DAW MIDI Bar Counter

[Pilbromatic]

Something I've always wanted to make is a unit with a few 7-segment LED displays, that shows the bar number (or possibly time) of my DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) software. From what I can tell, this data can be transmitted via MIDI from most audio applications. Infact, it must be - My Korg keyboard comes up with the bar number on it's display.

So what I basically want is a stand-alone version of what my Korg keyboard (A Korg TR) does, so I can hang it on the wall or sit it on the desk of my studio, so anyone can easily see what bar they're recording at, at a glance. It can be quite frustrating when the person recording in my studio keeps missing where to come in, or has to say "go back a bit", which isn't very descriptive!

Does anyone have any clue what so ever about how to go about building one of these???

My thoughts would be to start with a microcontroller, and obviously the displays. Does anybody know how to read the MIDI data that contains the bar information?

Cheers!

[rekimba]

if you got a answer for this i would love to know! im looking to do the same thing.

(im actually working with a drummer and he hates it when i start messinga around with delays and reverb and really mess up his little "1,2,3,4")

anyway would be awesome

rekimba

[Diginerd]

What you're looking to extract from the MIDI stream is the SPP (Song Position Pointer) information traveling with the MIDI beat clock.

Should be very doable with an arudino board, a bit of code and either an LCD display or a bunch of 7 segment LEDs like you mentioned.