I've always wanted a ribbon controller for playing legato synth lines and microtonal stuff, but I couldn't justify the price of one. The only model I was able to find was $400. That's as much as my 61-key Roland MIDI controller with all sorts of knobs and sliders! So I decided I'd make one using the amazing Arduino microcontroller. It is a tiny microchip about the size of a flash drive, and you use code very similar to C to program it to do whatever you can think of. The Arduino program for loading the code onto the chip's memory is also quite user-friendly and comes with many examples of applications.
I started work on it yesterday with an Arduino Micro, one of the smallest models available and only costs around $30. In one day I already have it sending out MIDI notes! I basically just looked at examples of MIDI projects and used parts of that code. Once you have that working, adding more features is quite easy. I'm just waiting on my shipment of the touch strip to add the ribbon part, and next I'll probably add a few knobs and other performance features.
I'll write a tutorial soon too if anyone is interested, you can make all sorts of MIDI devices out of it so I'll probably make it a more generic guide on how to make all kinds of MIDI hardware.
Building a MIDI controller (ribbon controller) with Arduino
- East Island
- Posts: 103
- Joined: 17 Jan 2015
- Location: Almelo
Arduino is very cool for music and multimedia art projects,
I am very interested how you do it.
I am very interested how you do it.
A Controle Freak. Loves Logic&Reason&Luna , remote controllers.
https://soundcloud.com/east-island
https://soundcloud.com/east-island
- pushedbutton
- Posts: 1541
- Joined: 16 Jan 2015
- Location: Lancashire, UK
- Contact:
www.highlyliquid.com do a MIDICPU which is nice. I had a little trouble soldering it so mine ended up fried but while i had it in a testing environment it did everything i wanted it to do. You need to program it using Sysex codes but it's not that hard.
@pushedbutton on twitter, add me, send me a message, but don't try to sell me stuff cos I'm skint.
Using Reason since version 3 and still never finished a song.
Using Reason since version 3 and still never finished a song.
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