Synth:Bit - Making Music with a micro:bit

March 13, 2026 by Little Music

There's something genuinely charming about the Synth:Bit from Lectrify. It takes a BBC micro:bit - that small, beginner-friendly microcontroller well known in schools - and turns it into a working synthesizer with a proper keyboard layout. Nothing fancy, nothing expensive, but something that just works and invites you to play.

Synth:Bit synthesizer

The Hardware

The board gives you 16 inputs arranged as a one-octave keyboard in a 4x4 matrix. Two variants exist: one with tactile buttons, and one with capacitive touchpads. There's a small OLED screen for visual feedback, an audio jack so you can plug in a speaker, and a built-in battery pack to take the whole thing somewhere without needing to be tethered to a cable. Lectrify even made the board LEGO-compatible, which tells you something about who they had in mind when designing it.

Programming

Programming is done through MakeCode - the block-based editor that runs in the browser and was built specifically around the micro:bit ecosystem. You can also go deeper with Python if you want. The idea is that the barrier to entry stays low, but there's room to grow.

Open for Tinkering

What I find interesting about the Synth:Bit is that it sits at a crossroads between music, education, and DIY electronics. It's the kind of thing that could sit on a classroom desk just as easily as on a maker's workbench. The jumper pins along the edge let you wire in custom keypads or breadboard your own expansions, which nudges it firmly into tinkerer territory.

Synth:Bit keyboard detail

STEM Meets Sound

Lectrify positions themselves as a STEM education company - "where STEM sparks imagination" is their tagline - and the Synth:Bit fits that mission well. It's a tangible way to connect coding with sound, and that combination has a way of holding people's attention far longer than a blinking LED ever could.

At the time of writing, both variants are sold out on the Lectrify website. Hopefully that's a sign they've been popular, and more stock will come around. If you're looking for a small project to share music-making with a younger person, or just want a low-stakes way to experiment with a micro:bit beyond the usual beginner projects, the Synth:Bit seems worth keeping an eye on.