sparkfun MIDI shield and multiplexer

Projects General Guidance
1

Hi,

I just need to make sure that I understood how this shield works before buying it.

I'm planning to make a MIDI controller with many buttons/potentiometers ecc.

I saw the MIDI shield from sparkfun should be the one for me but I want to make sure that:

  1. adding a multiplexer I can expand my input pins to send MIDI messages (in this case which multiplexer would you recommend?)

  2. Using a MIDI-USB cable from the shield, when plugged into the computer, the controller is recognized automatically as any other MIDI device (without the need of a specific software to deal with)

did I get it right?

thank you!