TechRoadie

How you can make your dream MIDI or Audio Device come true

Posted on October 1, 2009 by SCP

Let’s start off with the assumption that you have a studio or live performance problem. Your pedals don’t switch like you would like them to, you want to merge multiple MIDI inputs to your computer, or some other problem that doesn’t have a solution yet. You know that you can’t get companies like PreSonus or M-Audio to develop the problem solver for you, and you have a bit of skill in computer programming, well, at least you are confident that you can do it better than most if you learn about it.

How do you solve a problem like this?

You could consider making your own solution. Here at TechRoadie, we regularly cover the efforts of technology oriented musicians building their own devices. We publish a monthly MYO (Make-Your-Own) round-up that cover devices that were rolled out in the past month. Many of these prototype devices are based on a technology called Arduino.

What is Arduino?

According to Wikipedia, “Arduino is a physical computing platform based on a simple open hardware design for a single-board microcontroller, with embedded I/O support and a standard programming language.” It comes in several flavors, has an ecosystem of software and peripheral support, and is cheap. Arduino is largely based on the Atmel AVR microcontroller family and the supported hardware has been expanded through clones, outlined on the Wikipedia pages.

What about functionality, how do I write software for the thing?

That’s where the answer gets really interesting, especially for a software engineer. Arduino has an integrated development environment (IDE) that can be used to create projects that stand alone or projects that are tethered to a PC. The programming language looks a lot like C/C++. The IDE acts as a terminal emulator once the application is downloaded to the Arduino board. Of particular interest to electronic musicians is that Arduino boards can interface with Max/MSP, PureData, and SuperCollider. If you don’t know what that means, it’s cool, you can read all about them by following the Wikipedia links. We’re going to investigate as much as we can about PureData in a future installation on TechRoadie.

With the audio and MIDI interfaces offered above, you can use the Arduino as an input to the PC or as an output from those programs. So, you can accept gestural input from the input/output (I/O) ports of the Arduino and send them up the cable to PureData or Max. Starting sequences, triggering sounds, modifying signal processing parameters – all possible with the Arduino board and software.

This all sounds fantastically nerdy, so where do I start?

It’s recommended that you start with developing an understanding of all of the components of the system that you want to build. You’ll want to read the Wikipedia entry, visit the Arduino project website, and then plan your project. On Wikipedia, we know it’s the boring part, but the References and External Links sections of the page is crammed full of additional resources worth reading. When it comes time to buy components, there are many sites on the web that can help you. We recommend starting with the folks at MakerShed on their Arduino page. It really gives you a good idea of what configurations are available, resources for learning the basics, starter kits, I/O modules (including wireless transports), and more.

Here’s an example from over at MAKEzine: the Arduino MIDI Touchpad by Collin Cunningham:

What’s next and an invitation …

TechRoadie is planning to start an Arduino project soon. That said, we’re certain that we need to follow our own advice and learn about the options and software, then plan our project. We’ll be investigating and noting our plans here on the site. The invitation is for readers to contact us if they are interested in documenting their project in an article on TechRoadie.

The tools are out there that enable the average musician with a technical bent the opportunity to build the device of their dreams. From making simple control or switch boxes to having a physical interface drive a quad-core Mac or PC processing audio, they opportunity is there. Drop us a line and good luck!