lucasnewman:
I have no idea what the feasibility is with Arduino - is this the right platform? I asked a couple people about this and the words "multiplex" and "daisy chain" got thrown around. As I understand it, multiplexing is a problem if I want simultaneous input. What is daisy chaining? Is there another more obvious approach? Am I on the wrong site? I'm pretty green to this world, but excited and driven.
I suspect 'daisy chain' is used here as synonymous with 'cascade', which in this context means cascading shift registers. The link illustrates output registers but the concept applies to inputs also. Searching 'midi' on this site will yield many results.
p.s. Do read the stickies at the top of every topic. You'll be glad you did.
Also, check out the Audio topic.