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.
Dan Morril made a cigar box guitar by following the instructions in MAKE Volume 21. It looks great! I like the way he put one of the tuners on the top of the headstock instead of the side. I might give that a try on one of my future builds. Dan also posted detailed and […]
Every other week, MAKE’s awesome interns tell about the projects they’re building in the Make: Labs, the trouble they’ve gotten into, and what they’ll make next. By Meara O’Reilly, projects intern I’ve been working on winding coils and testing out a cool new electromagnetic guitar pickup for the upcoming issue of MAKE, so I thought […]
Anybody have any guesses how this was done? Neurosonics Live on Vimeo by Will clark, JFB, and Beardyman. Just a little warning, there’s a little bit of swearing at the very end of the video. [Thanks, Jamie!]
Ranjit Bhatnagar’s at it again: I love the sound of the obsolete Marxophone, but they’re expensive on ebay. I made this guitar-marxophone with hex nuts glued to street-sweeper bristles stapled to a chunk of wood. The marxotar straps to the guitar’s tailpiece and strap button with zipties, and can be attached and removed without any […]
Musical group Jazari consists of one human, a variety of percussive instruments, and a whole lotta solenoids. Patrick Flanagan directs his mechanical bandmates by way of two Wii remotes sending data via bluetooth over to Max/MSP software. Actual note data is sent out to Arduinos which handle all that solenoid switching seen above. Patrick provides […]
Steve Cooley designed a pretty deluxe hardware interface for controlling music software, better known as the Beatseqr. Since it’s based on an Arduino Mega, the device can of course be reprogrammed to make use of onboard faders and LED buttons in a variety of ways. Beatseqr sends data out in the form hi-res OSC messages, […]
In this video, “Jankworks,” makes a joyful noise by flicking, banging, twanging, tapping, and triggering various pieces of old tech (drives, phone bells, typewriters, cassette players, etc). Jankworks writes: I loved the pictures of Mark Tilden’s workshop and it reminded me on the many times, while working on some project, that the clutter and tangle […]
