How to control media player while playing a game with Logitech Keyboard?

Question

Hey I've been trying to play games and play music in the background.

I have a multimedia player keyboard from Logitech. When you press <FN> on the keyboard, you can press buttons <F1> to <F10> for the second function. If I press <FN> <F5> it opens Winamp, which is cool, but the other buttons like "Play" etc. don't work, only in Windows Media Player.

This is fine, but can I somehow let the keys work in the background while playing a game?
It's cumbersome to press <ALT> <TAB> to go to the player and change the song.

Is there a solution so that I can play games and use the keyboard to skip music?

Answer 1

There are several ways to accomplish what you want. First, which Logitech keyboard do you have? Some of them are programmable such as the G15 and G11 — which allow you to assign functions, macros, or hot-keys for whatever purpose you might need:

http://www.logitech.com/en-us/434/285?section=downloads&bit=&osid=-1&file=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.logitech.com%2Fpub%2Fgaming%2Fkeyboards%2FGamePanel3.06.128-Multi.dmg

If your keyboard isn't one of the programmable models, then you can also run a background application or script to control your music, volume, etc. Depending on what platform you're running and extent of your music control needs there are many options.

Answer 2

The Logitech Multimedia Keyboard Plugin for Winamp should sort you out.

It's a bit old (in Internet years it's prehistoric) but hopefully it still works - there are positive reviews within the last year at least.