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.