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.
The Gakken SX-150 from the Maker Shed is a fun, hackable, analog synthesizer. Its simple design allows for easy modification with button mods, midi control, or whatever else you can think of. Check out Collin’s great review of the SX-150 to learn more and see a video.
Joshua Maruska and Adam Kumpf from Teague Labs created an interesting Arduino-based musical instrument called Muze, which synthesizes evolving melodies. According to their site, they’ve “educated Muze with a palette of notes that it can in-turn interpret and compose into various rhythms and phrases that are strung together to form something musical.” The user is […]
Saga Guitar Kits, available in the Maker Shed, include all the parts and instructions to make a playable instrument. These affordable kits let you learn the guitar from the inside out while allowing you to personalize it any way you want.
Patrick Flanagan of Minneapolis, MN, wrote in with his excellent robot ‘percussion ensemble’. [I serve] as the token human in cyborg percussion ensemble Jazari, which fuses African rhythms, algorithmic composition, computer music, and electro-mechanics into beat-driven steamfunk. Besides percussion music, Jazari is influenced by funk, house, drum n bass, jazz, academic computer music, and spectral […]
Reed Ghazala’s breakout desk turns the iPad into a serious music tool. So many cool experimental music apps on the iPad! But what a lousy interface. Dealing with dongles to get audio into and out of the thing is a pain. This desk allows all jacks to be mounted on the aluminum case for easy […]
Ross Crawford’s brick ukulele can be played and its four strings are tuned to C, F, A and D. This model has to be able to withstand the tension of 4 fairly tight strings without exploding. I ended up using a pre-stressed Technic rod up the middle of the neck, which allowed the head to […]
Check out Onyx Ashanti‘s electrifying demo performance of his new Beatjazz Controller at last night’s TED 2012 Full Spectrum auditions in New York City — he’s on 34:40 – 41:10. Onyx has been designing, building, and programming the Beatjazz Controller for the past several months, and he will be writing about it (and open-sourcing the […]
