Reply to Gamepad MIDI controller (noob) questions

So I know this subject has been beaten to death plenty of times, but I figured someone might be able to give me an idea of where to go from here. I know it may be hard to help without any pics to give you a visual reference, Ill throw one up when I'm out of work later today.

I have a gigaware usb pad from radioshack, I opened it up and I dont seem to find clear connections for some of the buttons to be soldered. I see a round maze of circuitry where each of the gamepad buttons contacts the pcb, which seems promising however these connections seem far too small to solder with... I assume these are more complex than a regular 4 button setup since its an 8 way d-pad, and id like to take advantage of this to send 8 different midi messages (if possible)

4 of the other buttons have larger circle-shaped contact points where the original gamepad buttons contacted the pcb, these 4 buttons look easy to solder to. the shoulder buttons should be much easy as well since they're connected with a pair of wire leads that I can solder up easily.