We love seeing all of the many creative projects that folks use Teensy boards for, and the plethora of musical instruments bring us particular joy. This is especially the case with ETMoody3’s capacitive touch MIDI keytar.

The birch plywood body resembles the classic 80s styling of the Yamaha SHS-10 Sholky (Shoulder Keyboard), but the underlying ideas could be applied to any form factor. Four MPR121 capacitive touch sensor breakouts on each of the four available addresses handle the 37 keys, with an ST7789 LCD and seven additional touch sensors providing the user interface. An ADS1015 ADC and simple LED/photoresistor pairing in the headstock serves as an optical pitch bend. The keys are copper foil tape, covered with vinyl. A pair of XBee radios provide wireless communication to a Teensy 3.6-powered receiver, which in turn outputs MIDI. The BOM, blueprint, and source for both the controller and receiver can be found on GitHub, including bitmap data for the adorable namesake Platypus who is depicted on the LCD rocking out with its own tiny keytar!