“Now this is a story all about how my life got flipped, turned- whoops, so sorry; wrong story. This is actually a story about a project I’ve been dreaming of working on since I first learned about Arduino and open source: a MIDI controller inspired by the MIDI Fighter by DJ Tech Tools, complete with light-up arcade buttons. It took a while for my skills to catch up to my project aspirations though, so finally, a few years later, I’ve built my version of a DIY MIDI Fighter. Now obviously this isn’t an original concept to make. You can find quite a few different ones by different makers all over the internet, but what I think is awesome about this project is that no single MIDI Fighter is the same, whether it be hardware hook-up, final housing or code iteration. Even the microcontrollers vary. So with all of that, here is my humble version. I hope that my work helps you with your own open source MIDI explorations.”