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.
Saga Guitar Kits, available in the Maker Shed, include all the parts and instructions to make a playable instrument. These affordable kits let you learn the guitar from the inside out while allowing you to personalize it any way you want.
Patrick Flanagan of Minneapolis, MN, wrote in with his excellent robot ‘percussion ensemble’. [I serve] as the token human in cyborg percussion ensemble Jazari, which fuses African rhythms, algorithmic composition, computer music, and electro-mechanics into beat-driven steamfunk. Besides percussion music, Jazari is influenced by funk, house, drum n bass, jazz, academic computer music, and spectral […]
Reed Ghazala’s breakout desk turns the iPad into a serious music tool. So many cool experimental music apps on the iPad! But what a lousy interface. Dealing with dongles to get audio into and out of the thing is a pain. This desk allows all jacks to be mounted on the aluminum case for easy […]
Ross Crawford’s brick ukulele can be played and its four strings are tuned to C, F, A and D. This model has to be able to withstand the tension of 4 fairly tight strings without exploding. I ended up using a pre-stressed Technic rod up the middle of the neck, which allowed the head to […]
Check out Onyx Ashanti‘s electrifying demo performance of his new Beatjazz Controller at last night’s TED 2012 Full Spectrum auditions in New York City — he’s on 34:40 – 41:10. Onyx has been designing, building, and programming the Beatjazz Controller for the past several months, and he will be writing about it (and open-sourcing the […]
Watching the stream from the MAKE and CRAFT demo stages, I was totally impressed by Owen Grace and the work he’s done with Electronic Arts converting game controller guitars into playable instruments. In a Maker Faire success story, Owen told of how he made his game controllers into instruments as a personal project, got some friends together to form a band, and then caught the ear of the executives at Electronic Arts. They liked his maker project so much that they offered him a job, where now he continues his project of passion as his profession. Owen and his band are featured on the cover of Make, Volume 15.
In MAKE Volume 26, there’s an article about Matt Brown‘s clever laser-cut RFID radios, written by Thomas Wilson. The idea is to affix an RFID chip inside a laser-cut, flat-pack paper radio, and then pair the radio with a speaker base with an RFID reader. Each radio would be designed by a different musician or […]
