-out-record-from-motu-device-in-Splat-m3616550.aspx

http://forum.cakewalk.com/MIDI-Foot-Controller-for-Start-and-Stop-m3195641.aspx

http://forum.cakewalk.com/The-Handy-Dandy-USB-foot-Controller-m2998482.aspx

 

 

[Craig Anderton]

The pok from x-tempo is a pretty amazing device. It's wireless, and basically lets you program keyboard shortcuts on two banks of four footswitches. It's actually more than that, though, because you can have another set of shortcuts if you double-click the footswitch, so that's 16 keyboard shortcuts. If you dedicate one switch to a function key, then you can hold that and press a footswitch for another keyboard shortcut - so in this mode, you can have 21 keyboard shortcuts underfoot, as it were

There's a Mac/Windows pok manager app for programming the shortcuts. You can also load and save profiles. For example, you could have a profile for keyboard shortcuts for Word - change selected characters to all uppercase, bold, insert page break, whatever. 

In addition to storing keyboard shortcuts, you can also store up to six individual keypresses as a character string. As one way to use this, if you put the keypress for zoom in horizontally (like PgUp or whatever) and the keypress  zoom in vertically on the footswitch, then one footswitch press does a "two-dimensional" zoom.

The pok concept has been around for a while, I wrote a review of the original wireless, USB-receiver-based unit, which was great. the latest model pok now works with Bluetooth BLE. The price is $259, but they have B-stock on the site sometimes for $179. They're rugged, so it wouldn't be a problem if it was a unit they took around to demo at a music store, had at a trade show for a few days, or whatever. Being able to place so many keyboard shortcuts under foot control is really helpful.