“A loop station, or a looper, is essentially a tool to playback in real-time your instrumental riffs (loops). It’s not intended as a recording media, but an instrument to shape the inspiration without distraction (and eventually perform live…).
There are plenty of audio recording loop stations out there, both in the form of dedicated hardware (almost every single guitar pedal manufacturer has its own product) or computer software (the excellent Linux Sooper Looper or windows Mobius, to cite the most known). I could only find few projects about DIY non-audio but MIDI loopers, meaning a tool to record MIDI events and play them immediately back in a loop; most of these projects (all of them, I should say) are abandoned or lost … well, here we are with a complete project for everyone!
This Arduino MIDI loop station simply keeps track of incoming MIDI events and play them back. You only have to press the record pedal, create your best riff ever and stop recording by pressing the pedal again. Super easy :)
This project is based on easy to find open hardware (Arduino DUE), software (my own firmware and Arduino IDE) and can be customized to reflect you preferences.
Let’s do it!
PS: yes, it’s super cheap!”