This is the MIDI Blaster: a nostalgia-soaked trip into the digitised music of games past. The idea began when the maker discovered the Roland MT-90S. This is a device that plays MIDI files from floppy disks, and because MIDI is so versatile, it enables the user to speed up, slow down, and otherwise manipulate the sound. The drive on the Roland was beginning to wear out, so Luke needed a replacement. Naturally, he designed and built his own – and put the design files on his Patreon page for free.
The MIDI Blaster uses a Raspberry Pi 4, as the Raspberry Pi 5 doesn’t have a 3.5mm audio jack. It’s loaded with ‘sound fonts’, which is a new one on us, but it means that the user can give the music from one game – Final Fantasy VII, say – the sonic characteristics of the music from another game… Ocarina of Time, perhaps. And perhaps the most immersive sonic treat is that you also get the sound of a floppy disk whirring away in the drive.
