Nick Culbertson, aka Moby Pixel on YouTube, recently acquired a Teensy 4.0 and some tiny breadboards. Nick liked the aesthetics of the Teensy/tiny combo so much that it turned into a “world’s smallest MIDI controller” attempt!

Nick had been eyeing Teenage Engineering’s new EP-133 K.O. II sampler, but decided to put some of those funds toward a Teensy DIY project instead (note that the K.O. costs about as much as twelve and a half Teensy 4.0s, so there should be enough left for nearly a dozen more DIY Pocket Operators!). The code uses the Control Surface Arduino library for building MIDI controllers and control surfaces, plus USB MIDI. A couple of buttons and jumper wires complete the hardware setup. Two buttons doesn’t give a ton of expression, but the sound that Nick creates with them in the video is pretty impressive — and then, for an even more diminutive setup, the breadboard is removed, and the Teensy’s headers themselves are played with a jumper wire, creating the ultimate minimalist MIDI rig! See it in action below, and grab the code from Nick’s GitHub gist.