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.
If you’ve got an extra WiFi access point laying around and would like to stream audio to your stereo from sites like Pandora, last.fm, and Slacker Radio, then you’ll appreciate this informative how-to video from Tinkernut. Based on work available at MightOhm, this segment will get you up to speed with installing firmware, adding USB audio, and general configuration.
I have an old vintage tube radio and have thought about putting modern electronics in it, too. This one has some cool features, like it actually plays the MP3 and modern AM and FM tuners through the original AM tube radio, using the last two channels 340 and 307 KHz, so you get that crap… […]
Robert Schneider modified a Mindflex EEG toy to become the Teletron, a theremin that plays a Moog analog synth via thought control. The second video shows how to do it. [Via Pitchfork, thanks Jeremy!]
Last weekend at Culturefix in NYC, enterprising music makers gathered for another Handmade Music event. If you missed out on the phototheremin soldering workshop or any of the performances, check out Peter Kirn’s full report over at Create Digital Music. Photosets from Peter Kirn and Joe Saavedra.
This audio sequencer from Damien Kee can be made with a standard LEGO NXT 2.0 kit and includes software and PDF instructions.
Delightfully clever marketing gimmick from designer Matt Braun, who’s made a beer label printed with a scale showing the relationship between the level of liquid in the bottle and the note that it makes when you blow across the top. Apparently Matt actually brewed a small batch of “Tuned Pale Ale,” and, thanks to the massively positive response his clever label is getting, has plans to brew some more. You can sign up at his website to be notified when it’s available for purchase, or you could try tuning some bottles of your own. Once you’ve figured out the levels for the notes, why not etch the scale into the glass?
Musician and musical robot maker Charlie Williams created this fun art piece with a combination of OpenCV (an open-source computer vision toolkit that provides, among many things, facial recognition) and Processing. more info, including the opportunity to download the code and play with it yourself!
