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.
In 1958 the BBC established the Radiophonic Workshop to explore and produce innovative sounds for radio programming. The group’s unconventional approach to sound synthesis and arrangement poised them at the forefront of music technology – making them the envy of many pioneering musicians. Looking back at some of their hardware setups, it’s no wonder current-day […]
This Sequential Resonation Machine by Joseph Casbarian routs any amplified sound source through a twelve position switch positioned at the top of the device. Each of the 12 valves contain a speaker, turning this steampunk looking device into a sequencer of sorts that uses pipe resonance to produce pitch. Sequential Resonation Machine
Eric of LEMUR talks trons, slime, and sound – Eric Singer has more than just a penchant for making his musical bots. In fact, he has a separate category altogether for very innovative musical controllers he creates and calls “Trons.” Here, we take our first look at the Slime-o-Tron – a controller that works by […]
Andrew Turley turned a microfiche viewer into a musical/MIDI interface simply by pointing a photodiode at the screen and feeding the light values into an MCU and out to a Casio keyboard. As you scroll through the microfiche content, the changing light values of the data make music. Maker Faire Highlights: Making Music the Hard […]
The wood version of the “Weird Sound Generator” (pictured above), is one of a series of home built synths by Sascha Neudek. Really nice construction on all of the synths and he even sells them from his site which is pretty cool since they have a one-of-a-kind type look and feel. Subtle Noise Maker
This project by Aleks Kolkowski creates records by using a vintage record cutter to carve grooves into old CDs and DVDs. In his recent showing of the project at the Futuresonic Festival in the UK, visitors came by with sound files which he would carve into the discs and then give copies back as a […]
Here’s a vid showing just a few of the many musical interfaces on hand at Bay Area Maker Faire. There were so many cool instruments, yet so little time to play them all. It was truly awesome to see such a great turnout on the sonic front – big thanks to all who made it […]
