Experimental Music: Composition with an Arduino MIDI Controller

Knobcon  Chicagoland, September 2016

With an Arduino, a breadboard, and a handful of parts, you can build a MIDI controller that works as a sequencer or a classic beatbox. But the same design can be used to implement interactive MIDI effects that bend musical time and space. From real-time manipulation of tone clusters to playing the silences between the notes, simple midi parameter misdirection to an exploration of vertical time, hyperrealism and perceptual illusions – one basic Arduino MIDI build can serve as a useful platform for a wide variety of sonic explorations. In this talk, Elliot Inman of Musical Circuits will demonstrate the build and code necessary to get started and demonstrate various musical effects.

Apologies to Hiller and Isaacson, 1959, for use of the title.

Easy as a Sunday Morning

Descent into Madness

MIDI with an Arduino?

And a final apology to Roy Lichtenstein and the Art Institute of Chicago for that last one.

~ WEI 2016