Part of the reason MIDI has hung on as a standard in the musical world for so long is that it is incredibly versatile. Sure, standard instruments like pianos and drums can be interfaced with a computer fairly easily using this standard, but essentially anything can be converted to a MIDI instrument with the right wiring and a little bit of coding. [Jeremy] needed to build a MIDI controller in a single day, and with just a few off-the-shelf parts he was able to piece together a musical instrument from his parts bin.
The build is housed in an off-brand protective case from a favorite American discount tool store, but the more unique part of the project is the choice to use arcade buttons as the instrument’s inputs. [Jeremy] tied eight of these buttons to an Arduino Uno to provide a full octave’s worth of notes, and before you jump to the comments to explain that there are 12 notes in an octave, he also added a button to the side of the case to bend any note when pressed simultaneously. An emergency stop button serves as a master on/off switch and a MIDI dongle on the other side serves as the interface point to a computer.
After a slight bit of debugging, the interface is up and running within [Jeremy]’s required 24-hour window. He’s eventually planning to use it to control a custom MIDI-enabled drum kit, but for now it was fun to play around with it in some other ways. He’s also posted the project code on a GitHub page. And, if this looks a bit familiar, this was not [Jeremy]’s first MIDI project. He was also the creator of one of the smallest MIDI interfaces we’ve ever seen.
How do I actually get the musical notes out on a speaker?
Perhaps I should have explained that. You need a MIDI synth, or something like Garage Band on a computer with a MIDI-USB adapter.
Awesome writeup, thanks so much!
I thought the Teensy was the go to for midi but if this is a what’s on hand example it’s still good.
This is a rabbit hole I want to get through to midify pedal boards I have, and every midi kit seems to be in Europe.
Another video I had to just look at the timeline pics and hit play only to get dosed again and not find anything informative while eager to want more info only. Shaking the camera on purpose etc. and I have to hit pause. If I had VR gear on…
If you don´t need to synthesize MIDI events into notes, almost any microcontroller will do, even the most anemic ones.
Text is your friend: https://mitxela.com/projects/midi_on_the_attiny
Teensy is overkill, like using a Ferrari to drive in your garden.
There’s a bit more info on the GitHub page.
Love this :-)
Thank you!