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.
Scientists working on the Large Hadron Collider have put together a sound library consisting of Community Commons music interpreted from from LHC datasets. Here’s an example description: The ATLAS detector viewed from the direction of the beam is circular, allowing us to sweep around it in a clockwise direction, looking for tracks and energy deposited […]
When you first turn the POSC on, the LED will light for a fraction of a second. If you’ve got it hooked up to an amplifier, it’ll also squawk for a second. Playing it is as easy as licking your finger and tapping, rubbing, pressing, or smearing it across the two contacts. The amount of incident light on the photoresistor controls the frequency, so experiment with playing it under different lighting conditions. Jim and Kat have produced a bunch of software for digital post-processing of the POSC signal. For mroe info, see the Sonodrome website.
Evan Merz’s album Black Allegheny was arranged by the behavior of many AI ‘agents’ functioning within a bit of Java-based software – In Becoming, I directly borrow Cage’s gamut and graph concepts; however, the software assembles music using concepts from the AI subfield of swarm intelligence. I place a number of agents on the graph […]
There’s another first for MakerBot: electronic musician Haeyoung “Bubblfish” Kim wrote this song, supposedly the first original composition written for a MakerBot CupCake! If you’re digging this, check out MakerBot’s list of other musical compositions. If you want to make your own, there is a MIDI to gcode Python script that helps you convert your […]
Born on this date in 1901, American composer Harry Partch (Wikipedia) made music he wrote himself, in a tonal system he designed himself, on instruments he designed, and built, himself. He is largely responsible for the build-your-own-instruments craze that began in the 70s and continues to influence modern performers like The Blue Man Group and, oh, what’s his name…that cigar-box guitar guy…Mark something? Partch died in 1974, aged 73. American Public Media has a great online gallery of Partch’s instruments, including “virtual” versions you can play yourself in a Flash application.
[Note: Jameco is currently offering all the parts I used in this video as a perfboard prototyping kit — just add wire & solder. ] When you think “DIY electronics,” one of the first images that likely comes to mind is of parts and wire soldered to a standard piece of perforated circuit board — […]
Iain made this awesome Guitar Tuner for a Blind User, by adding audio feedback to a tuner designed for sighed people.
