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.
One of my favorite projects from MAKE Volume 17 is the BeatBearing Tangible Rhythm Sequencer by Peter Bennett, a Queens University Belfast Ph.D. student in the Sonic Arts Research Centre. Playing with the sequencer is mesmerizing and addictive! It’s a great way to see a physical incarnation of making electronic beats and rhythms.
Move over Tenori-On – dariusk is writing a music synthesizer program (among other things) for the Meggy Jr. RGB kit – This is my first run of a little live performance sound and video device I’m calling MeggySynth. It’s definitely just a proof of concept, I’m hoping to make things more impressive all around. I’ll […]
Lorin Parker, creator of the Phantastron, describes his starting point for diagnosing problems with electronic keyboards using an invaluable tool – the human ear. Keep in mind that potentiometers will sometimes still crackle after a thorough cleaning. This usually means the resistive layer has worn through, and the who;e pot needs replacing – but hold […]
Now here’s a good example of musicians adding value to their tangible music release – Jari writes in regarding the new record from the band Shogun Kunitoki. The custom record features printed art that deisplays an animation when lit by the accompanying 555/LED owl kit, otherwise known as “Mystical Shogun Kunitoki Strobe Light” of course. […]
From the MAKE Flickr pool Industrious experimentalist Eric Archer shares more of his synth dreams made real with this sequencer based on the Lagged Fibonacci number generator – Fans of the Golden Ratio know that it is built-in to the Fibonacci Sequence, being the ratio of S(n)/S(n-1) when n is very large. But lets make […]
Instrument-a-day maker Ranjit demonstrates a fresh idea for bending with his Bent Music Box – A strong magnet distorts the sound of a music box by warping the tines. It’s recorded through a hand-wound magnetic pickup, and it sounds like this. (There’s no processing added to the sound except for noise reduction.) Hmmm … using […]
Freaking rad – AT-AT Boom Box via BBG.
