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.
Glasgow sound-makers Roy Mohan Shearer and Jonnie Common built this excellent manual playback device as a gift for their bandmate Chris – Simply a hack of the increasingly hard-to-source cassette walkman, I took out all the mechanics, hard-wired the tape circuit to ‘on’, lengthened the cable to the tapehead and housed the whole thing in […]
This robotic clarinet player took home first prize at the Artemis Orchestra Competition where participants are challenged to create embedded systems capable of playing traditional musical instruments. Developed by the Australian research group NICTA the robot operated clarinet impressed judges with its articulated mouthpiece interface and sheer playing ability. Second prize went to teamDARE for […]
Andrew from San Francisco constructed this sonically stylish piece – Whisper was conceived as a simple wearable audio device that would be lightweight, comfortable, and provide an engaging and simple interface that was capable of producing interesting noises. I had recently been working on AVR code for sound synthesis for my Whispering Islands installation, and […]
From the MAKE Flickr photo pool Member Aud1073cH shares picks of his handcrafted pick collection – Handmade guitar picks. Most are made from old plastic cards (gift cards, credit cards, hotel room keys, etc.) Other materials are cardboard, “Handi Snacks” stick, CD, Toshiba laptop, and plastic packaging. – Guitar Picks on Flickr Related: Credit card […]
Got a blow-powered keyboard but weak lungs? Take the Saturday’s Specimen blog’s advice and make a foot pump and bladder attachment for it which works like bagpipes to keep the tunes flowing.
The “MIDIFY” is a pretty interesting, small board that lets you add MIDI to anything you can think of. In particular it, allows you to add MIDI to any Nintendo handheld game console such as the DS, DS Lite, GameBoy, GameBoy Advance, and others. It even can generate MIDI from Microwave ovens as seen in […]
ElektroKraft created a new NES cartridge dedicated to percussive electro-goodness. Super Synth Drums turns the NES controller into an 8-bit sound triggering tap pad. And if you’re underwhelmed by the cramped retro-style interface, check out this video of the DrumAxe touch countroller created for use with the cartridge. – Super Synth Drums cartridge at Electrokraft
