dust breeding » Archives » 279 / nanopedal

i’ve been wanting a compact usb midi foot pedal for using with live for a long time. off the shelf controllers are often bulky and require an external midi interface. i built one out of a usb number pad last year but it was less than ideal. last night while working on some music, i tried another little idea out and it worked great… so i decided to make it more permanent.

tonight i popped all of the keys but five off of my korg nanokey in order to see how it would work as a pedal. it turned out that it worked really well. i cut some small pieces of plywood out to raise the key height and some scrap plexiglass to cover up the missing keys. a little spray paint and double stick tape and it was all finished.

i think it turned out pretty well. not bad for a cheap keyboard and scrap materials.

TAGS: DIY, foot pedal, hardware hacking, korg, midi controller, midi pedal, paint, plexi, wood