Advice on midi foot controller needed

Hi peeps.
Im all new with Arduino. I was about to build using a gamepad but found this which seems to be a solution for my issues.

What im going to do is to build a midi foot controller and i want some specific features to it.
It's gonna be 6 pieces of 3pdt switches (they have 9 poles under them) that will send midi on / off messages. It's regular effect pedal switches kinda.
And 2 pieces of 10K linear pots. For the switches i need them to have a LED that goes on and stays on when the midi is sent and active and when turning the signal of, it turns black (this wasn't possible with a gamepad pcb from what iv'e read, only lights up when clicking the button for that half second).
Next thing is that i want LEDS that dimmers with the 10k pots, so the more you turn up the knob the brighter it will be.
As you understand, it's nothing fancy really but since im new with Arduino i wonder if this is possible and how easy it is to obtain for a noob?
Iv'e checked and Arduino UNO seems to be the way to go or?

From what i understood you have to write a program yourself? how hard is that for this type of project?

Maybe you got other suggestions that will execute my needs, they are more then welcome!

Thanks for any advice.

Kind regards
Jimmie