How-To: Make a trumpet
Our friend Steve Roberts sent us the link to this fellow showing you how you can make a pretty decent sounding trumpet out of a mouthpiece, a length of tubing, and a funnel. [Thanks, Steve!] Guy Makes Do It Yourself Trumpet
Music
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.
Jaime Oliver’s amazing membrane controller
Jaime Oliver’s “Silent Drum” uses a unique elastic membrane drum head as a sound controller. A camera reads the position/shape of the head as it’s deformed with the hands and then translates that into data that can trigger sound events. [Thanks, Alberto!] Silent Drum
Shoe music
Daito Manabe (of circuit face bending fame) worked on this Nike promo with music-making shoes. Nice video, would love to see a re-make! (Thanks, Bennett!) More: Circuit face bending Interactive laser demo is quite awesome! More on the Scorelight line-following laser synth Esoteric Programming Language For Embroidery
Vegetable synth
It uses 12 nails in a wooden fruitbowl to sense the resistance between different fruits and vegetables. This then goes to an arduino mega and gets send to max/msp with the arduino2max patch. I then used some low frequency oscilators and a heavy subwoofer for that real body feel.
Cat plays Gakken theremin
Move over Keyboard Cat, Theremin Cat’s in town and requires no human assistance to play his instrument of choice. Well … maybe just like a teensy bit of help assembling the Gakken Mini-Theremin Kit … and yeah granted, he’ll need fresh batteries once in a while. But aside from that – 100% straight solo, baby. […]
Great American Horn Machine plays MIDI music, spreads happy
Dana (Mon Valley, PA) built “The Great American Horn Machine” using a gasoline-powered air compressor, 620 gallon air tank, along with an array of ship & train horns + whistles. The whole thing is controlled by a couple dozen relays hooked up to a Highly Liquid MIDI board, and in case you didn’t notice -it’s […]
Low voltage tube headphone amp
Gio, a MAKE subscriber from Winnipeg, Canada, sent us a link to this well-documented low voltage headphone amp project. The tube-based amp uses a single 12AU7 tube for voltage gain and a IRF510 MOSFET to supply current to drive the ‘phones. The small hybrid amplifier operates off a 12V SLA (sealed lead-acid) battery, so there […]
