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.
“FielDrum” is an acoustic drum built with a system of magnets that pull the performer’s hits so that they complete the correct drumming motion. Imagine if you were learning to play and your instructor was always there, guiding your hits to the correct location on the drum. The system emulates this sensation through controlled magnetism. […]
Here’s an oldie, the “Bikelophone System” from 1995 is a slide instrument consisting of magnetic pickups attached to the body of a bicycle so that anything connected to or effecting the bike is amplified. Objects wired up included bass strings, scrap wood, metal bowls, and a tone generator which apparently created some “cacophonic terror”. Still, […]
Joel Johnson of BoingBoing TV gives us a peek into what goes on behind the curtain at the Electro-Harmonix sonic factory in NYC. Quite awesome to see how very hands-on and down-to-earth their staff and production process is. Keeping it this real is likely the only way one could maintain a rep for such creative […]
Mike Una points out this demo of Denha’s discreetly modded Gakken SX-150 synth under analog sequencer control. A quick YouTube search reveals just how popular this kit has become. All this week we have a 10% off sale this week in the Maker Shed, use code “2009OX” at the time of checkout – Happy Chinese […]
Dana’s excellent hamemade Ondes Martenot ring controller uses a multiturn potentiometer + pulleys making possible quite a lovely version of “When You Wish Upon a Star”. The note-marker indentations on the fingerboard are a nice touch likely improving note accuracy by far. Here is part two of my progress, building an Ondes Martenot-style controller for […]
Peter Redmer, of Caffeinated Pixels, is one happy little wirehead. For Christmas this year, his dad, an electrical engineer, built him a tube amp and a set of speakers for his iPod. Here’s dad on the specs: Amplifier: In order to keep the design small, I am using a hybrid design for the amplifier. A […]
Over at Audio Cookbook, John Keston has been running a few experiments with using image filters in Photoshop to process sound. Running the audio data through a Gaussian blur or Spherize filter, he was able to create some incredibly diverse effects from a simple electric piano input. To test this concept I created a simple […]
