Take your creations beyond the workshop and onto the stage with diy music instruments! Let us show you how these creations range from simple, basic setups that produce beautiful sounds to more complex projects that require a greater level of engineering knowledge. With these tutorials and examples, we’ll guide you on this journey to make your own musical instrument for experimental, artistic or everyday use – so whether you’re starting out new or a seasoned sound creator, come explore the wonderful world of making your own music.
Gio, a MAKE subscriber from Winnipeg, Canada, sent us a link to this well-documented low voltage headphone amp project. The tube-based amp uses a single 12AU7 tube for voltage gain and a IRF510 MOSFET to supply current to drive the ‘phones. The small hybrid amplifier operates off a 12V SLA (sealed lead-acid) battery, so there […]
Beavis Audio posted posted a collection of schematics for building basic squarewave oscillators along with a larger design, incorporating them into a synth project dubbed the “Heterodyne Peyote Space Explorer” (!). Learn more about the project here. [via GetLoFi]
Instead of being built with wood or metal, this unique xylophone (or rather, Lithophone), uses pieces of hornfels stone for sounding bars.
Ever wonder what goes into the design of a vacuum tube audio amplifier?
Australian chiptunes wizard Sebastian Tomczak built this DIY 8-Step Waveform Editor using just a few integrated circuits (ICs) and slider potentiometers. Each slider represents the amplitude of a waveform at one step of its cycle, and since there are eight sliders, there are eight positions in the waveform. So, how does it work? The waveform […]
Niklas Roy’s “Vektron modular” is a unigue approach to experimental synth hardware. The main device is essentially a control interface + display, capable of accepting a variety of digital chips as its core – The device plays compositions which are stored on microcontroller modules. The modules in this presentation are based on the Atmega family […]
Haeyoung Kim, aka Bubblyfish, wanted to make an animating LED display controlled by her chiptune rock-out move, the fist pump. Her and some classmates put together this little space invader LED dude who animates when the wrist-mounted accelerometer is moved in one of a few recognized motions. They also made an instructable documenting the procedure […]
