How-To: Make a trumpet
Our friend Steve Roberts sent us the link to this fellow showing you how you can make a pretty decent sounding trumpet out of a mouthpiece, a length of tubing, and a funnel. [Thanks, Steve!] Guy Makes Do It Yourself Trumpet
instruments
Analog synth heaven with Vince Clarke
Fawning fanboys (and fangirls) of analog synths may want to hold onto their wigs and keys before laying eyes on synth pioneer Vince Clarke’s “cabin” in Maine. Clarke was a founding member of Depeche Mode, Yazoo, and Erasure. In this vid, he gives Motherboard the grand tour of his studio in the woods and his […]
MAKE Volume 21: Traditional cigar box guitar builds
Back in MAKE Volume 04 (2005), we ran a project for making an electric cigar box guitar. In the newest issue of MAKE, Volume 21, our editor in chief Mark Frauenfelder offers a DIY on making a classic cigar box guitar, and we’ve had a few people commenting on the article page and sharing gorgeous […]
Turn your body into an instrument with the Stompolin
Mike Rotondo created an instrument using an Arduino, Max/MSP and some sensors for a Physical Interaction Design workshop at Stanford’s CCRMA. As he puts it: “When the guitar is too sexy and the piano makes too much sense, it’s time to stick a bunch of sensors to your body with electrical tape and plug it […]
Public staircase turned into piano keyboard
If you’re impatient with the preamble and want to see it work, scan forward to about 0:39.
Monty Monty’s modded instruments
Artist Monty Monty does a fine job of thinking way outside the box on his modded instruments. The piece pictured above is the Blues Bike, which obviously isn’t an instrument but uses repurposed instruments in its form. His actual instruments are beautiful hybrids of the most unexpected pairings, like the Electric Bass and Strings and the Bowling Ball Bass, both shown below.
Musical makers at Maker Faire ’09
Scottish sound designer, the Amazing Rolo, traveled to Maker Faire this year especially to see what sorts of cool musical technologies people were cooking up. He made a series of videos of makers demoing their wares. Of the three videos above, he writes: First up is Elly Jessop, a Masters Student at the uber-cool MIT […]
