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.
Joe DiPrima of ArcAttack! sent us a link to this video of their MIDI-orchestrated tools and appliance jam. We asked Joe to provide some more details of the build. Here’s what he sent us. Thanks, Joe! The completed 8-relay control board The main controller is basically just a MIDI-controlled powerstrip. We originally built it with […]
Make: Live guest Ranjit Bhatnagar writes: “These guys at the Thingamajigs DIY Instruments Tailgate Party really know how to operate a pointy rectangular fiddle!” More: Make: Live 3/9/11 – DIY Instruments
Lish Dorset posted this amazing, working record-playing wedding invite to CRAFT. Lish writes: Wow. All I can say is “wow.” This wedding invitation made by graphic designer Kelli Anderson arrives looking like a standard invite, but when you open it up, you see that it’s really a 45-RPM wedding single recorded by the couple themselves! […]
This remarkably beautiful video, uploaded to YouTube one day before the T?hoku earthquake and tsunami, turns out to be an ad for Sharp’s SH-08C handset. It is, nonetheless, entirely worth watching: in a tranquil forest, a single wooden ball rolls down a stepped wooden ramp, continuously, for two minutes. At each step, it falls and strikes a wooden bar tuned to play a single note of the 10th movement of Bach’s Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben, BWV 147, commonly known by its English title, Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring. Wait till you see how they handle the sustained notes. [Thanks, Rachel!]
Audio hacker extraordinaire Guest of Open Music Labs wrote this fantastic and very in-depth explanation of how the lowly (yet ubiquitous!) electret microphone works. Check it out!
Cybraphon, the latest project from Edinburgh-based artist collective FOUND, searches the web for reviews of its performances, and changes its playing style as a result. Image conscious and emotional, the band’s performance is affected by online community opinion as it searches the web for reviews and comments about itself 24 hours a day.
What’s not to love about Christopher Locke’s Analog Tele-Phonographer? Constructed from a salvaged trumpet and various machine parts, the device amplifies and directs music played by a docked phone without the need for additional power. And it looks pretty cool to boot! [via Gizmodo]
