MIDI Board Github link
My MIDI soundboard project was the result of my love for microcontrollers and my growing interest in music. My fascination with music began when my roommate, Ryan, taught me how to play the piano. However, I struggled to understand how all the notes came together to form chords and I found it difficult to grasp the basic concepts of playing music. To overcome this, I decided to create my own project that would allow me to learn about music by building an “instrument” from scratch.
This project was very intriguing to me, as I had very little knowledge about music and the process of creating it. I had always thought that music was simply a combination of random sounds, but I soon discovered that it is much more complex than that. Without delving into music theory, let's just say that it was an eye-opening experience.
One day, while browsing the website of Adafruit, I came across Capacitive Touch Sensors and was immediately intrigued. I decided to purchase two of them and put them to use in my project. I designed and 3D printed a top panel to hold the copper contacts, or "buttons", and then began he tedious task of soldering wires to all 24 contacts. After a long and frustrating process, I finally got all the contacts connected and working properly. The software was relatively easy to implement, as the sensors came with code to detect when something touched them. I simply added the code needed to make it a MIDI controller. Once that was done, the board was all set and ready to be used with any software that accepts MIDI inputs.
Despite the annoyance of soldering everything together, this was a very fun project to build. In hindsight, I would want to design a PCB to make the wire management much easier. I learned a great deal about how music is created and tweaked the software countless times to make it feel more natural to use. My favorite part of this project was watching my friends use it to make music, as it was one of the few projects that other people could use.
As with all of my projects they are mostly proof of concepts and or prototypes, they are in no means fully complete. Below are some pictures of the "finished" product.
