I finally got my mouse hooked up to freewheelin, http://freewheeling.sourceforge.net/. Which means I can dance around, and trigger the recording of music with the mouse in the hand. Next step: get a silent, wireless trigger. I also noticed that when I have power plugged into the laptop that I get some not so nice background sound. Strange. Anyhow, the trick was a mixture of xbindkeys, xvkbd and fweelin config. So, from my .xbindkeys.rc.fweelin: #Button 3 sends a 'p' into X "xvkbd -xsendevent -text 'p'" b:3 and from my .fweelin.rc: which makes p replace the footpedal. Works for me - for now. Did give it a first go in Garys kitchen, which was good fun.