Workshop Agenda
What We're Building
In this workshop we will be learning about MIDI, how to build our own simple MIDI controllers and how these custom-built MIDI controllers can interface with web pages using the WebMIDI API and JavaScript.
We'll discover very quickly that this simple protocol designed for electronic musical instruments can be used in fun, interactive and completely non-musical ways!
Things We'll Need
For this workshop we'll need:
A Circuit Playground SBMC, which has been provided to you! There are many single-board microcontrollers and computers out there you can fashion into MIDI hardware. The Circuit Playground was chosen for this workshop as it has many fun sensors already built-in which makes it great for experimenting.
A WebMIDI-capable browser such as Chrome, Chromium, Microsoft Edge or Opera. Currently these are the only browsers will full support for WebMIDI, though it's in the pipeline for Firefox.
Nice to have but not strictly necessary:
- An account with Glitch, CodePen and GitHub. If you'd like to save your projects it would be best to have an account with one or all three of these services.
What We'll Do
- Briefly review how MIDI, MIDI Controllers and MIDI messages work
- Overview how our CircuitPlaygrounds are setup as MIDI controllers
- Build a "Hello World" WebMIDI app together, reading and sending MIDI messages
- Explore example projects together
- Guided time for participants to start building a WebMIDI project of their choosing. Ideas will be provided but participants are encouraged to explore their own!
- Discuss possibilities for further exploration and projects to hack away on together
- Review and discuss where to go from here