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.
When the folks over at Electro-Harmonix discovered Gwendolin Tägert had been crafting and selling huggable handmade versions of their legendary Big Muff Ï€ stompbox, they could have persued litigation on the grounds of trademark infringement. Instead, they did what everyone should when faced with a cuddly-soft pillow – they embraced it. We’re all too familiar […]
Tinla put together a Ruben’s Tube sound-to-flame visualizer on the cheap netting some nice results. The basic idea is that you have a length of pipe with hole drilled along the top. The ends are sealed, at one end there is a speaker and at the other end there is a gas source. Once the […]
Hye Yeon Nam shares this demo of a music controller made for mouths – The Tongue Music system is an experimental instrument using the tongue, rather than the hand, to generate sounds. There is one person performing in front of projector, which displays an abstract video image consisting of hundreds of dots. The performer controls […]
MAKE Editor-in-Chief Mark Frauenfelder made this stringed instrument last weekend and posted it on Dinosaurs and Robots: My goal was to make an electric string instrument that uses drone tuning. I don’t know anything about music theory, but drone tuning is a way to tune an instrument that makes it sound good no matter what […]
One of the new features to make it into Flash 10 is the ability to generate software-based audio. There’s essentially an event callback that will trigger during audio playback that lets you fill an input buffer full of wavelength samples. I’m looking forward to seeing what types of generative music folks will be able to […]
Behold! MAKE subscriber Mike Cook brings us the Arduinocaster – Arduinocaster is a an Arduino based MIDI instrument modelled on a guitar sometimes called a keytar. It uses switches and LEDs to control six “strings” which are held down in guitar like chords. Triggering the strings is through an opto reflective switch for a continuous […]
From the MAKE Flickr pool Matt the Modulator shares some key solder points on the SX-150 analog synth PCB, allowing for – envelope triggering frequency to voltage output self oscillating filter LFO to filter cuttoff To see the specific points in question, check out the photo’s notes on Flickr. He also points out that the […]
