How to use a MIDI controller with design apps like Sketch
When I had an idea to hook up a MIDI controller to Sketch I knew I couldn’t be the first. I was happy find a great post by Chris Gain explaining the steps and tools needed to get it working.
Chris’s post describes how to assign a key or pad to a shortcut but I was interested in using MIDI knobs, which are a little more complex. So here’s a write-up of how to use knobs, along with a few other ideas for more advanced MIDI play.
MIDI Controllers
If you’re familiar with MIDI you can skip this section but for everyone else: a MIDI controller is a device, like a musical keyboard, that you plug into your computer to play music. The device itself doesn’t generate sound, it just sends on/off events to the computer when the keys are pressed. This means any controller can be used as a general-purpose input device by mapping these events to keyboard shortcuts or other application actions.
MIDI controllers have a variety of sensors. There’s the familiar piano keyboard but they can also have pads…
