Real time MIDI note recognition?

[TomFid]

We'd like to drive a TinyTesla from a string instrument. IOW we'd like to identify notes from a live violin or cello and send them to the coil as MIDI notes, with an octave shift if needed. Accuracy isn't terribly important; it's just for fun.

I know some DAWs and notation software can transcribe an audio file to MIDI. I've heard that some can do it in real time, but I haven't used any.

I'm pretty sure I can do this in Processing with the MIDIbus library - I've done the recognition part before. I'm guessing I could also do it in Pure Data or Python, though I don't know the libs.

Has anyone been down this road before? Is there a better way, like developing a custom interruptor that works on an audio signal instead of MIDI?