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.
There was no shortage of attendees (or noises!) at Austin’s first Handmade Music event. The mass kit-build was a definite success, with all participants bringing home fully-functional mini sound modules. Kit designer Eric Archer came equipped with 25 different capacitor recipes for his Mini Space Rockers – thus keeping the sonic landscape fresh – and […]
Casper Electronics is currently taking PCB & kit pre-orders for the 4 voice synth/rhythm generator/effects processor beast better known as the Drone Lab. The v2 design sports 25 board-mount pots – good news for those who tire of tedious panel wiring. Knowing the designer (Pete Edwards), I’m guessing this’ll be a fun one to mod/hack/bend […]
Jesse of Bent-Tronics kindly posted a four-part video series introducing newcomers to the art of circuit bending. The first half of the series provides a helpful intro to the necessary tools and parts while the second two vids gets into the actual bend process – good stuff! [via GetLoFi]
The UK-based electronic instrument maker known simply as the Sonic Manipulator demonstrates some of his unusual audio devices for the fine people of Earth – The Claude-a-tron – sort of a throttle-synth that seems surprisingly playable, with “pitch & volume, with oscillator modulation, bass & percussion control” … and the Rap Rod, a push/pull controlled […]
From the MAKE Flickr pool Matt the modulator picked this rather sweet 80’s Maplin Harmony Generator kit on ebay. Though nonfunctional after the initial assembly, a bit of rewiring got things up and running for the above-seen demo processing a Gameboy/LSDJ sequence. He was also kind enough to post the relevant schematics/article for those interested.
Mark Williams’ electric violin, which he has been building over the past few months is nearly complete. Other than the neck and a few other items, the whole instrument has been scratch built, mostly at the Boston Fab Lab. He has a nice gallery of photos detailing the build.
I’m almost finished painting it, and I just string it all up for the first time since the project exposition to test out the new pickup magnets. It works GREAT! So amazing to play something I’ve built from the ground up. Just have to finish the fingerboard and bridge and then wait for the paint to finish curing so I can buff and polish it.
Man, what don’t monomes do? Robert Böhnke puts the popular open source controller to work as a Twitter display. Related:Monome’s 64 (video) fingers
