programming midi controllers for beginners

[coooool]

I went to a really good flash conference earlier this year where a guy (can't remember his name off hand) had used action script to program a Wii midi/video controller among other things. I gather there is free software out there for that now anyway but I'm really interested in unorthodox interfaces with midi, stuff like this http://youtube.com/watch?v=nD9qub4fJWo

I have basically no programming experience except for taking a bit of C++ and javascript in high school but I'd like to try and do something like turn a wacom tablet into a midi controller eventually. So I guess my question is where can I look for resources on this kind of stuff that starts out really basic?

Thanks

[Daz]

In Windows check out the Windows Multimedia API documentation, that explains how to program MIDI using C++. On Apple Mac OS X check out the documentation for CoreMIDI, their C++ MIDI app. Both are documented on-line by the respective companies :

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms712733.aspx
http://developer.apple.com/reference/Mu ... -date.html

Alternatively check out something like Juce which is a C++ library for writing music apps that fell out of the development of Mackie Tracktion :

http://www.rawmaterialsoftware.com/juce/

Of course you'll need a good grounding in the underlying operation of MIDI in order to program with it and this site is packed with tech details :

http://www.borg.com/~jglatt/tech/miditech.htm

Alternatively you can program at a higher level using things like pd, chuck and max/msp.

http://puredata.info/
http://chuck.cs.princeton.edu/
http://www.cycling74.com/

Daz.