A Parts Bin MIDI Controller In 24 Hours

October 20, 2024 by 9 Comments

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.

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MIDI Controller In A Cubic Inch

July 27, 2024 by 3 Comments

MIDI as a standard has opened up a huge world to any musician willing to use a computer to generate or enhance their playing and recording. Since the 80s, it has it has revolutionized the way music is produced and performed, allowing for seamless integration of digital instruments, automation of complex sequences, and unprecedented control over everything from production to editing. It has also resulted in a number of musical instruments that probably wouldn’t be possible without electronic help, like this MIDI instrument which might be the world’s smallest.

Fitting into a cubic inch of space, the tiny instrument’s volume is mostly taken up by the MIDI connector itself which was perhaps an acceptable size by 1980s standards but seems rather bulky today. A two-layer PCB split into three sections sandwiches the connector in place and boasts an ATtiny85 microcontroller and all the associated electronics needed to implement MIDI. Small threaded screws hold the platform together and provide each layer with a common ground. Four small pushbuttons at the top of the device act as the instrument’s keys.

The project’s creator (and Hackaday alum!) [Jeremy Cook] has it set up to play notes from a piano right now, but has also made the source code available so that any musical action can be programmed onto these buttons. Flexibility is perhaps MIDI’s greatest strength and why the standard has lasted for decades now, as it makes it fairly straightforward to build more comprehensive, easy-to-learn musical instruments or even musical instruments out of retro video game systems.

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TuneShroom Is An Artistic Mushroom-Themed MIDI Controller

February 25, 2024 by 1 Comment

Most MIDI controllers are modelled after traditional instruments, like pianos, flutes, or guitars. [Oliver Child] went in a different direction for the TuneShroom, instead modelling his DIY controller after the terrifying, unclassifiable living organism we call the mushroom.

The project was a fun way for [Oliver] to try creating a project with an artistic PCB design, and it worked out well in that regard. He penned a circuit board in the shape of a toadstool, with conductive pads serving as capacitive touch points to activate various notes.

The design is based around the Sparkfun Pro Micro, but it’s not programmed in Arduino. [Oliver] wanted to make full use of the ATmega32U4 microcontroller and have freedom to use the pins at will, so instead the project was programmed with a patched version of LUFA to handle the USB side of things. MIDI data is naturally piped out over this interface to an attached computer.

Files are on Github for the curious. Alternatively, contemplate turning an entire saxophone into a MIDI controller in your spare time. Video after the break.

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High-Resolution MIDI Controller

January 5, 2024 by 20 Comments

For an older standard, MIDI has remarkable staying power in the music industry. It remains the de facto digital interface between computers and instruments thanks to its open nature, but its age does show a little bit. Sending control change (CC) messages, for example, was originally designed to fit within seven bits, which doesn’t give particularly fine resolution compared to more capable modern computers. To work around that, a fourteen-bit message is possible, doubling the resolution, and this MIDI interface uses this larger amount of data to send these high-resolution CC messages.

The 14-bit messages are actually fairly well documented but are a bit obscure, with very limited hardware support. To that end, [Gero] set about building this control interface to solve that problem. It’s made up of only eight knobs, each of which is mapped one-to-one to a parameter on the computer, allowing the interface to feel more like an analog device where the knob corresponds directly to a change in an aspect of the sound. The platform is built around a Teensy 4.0 and some multiplexers to handle all of the knobs, with the open source software available for anyone to use to modify their actions. [Gero] was aiming for high fidelity for all aspects of this controller, not just the improved digital resolution, and made a number of other improvements to it as well like re-greasing the potentiometer knobs and a custom 3D printed enclosure.

All of the software is available for use, as well as the files to print the case. [Gero] is also working on a PCB to make the construction of the device a little more streamlined, but for now, it requires a bit of soldering off-the-shelf parts together. The MIDI standard is open as well, which allows for a lot of innovation in the creation of musical instruments from unique hardware. This project builds a MIDI synthesizer with parts from a Sega Genesis.

Turning A Saxophone Into A MIDI Controller

November 22, 2023 by 6 Comments

Most of the time, if you’re looking for a MIDI controller, you’re going to end up with some kind of keyboard or a fancy button pad. The saxophone is an altogether more beguiling instrument that makes for one hell of an interface, but there’s a problem: they’re seldom MIDI-compatible. This build from [AndrewChi] changes all that.

This digitized sax relies on a SparkFun ESP32 Thing as the brains of the operation. It uses Hall effect sensors, the digital switch type, to detect the action of the keys of the sax. Choosing parts that are quick to respond is key for musical use, so [AndrewChi] selected the Texas Instruments DRV5023 for its unipolar operation, short output delay and fast rise time. Beyond setting up the basic keys to send MIDI notes, the instrument also received additional octave controls for greater range. With sensors and magnets attached to the saxophone and keys with Sugru, the instrument is ready to serve as a capable MIDI controller. Thanks to the ESP32, it’s capable of sending MIDI data wirelessly over Bluetooth for the maximum freedom of performance.

It’s a nifty build, and a great way for wind players to get into the world of controlling digital synthesizers in an intuitive fashion. We’ve seen some great MIDI controller builds before, too.

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Nanoaetherphone Is A Special MIDI Controller

December 14, 2022 by 11 Comments

MIDI controllers can be simple straightforward keyboards, or wild magical devices that seem to snatch notes from the very aether itself. As you might expect from the name, the Nanoaetherphone II is one of the latter.

The device is inspired by the Theremin, and was built to celebrate its 100th anniversary. The Nanoaetherphone II is all about using sensors to capture data from wireless hand-wavey interactions, and turn it into MIDI messages. To this end, it has an LDR sensor for detecting light levels, which determines volume levels. This is actuated by the user’s thumb, blocking the sensor or allowing ambient light to reach it. At the front of the handheld unit, there is also an ultrasonic range sensor. Depending on how close the sensor is to the user’s hand or other object determines the exact note sent by the device. As a MIDI controller, it is intended to be hooked up to an external synthesizer to actually generate sound.

The overall concept isn’t too complicated, and the design makes it easy to pickup and play. We imagine it could even be foolproofed by programming it only to play notes from a given scale or mode, allowing for easy soloing without too many of those ill-tempered blue notes. Jazz enthusiasts might prefer it to just spit out any and all notes, of course.

We love a good MIDI controller around these parts, and we’ve seen everything from knitted models to those made out of old phones. Video after the break.

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MIDI Controller Looks Good, Enables Your Air Guitar Habit

May 18, 2022 by 8 Comments

We all want to be guitar heroes, but most of us have to settle for letting a MIDI board play our riffs using a MIDI controller. [Joris] thinks a MIDI controller should look like a cool instrument and thus the Ni28 was born. Honestly, we first thought we were looking at wall art, but on closer look, you can see the fretboard and the soundhole are festooned with buttons.

Actually, they aren’t really buttons. The Ni in the name is because the buttons are nickel-plated brass plates that act like touch switches. There’s virtually no activation force required and you can easily touch more than one plate at a time.

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