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.
Join us later today for our sixth installment of Weekend Projects Hangouts On Air. We’ll be chatting with the author of Make: Electronics, Charles Platt, who in MAKE Volume 15 theorized a hypothetical tremolo wheel. Years later MAKE Technical Editor Sean Ragan would build this project, giving us the Optical Tremolo Box (and subsequently one […]
The Optical Tremolo Box was inspired by Charles Platt’s “Stomp Box Basics” article (MAKE Volume 15, page 82), which theorized using a light sensor to read patterns on a rotating disk to create a tremolo effect. Taking the project from theory to reality, MAKE Technical Editor Sean Ragan used a cadmium sulfide photoresistor to provide us with our light sensor. Watch the video to see – and hear! – this project in action.
Combine snap-together electronics gurus littleBits with Korg’s synthesizer mastery and you get an impressive kit for creating modular synths.
Ray Wilson has been interested in analog synthesizers since the first time he heard “Switched On Bach” back in 1968. After working at U.S. Steel, Intec Systems, Siemens Pacesetter, and Telectronics, he now runs his popular web site Music From Outer Space (MFOS) full-time. Most of his electronics learning has been hard-won and experiential, with hundreds of hours devoted to reading, breadboarding, experimenting, and appreciating analog synthesis.
Ray presents a free, one-hour webcast on the topic, ‘Using TL07X Op Amps in Analog Synthesizers,’ on Thursday, Nov. 14, at 10am PT.
Matt Richardson caught up with littleBits founder Ayah Bdeir today to talk about their new Synth Kit. The kit works with all existing littleBits and is made in collaboration with international electronics powerhouse KORG. Pre-orders are being taken now and units are scheduled to ship December 6, 2013.
Join us at the scheduled time for our fifth Weekend Projects Hangouts On Air. We’ll be talking with Jay Silver, maker of the Drawdio and MaKey MaKey musical invention kit.
Vito Caiata got his Arduino to talk to his computer sound card via MIDI, then connected a pull-type solenoid to bang on an improvised drum.
