Since the early 1980s, the Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) has been used to communicate with, control, and synchronize synthesizers, drum machines, lighting, input devices, and just about any musical instrument you can connect to a computer. There have been many dedicated controllers, and though many people use a laptop or PC these days, dedicated MIDI controllers like the Pico MIDI still have an important place in the digital music scene.

The Pico MIDI has 1 MIDI input, 2 MIDI outputs, and a MIDI thru — properly optoisolated, and with LEDs to show activity (a nice sanity check). By taking control of the MIDI bus programmatically, the Pico can act as a sequencer, controlling a vast number of synths and other sound output devices. It could also be configured as a passive sniffer. Add a small LCD display and it could easily show you everything happening on a MIDI bus. All the GPIO outputs are fully broken out, so the board can be used for various projects!

There are a few uncommitted DIP switches, which you can use to tell the Pico things like MIDI channels to connect to, or to load a particular program, for example. The documentation is quite good, explaining every jumper setting on the board and what it configures. Examples are given for the Arduino environment, MicroPython, and C++! The entire board can be powered from the Pico’s USB connector, or alternatively, it can take 12V, which is a standard voltage in most Eurorack-style synthesizer banks.

If you’ve wanted to roll your sleeves up and really hand-control some MIDI devices, create a permanent installation using MIDI, or just want to make some noise, check out the Pico MIDI and get hacking!