Control This Ocarina-Like MIDI Device with Your Breath

Tears of the Kingdom may be the hotness right now, but Ocarina of Time will always hold a special place in our hearts. If you were as nerdy as I was, you may have purchased an ocarina at a renaissance festival after playing that game. If so, you then discovered that breath control was crucial to making the ocarina sound like an instrument and not a deflating balloon. Most MIDI devices omit breath control and that limits their versatility, which is why Xavier Dumont designed this ocarina-like MIDI device controlled by breath.

This MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) device, dubbed the MIDILodica, is a unique instrument devised entirely by Dumont, but it resembles an ocarina or a flute. The top surface has 35 buttons to select specific notes, similar to the MIDI controllers that you're used to. To trigger a note, the player has to blow into the mouthpiece. The strength of their breath translates to the intensity of the MIDI note. There is also a linear touch pad on the bottom side that the player can reach with their thumb. Manipulating that will bend the pitch of the notes. Together, the breath control and touch pad let the player create a lot more variation in the MIDI output than would be possible otherwise.

The MIDILodica also has a simple interface on the top surface, which includes a TFT LCD screen and four buttons (there is a fifth button on the bottom). That interface lets the player adjust settings, switch octaves, and so on.

As is the case with most MIDI controllers, the MIDILodica doesn't output any sound itself. Instead, it sends MIDI messages to a computer or synthesizer that generates tones based on the parameters input by the player.

This is an open source project that you can replicate yourself using the files Dumont uploaded to GitHub. The shell of the MIDILodica is 3D-printable and inside there is a custom PCB. An Arduino Micro, the buttons, an Adafruit TFT LCD, and the breath sensor all mount onto that PCB. The touch pad connects to the PCB through a jumper cable. Because this is a standard MIDI controller, it will work with whatever software you prefer. If you want to hear it in action, Dumont has some simple demonstrations at the end of his video.