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.
MAKE subscriber Tom, of Hobgob Electronics, writes: I thought you guys might like to check out my latest project. It’s a pair of musical MIDI-enabled sneakers. You can use them to trigger sounds/samples, or control pretty much anything that you can connect to a computer or Arduino. It’s a relatively straightforward project, and has tons […]
Patrick Sébastien Coulombe’s Guitare à crayon project allows the user to create visual art and music with one instrument. The custom USB device makes use of Pure Data to generate sound and Gimp software handles the visual element. The feature list includes – Accelerometer X-Axis (for example controlling the octave) Accelerometer Y-Axis (for example controlling […]
XenonJohn recreates a portable audio player from an alternate timeline – This is an admittedly mad project to see what might have happened if Sony had invented the Walkman earlier than they did – and made it so it took 8 track tape cartridges (which came before cassette tapes were invented). In other words, can […]
Ray Wilson of MFOS demonstrates the use of his WSG project under the control of a basic sequencer. Skip ahead to the 4m20s mark for a straightforward explanation of how this simple mod does its thing. Though Ray uses an MFOS 10-step sequencer with above, this would likely work with any basic 4017-based sequencer (or […]
Eric Archer posts thorough instructions on cloning snare, hi-hat, and bass drum circuitry from the legendary Roland TR-808 drum machine. The relevant PDF files include schematics (updated with available parts), detailed protoboard layout, triggering tips, and more – grab them over at his Roland TR-808 Clone page.
Fabien Cappello’s “Typing the Sound” does just that by triggering individual notes with each typewriter keystroke – a simple idea with pleasantly whimsical results. Build info is scarce on this one, but the basics come across in the photos here (tactile switches placed beneath each key are presumably trigerring MIDI).
Tom Phillipson, an Australian electronic musician, sent us a link to this YouTube video of his portable performance rig, housed in a Pelican case. The setup consists of a modified Pelican case that enables the rack mounting of equipment. This means I can be setup and ready to play in under 4 minutes. Hardware includes […]
