Grumpy_Mike:
Would it?
I remain to be convinced of that, it is not the way things usually work.
Prior to seeing your response I actually found a midi breakout board for the Arduino and ordered that so I didnt have to mess with octocouplers and all that jazz. Worst comes to absolute worst, I can leave the internals of the keyboard in tact and mount the midi breakout board I/O on the back of the keyboard and take the existing output to the new input and then out again from there to whatever I want to control. That should help simplify the controller portion so I can focus on getting the code completed and the additional interface components that I want to incorporate. The book looks interesting, I feel more confident with the next couple steps having the midi data flow in a more manageable condition so we will see how it goes with the breakout board.