This is one of the finest Hauptwerk setups I have ever seen. WONDERFUL. And the music is delightful as well. Thank you so much for putting this up and all your hard work.
Yes, there is a page forward and page backward toe piston either side of the expression pedals, and these are duplicated by page forward and page backward thumb pistons. You can just see the page forward piston above the Solo manual on the far right. In reality that's more useful for a pageturning assistant - I nearly always turn using the toe piston. The pistons could just as easily be mapped to other functions such as a sequencer.
Hi Paul, good question. I actually use three different programs as follows. I couldn't just use a system of USB-controlled buttons such as X-keys since their controlling software requires to be "in focus" to activate them, and whenever I activate a control either directly in Hauptwerk, or in j-organ (which I use as a graphical interface for designing the stop-jambs which control Hauptwerk), that program becomes the one "in focus". Not sure if that is a limitation of just Windows or all operating systems. So instead, the four pistons (page forward and and page back, for thumb and toe pistons) each send a unique MIDI signal to a MIDI encoder (in fact just the same one that is controlled by the pedal notes, since it has over 100 inputs and only 32 are in use for the pedals, leaving me with more than enough for all the pistons). The MIDI signal generated by each piston doesn't need to belong to the program which is "in focus", and the signal is detected by the first piece of software, Bome's MIDI Translator. This is postcard-ware - it's free if you send the programmer a postcard from anywhere in the world. Or you can pay a small amount for the licence key. BMT converts each of the four pageturn MIDI signals into one of two complex keystrokes - you can choose anything you want, but I went for somelike like Control + Space + Pageforward and Control + Space + Pageback. The reason for the complexity will become clear in a moment. I then wrote a short script in Autohotkey (essentially a Windows macro writer) which, when it receives the keystroke combination Control + Space + Pageforward, brings Acrobat Reader into focus if it isn't already (it will be in focus if I just opened a music score pdf and haven't changed any stops since, otherwise j-organ or indeed any other program will be in focus) then it does one pageforward. (NB I had to add a Sleep 100 command to allow Windows enough time (10ms) to do the pageturn after activating Acrobat, otherwise I found it doesn't work properly). Thus Acrobat comes into focus and turns the page (and stays in focus until the next j-organ stop change, or the next time I click Hauptwerk or any other program etc). As Hauptwerk responds to MIDI signals it doesn't need to be put back in focus after the AHK macro has executed. To ensure the AHK macro always runs with Windows I created a shortcut to the executable file and put it in the startup folder. Now it will be clear why I needed to find a unique key combination to run the macro - because if I just went for something obvious like the forward arrow key, every time I press the arrow, the AHK macro will search for any open Acrobat files, bring them into focus and move the page forward! Not useful when I use my computer for work besides controlling Hautpwerk. There's obviously a similar AHK macro for page back (in case I accidentally move two pages at once, if I need to go back to an earlier piece in a book or if there is a repeat in a piece - I use the pageback rather less frequently however.) As for music reading software, I just use Acrobat, and as long as my music is saved to and opens as a pdf, and as long as the AHK macro is set to look for any open Acrobat files, the macro will work. I did consider using a different pdf reader (does anyone know of a reader that by default will open pdf files fullscreen?) just for the organ, but haven't found any that offered superior features to Acrobat reader. Hope that helps, happy to share code if you want to go further. Kind regards, Organorak
This is one of the finest Hauptwerk setups I have ever seen. WONDERFUL. And the music is delightful as well. Thank you so much for putting this up and all your hard work.
Hi, I am so envious I don't know what to do with myself!
Yes, there is a page forward and page backward toe piston either side of the expression pedals, and these are duplicated by page forward and page backward thumb pistons. You can just see the page forward piston above the Solo manual on the far right. In reality that's more useful for a pageturning assistant - I nearly always turn using the toe piston. The pistons could just as easily be mapped to other functions such as a sequencer.
Hi Paul, good question. I actually use three different programs as follows.
I couldn't just use a system of USB-controlled buttons such as X-keys since their controlling software requires to be "in focus" to activate them, and whenever I activate a control either directly in Hauptwerk, or in j-organ (which I use as a graphical interface for designing the stop-jambs which control Hauptwerk), that program becomes the one "in focus". Not sure if that is a limitation of just Windows or all operating systems.
So instead, the four pistons (page forward and and page back, for thumb and toe pistons) each send a unique MIDI signal to a MIDI encoder (in fact just the same one that is controlled by the pedal notes, since it has over 100 inputs and only 32 are in use for the pedals, leaving me with more than enough for all the pistons). The MIDI signal generated by each piston doesn't need to belong to the program which is "in focus", and the signal is detected by the first piece of software, Bome's MIDI Translator. This is postcard-ware - it's free if you send the programmer a postcard from anywhere in the world. Or you can pay a small amount for the licence key.
BMT converts each of the four pageturn MIDI signals into one of two complex keystrokes - you can choose anything you want, but I went for somelike like Control + Space + Pageforward and Control + Space + Pageback. The reason for the complexity will become clear in a moment.
I then wrote a short script in Autohotkey (essentially a Windows macro writer) which, when it receives the keystroke combination Control + Space + Pageforward, brings Acrobat Reader into focus if it isn't already (it will be in focus if I just opened a music score pdf and haven't changed any stops since, otherwise j-organ or indeed any other program will be in focus) then it does one pageforward. (NB I had to add a Sleep 100 command to allow Windows enough time (10ms) to do the pageturn after activating Acrobat, otherwise I found it doesn't work properly). Thus Acrobat comes into focus and turns the page (and stays in focus until the next j-organ stop change, or the next time I click Hauptwerk or any other program etc). As Hauptwerk responds to MIDI signals it doesn't need to be put back in focus after the AHK macro has executed.
To ensure the AHK macro always runs with Windows I created a shortcut to the executable file and put it in the startup folder.
Now it will be clear why I needed to find a unique key combination to run the macro - because if I just went for something obvious like the forward arrow key, every time I press the arrow, the AHK macro will search for any open Acrobat files, bring them into focus and move the page forward! Not useful when I use my computer for work besides controlling Hautpwerk.
There's obviously a similar AHK macro for page back (in case I accidentally move two pages at once, if I need to go back to an earlier piece in a book or if there is a repeat in a piece - I use the pageback rather less frequently however.)
As for music reading software, I just use Acrobat, and as long as my music is saved to and opens as a pdf, and as long as the AHK macro is set to look for any open Acrobat files, the macro will work. I did consider using a different pdf reader (does anyone know of a reader that by default will open pdf files fullscreen?) just for the organ, but haven't found any that offered superior features to Acrobat reader.
Hope that helps, happy to share code if you want to go further.
Kind regards, Organorak
Are you able to turn the virtual pages with a thumb piston as well as your feet if you don't have any spare feet at the right moment?