Which has actually been the name we've used for it for quite a long time now. We call it MIDI Thing for two reasons.
- It's a thing ...
- It does MIDI, in fact, it only does MIDI
So, what does it actually do? Good question. Here's an overview:
MIDI Thing is a portable battery powered MIDI looper. It takes a MIDI signal in on any channel and puts the same MIDI data out. So, to give you an example:
If you record a 4 bar bassline on channel 1 it'll continue to play that on channel 1 until you tell it to stop. You then record a chord sequence on channel 2, and it'll put that out on channel 2 as well as the bassline on channel 1. You can do this on all 16 MIDI channels and it'll keep on playing everything until you erase a channel, or switch it off!
It listens on all channels simultaneously so you don't need to do any switching around and it has a very simple interface. In fact, it has just 2 switches on it. One is the on/off switch, the other puts the device into command mode, and this is where it gets clever.
The MIDI Thing get its instructions from what ever keyboard controller is being used for MIDI input. We thought that would make sense as you've already got a keyboard in front of you and you wouldn't want to have to navigate through lots of menus on a tiny box.
So, here's what the commands look like ...
Of course MIDI Thing can support multiple in and out connections if you've got a MIDI thru box.
As you can see above we used a number of output MIDI devices on the teaser video we showed recently. The CZ101 simply acted as a controller driving several channels on the MU15, the meeblip Anode, and the Waldorf Rocket (out of shot). We could have added more, but I ran out of MIDI cables!
Hopefully that gives you a good overview of the device and what it can do. We've built 4 prototypes so far and it all works very well.
So I've got a few questions for you ... Is it something you'd be interested in, and if you would, what sort of price would you pay for it?
3 comments:
Would definitely be useful to me if it stays cheap. I've considered programming something similar for my miduino. Needs a magnetic case.
Lovely idea. Questions: How many steps can it record to each channel? Where does it look for midi clock? I have more but will save for later.
I built myself one of these in 1992 or so. Intended for control by a Yamaha KX-5, used notes on Ch 2 for the commands, played on ch1, used the hold button for record enable. In 2002 I built it again in software. I just never thought of it as a product.
SInce I already have one I'm not likely to be a customer, but good luck indeed! (I'm sure my design is different than yours. Based on a Moto 68HC11 for tarters).
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