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.
The A.I. version of the Drum Kit kit is a deluxe version of the original Drum Kit Kit. It features an on-board Ardunio, MIDI out, and an FTDI connection. You can connect it to your computer to play music using software like Apple’s Garage Band, Abelton’s Live, etc, or you can us the MIDI-out port […]
This home-brewed instrument uses an Atmega644 and can be programmed through a qwerty keyboard. I love the sweet electroni-singing! [Thanks, Ian.]
From the MAKE Flickr pool: 23N! (Flickr user zeni666) made this TV Bug noise instrument using a CRT TV, SN76477 noise chip, and 3 phototransistors. (Presumably) it works by feeding the output of the sound chip into the TV, where the resulting video signal then gets looped back into the circuit using the light-sensitive phototransistors.
This fabulous musical instrument was created by members of the Perth, Australia hackerspace Artifactory. It will be having its first public concert in about two weeks, and the final configuration will have 13 coils in 2 tiers. (The photo shows a partially competed build.) Bicycle spokes are proving to be a fun choice for the […]
Josef Průša saw last week’s post about choosing a silicone for casting soft button arrays and pointed me to his printable mold for such arrays on Thingiverse. The model was produced in Clifford Wolf’s awesome OpenSCAD 3D modeling package, and the .scad script is available for download with the Thing. It has been parametrized to produce molds of button arrays having any number of rows and columns–all you have to do is change two values. The individual buttons are sized to match the SparkFun 2×2 button pad used on the monome, and also include backside recesses for LEDs.
Another cool Arduino/XBee project… 18 Darbuka drums and 36 robotic arms are controlled via wireless communication. Drum music is composed and played at a music sequencer on an iPad. The project was presented at the Bat-Yam international biennale of landscape urbanism, September 2010, as a part of the ‘Green to Blue’ ecological street project. During […]
It’s that time of the month again folks, great event this Sunday in NYC: Handmade Music! Peter Kirn writes: We promise music you can dance to, music you can’t, and tapas (at least in NYC). And on October 10, a little secret will finally be revealed to Manhattan and the world. If you’re a citizen […]
