Introducing UniMIDI Hub: A Groundbreaking Inclusive MIDI Controller

UniMIDI Hub is a pioneering software application designed to revolutionize MIDI control across multiple platforms, making music accessible to individuals with diverse abilities. Developed in C++ with the JUCE framework, UniMIDI Hub ensures seamless compatibility with both macOS and Windows. This innovative MIDI controller features an intuitive interface with customizable colored pads, ranging from 2 to 12 buttons per screen. These pads can be activated via various input devices, including eye-trackers, typing keyboards, micro-switches, and game controllers, providing a versatile solution for music creation.

Key Features of UniMIDI Hub

• Customizable MIDI Interface: Users can configure each pad with specific MIDI events, channels, notes, chords, velocities, delays, colors, and keyboard shortcuts, offering a personalized music creation experience.
• Inclusive Design for Accessibility: UniMIDI Hub supports a wide range of input devices, making it accessible for individuals with physical and cognitive disabilities. It works with eye-trackers, typing keyboards, micro-switches, and game controllers.
• Cross-Platform Compatibility: This innovative MIDI controller seamlessly works on both macOS and Windows platforms, ensuring broad usability.

Innovative Approach to MIDI Control

UniMIDI Hub revolutionizes MIDI control by prioritizing inclusivity. This groundbreaking MIDI controller allows users to express their musical creativity using everyday tools like eye-trackers, micro-switches, and game controllers. By democratizing music-making, UniMIDI Hub enables individuals with physical and cognitive disabilities to participate in music education, therapy, and performance.

Most Inspiring Use Cases

One of the most inspiring uses of UniMIDI Hub is its transformation into a fully functional musical instrument. Users can perform solo or in ensembles, utilizing adaptive technology to create and control music in real-time. This fosters inclusivity in musical expression and empowers individuals with diverse abilities. To see UniMIDI Hub in action, watch this video.

Expansion Plans for UniMIDI Hub

Our expansion plans for UniMIDI Hub include integrating additional adaptive technologies like motion sensors and voice control to further enhance the software’s accessibility. We aim to develop an online community and support forum where users can share experiences and provide feedback. Additionally, we are exploring collaborations with hardware manufacturers to create dedicated controllers optimized for use with UniMIDI Hub, improving the user experience and expanding our market reach.

Commercialization Strategy for UniMIDI Hub

To bring UniMIDI Hub to a wider audience, our commercialization strategy focuses on developing partnerships with educational institutions, therapy centers, and accessibility organizations. These collaborations will refine and expand the software’s capabilities. We aim to secure funding to enhance the user interface, add more input device support, and enable plug-and-play control with most DAWs. Additionally, we will develop a robust marketing strategy. Our goal is to release UniMIDI Hub as a commercial product within the next two years, making it widely available to individuals and organizations dedicated to inclusive music-making.

Transforming MIDI Control with UniMIDI Hub

UniMIDI Hub is poised to revolutionize the world of MIDI control with its inclusive design and innovative features. By empowering individuals with diverse abilities to create and control music, we are taking a significant step towards democratizing music-making. Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to innovate and expand the possibilities of inclusive music production. Thank you for joining us on this journey towards a more inclusive musical future!

To visit the MIDI Association’s site and view the page dedicated to UniMIDI Hub, click here.

At Audio Modeling, we believe the ability to make music should be as close to universal as can be achieved, and that technology is the pathway that leads to broader accessibility and, therefore, wider inclusion in who can make music. This notion has become part of our quest as a company, and something we want to explore and share as widely as possible.

We recently started designing and building our products to work better with screen readers, in order to expand accessibility for those with compromised vision. This has been an enlightening experience and has highlighted for us the scope and complexity of the problem. We see that this action barely begins to scratch the surface of the solution, but it’s a start and has served to dip our corporate toe into the water.

We are not yet close to being experts in adding accessibility in our designs, but our eyes have been opened to how much room for improvement exists in current user interface designs. However, what we have already realized is that a better user interface is only one piece of the puzzle. What is needed is a complete ecosystem aimed at making music technology more usable by people with a broader range of abilities and skills.

Operating systems, code frameworks, voice-driven assistants, protocols such as MIDI 2.0, APIs that collect data, artificial intelligence (AI), and a whole range of products and services wrapping around this basic infrastructure – all of these components will be needed to realize our vision of a new experience of making music that can be enjoyed by the widest spectrum of people, including those with ADHD, learning disabilities, mobility limitations, medical or psychological disabilities, traumatic brain injuries (TBI), PTSD, visual impairments, deafness or impaired hearing, disorders on the autism spectrum, and other issues related to age, culture, or economic status.

We made this short video (and this small pasta lunch) to illustrate one possibility of how much a voice-driven interface could enhance music making:

EVERYBODY should be able to make music. Yes, that’s a tall order and we are under no illusions that we can actually achieve that goal ourselves. But we can move much closer to that objective than we now are. It will take all of us contributing to this effort to succeed, so we want to open a discussion that we hope will involve as many as possible who currently work in the field of audio and music technology. This means YOU!

We invite you all to join us and be part of the change. Enter the conversation by joining us on Discord.

We are wonderfully excited to be doing this and look forward to hearing from you!

The Team at Audio Modeling