In the Maker Shed: MidiVox shield for Arduino

Arduino

The MidiVox shield turns a basic Arduino board into a standalone MIDI synthesizer with parameters tweakable via MIDI CC messages. Hook up a MIDI keyboard controller via the onboard 5-pin DIN (aka MIDI) jack, upload a sketch and play. You may be surprised what sweet sounds can be generated by a single channel of 12-bit digital-to-analog conversion (I definitely was).

A test drive of the kit’s example sketch can be seen synthing just below this sentence …

MidiVox shield for Arduino

18 thoughts on “In the Maker Shed: MidiVox shield for Arduino

  1. Angry Man says:

    Does it only play sharps and flats? Why is he only playing those keys?

    1. Collin Cunningham says:

      Because those are easiest keys to improvise on, while remaining enjoyable to listen to :)

    2. Matt Mets says:

      The black keys happen to form a pentatonic scale, which is a set of notes that generally sound good no matter which order you play them in. You could do the same thing using any set of keys that make a pentatonic scale, but the black keys are especially nice because they are separated from the rest of the keys, so they don’t take much work to play :-)

      1. Collin Cunningham says:

        yeah – what he said!

        1. rush rules 2112 says:

          you got me into electronoics mr. cunningham . soon afte I wached your videos I started working on arduino, computors and, breadbord electonics. I am only 12 years old and I now can build cool thing in my room. soon I am going to build a arduino collor orgon inspired by you. thank you for your videos and your time.

  2. pichenettes says:

    I am curious as to why you used a DAC instead of PWM + active low-pass filter. Did you really care about those extra 4 bits of resolution?

  3. Collin Cunningham says:

    Yup, those extra 4 bits can add quite a bit more detail.
    Plus I imagine the filter necessary for the Arduino’s standard PWM signal(@~490Hz) would muddy things up quite a bit

  4. Jowa Moo says:

    Cool stuff!
    Check out Nexagen Inc, provides a flexible compensation plan by the help of which the distributor can earn huge revenue.Nexagen provides the distributors a complete training program that help the distributors to understand his duties. Visit: http://www.mlmtipsandadvice.com.au/mlm-companies/nexagen/

  5. David B. Lection says:

    Is this shield still available?

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