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.
From the MAKE Flickr pool Member Makaaberi’s optical theremin looks like a curious alien visitor. That’s quite a unique enclosure taken from an “antique” phone. –Link Related: HOW TO – Make a Radio Shack optical Theremin –Link
From the MAKE Flickr pool Ranjit returns with another compelling artifact on red, this time reusing a box formerly occupied by some smoked fish – The keyboard is copper tape cut to shape. It’s tuned (approximately) to the twelve tone Just scale based on 2’s, 3’s, and 5’s. When the little red plug is plugged […]
The Feedback Harmonizer, by Arius Blaze of Folktek Electro acoustic hybrid piece…unfortunately vid and audio don’t synch proper. The piece is based on drone feedback insanity with delay and oscillation. Feedback, usually seen as an obstacle to be avoided, here it’s reconsidered as a basis for an instrument’s voice. The Harmonizer’s classic wooden aesthetic and […]
The Thomas Henry 8038 Audio Generator device – The audio generator operates in the the range of exactly 20 Hz to 20 kHz. It features sine, triangle and square wave outputs. The frequency control set consists of a coarse and fine tune arrangement – the coarse control obviously will move the frequency in greater increments, […]
Check out this awesome light-controlled synth “harp.” The builder explains: The harp is connected to the impOSCar VSTi software synthesizer, the TAOS sensor array sits on the floor in it’s own stand. The array above the harp i is just made up of fs mirrors for added p’zazz. Stephen Hobley Photography – Link
Dane has another interesting project that asks the question “Can PWM from a simple micro-controller duplicate complex sounds?” The answer is yes, with surprising results. Wouldn’t it be sweet if you could have your micro play back complex things, over audio for an extremely low cost? Imagine replacing that one i/o line that used to […]
I had doubts that Matt Mets could pull off an awesome hardware project every day for Thing-a-Day, but he’s doing a pretty stellar job so far; keep it up! He made this drum loop recorder that records physical inputs and plays them back in a loop using an Arduino Barebones board. Source code and schematic […]
