Monthly Archives: July 2017

Proxima Controller, a Virtual MIDI Controller

Back in 2008 I created an app called Proxima Controller. It’s a virtual MIDI controller that runs on Windows, OSX, and Linux.

I wanted an easy way to control external MIDI hardware (synthesizers, etc.) from my PC and there wasn’t an app that I liked available.

It started out as a Windows-only app. A few years later I ported it to Linux. And last year I ported it to OSX (but didn’t release it via the app store).

It’s been one of my more popular apps, with more than 70,000 downloads. I’m glad people have found it useful. It certainly made it easier for me to test sounds on my rackmount audio equipment without needing to shuffle full-sized MIDI keyboards around.

When I have time I’d also like to add an X-Y controller pad, something that can be used to transmit the same controller messages as the joystick on the Korg Wavestation and the Yamaha SY22/SY35/TG33.

You can get it here.

Trigram Generator for Windows and Linux

A long time ago I wrote a free Windows app called the “ZC Trigram Generator”. It was a simple app to generate plausible-sounding words based on a set of input words.

It had a steady trickle of downloads for around 8 years or so, about 1500 downloads per year.

Two years ago I open-sourced it and posted it on GitHub.

Today I updated it to be a little easier to use by adding a “load text” button to load a text file.

Trigram Generator Screenshot

It works on Linux and Windows 7 or newer (including Windows 10).

It’s available here on GitHub if you’d like to get it.

Guitar Tuner and Bass Tuner for Windows

Guitar Tuner and Bass Tuner are the first desktop Windows apps that I wrote. I don’t recall how long ago, but it was certainly more than a decade.

They’re super-simple apps that let you sound notes to tune your guitar or bass to. They only support standard tuning and use the default MIDI device for sound output, which usually means the “Windows MIDI Mapper”, a built-in sound synthesizer that’s been part of the OS for ages.

For nearly ten years I had them available for download on zecentauri.com, and they had more than 100k downloads in total. Two years ago I open-sourced them, but didn’t really mention it anywhere.

I updated them both today, adding two notes to Guitar Tuner to support 8-string guitars and making improvements to the installers.

Both the source code and the installers are available on GitHub under the MIT license.

Visit Guitar Tuner on GitHub.

Visit Bass Tuner on GitHub.