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.
My friend Justin Sabe made this nifty cigar box sitar and did an Instructable and a short YouTube vid for it. I decided yesterday to stop thinking about how to do it and finally make a cigar box sitar. The main difference is the buzzing bridge. In many ways, it’s easier to make than a […]
Indie rock/alt.country artist Neko Case gave MAKE a shout-out during a recent CBC Radio 3 Sessions podcast. She was on the show promoting her new record, Middle Cyclone. Host Tariq Hussain asks her about the unusual instrumentation used on the title track. Turns out, they used “programmable” music boxes, the little paper-tape music machines where […]
I really like the tones this DIY pipe organ is able to produce. I would love to see this adapted to an Arduino or other micro-controller so it could play by itself. Then again, I would like to see almost anything automated with a micro-controller! Hopefully this will eventually be turned into a full instructable […]
CDM points out this interesting demo of a tangible tracking system using Trackmate software – Trackmate is an open source initiative to create an inexpensive, do-it-yourself tangible tracking system. The Trackmate Tracker allows any computer to recognize tagged objects and their corresponding position, rotation, and color information when placed on a surface. Trackmate sends all […]
Paul Lamere, of the Music Machinery blog, has a most excellent post investigating the detectability of drummers who use a click track: I’ve always been curious about which drummers use a click track and which don’t, so I thought it might be fun to try to build a click track detector using the Echo Nest […]
Check out the Doomsday Sound Kit from the Maker Shed. It’s a really cool sound generator based on circuit bending a toy. It’s easy to build and a lot of fun to play. I haven’t made a video yet, but there is one posted in the Maker Shed. A noise generator that operates entirely on […]
Flickr user solipsistnation created this rather awesome sample sequencer using Meggy Jr. and an Arduino WaveShield – The Meggy Jr RGB from Evil Mad Science running MeggySeq, driving a Wave Shield from Lady Ada. MeggySeq is a pattern-based drum machine sequencer. It has 8 patterns of 16 steps each and each step can play one […]
