MIDI Spoon Piano

“Playing the spoons” typically refers to percussively clicking spoons together in order to create a rhythm. Whether through some temporary misunderstanding of that concept, or because the electronics could be set up a lot like my MIDI kalimba, I decided to instead build a touch-sensitive MIDI spoon piano.

The body of this piano was constructed using a piece of 2x10 lumber as the base, as well as 2x4 positioned at 90º with 3/4 inch holes for each note. 3D-printed inserts plug into these holes and directly hold the spoons, along with DuPont-style connectors in such a way that they make electrical contact. A middle “touch console” was added to change the keyboard’s octave and for note modification.

The device is controlled via a Raspberry Pi Pico, plus a Pico Touch 2 capacitive touch helper board, which takes care of the resistors needed for touch sensing. With these two elements soldered in place, and header pins, jumpers can simply be plugged in from the spoon/inserts to the headers. With the spoon jumpers arranged correctly, code from musical hacker Todbot's other picotouch device can be used as-is, though one could also change things around as needed.

Much of the video shown below focuses on playing and testing the device. Notably, the central mod console was an afterthought which turned out nicely, significantly enhancing the device’s playability. 3D print files can be found here if you want to build your own, or perhaps it will help inspire more capacitive touch instruments!