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.
One of my favorite projects is a favorite not for its complexity but for the effect it provides. In “Let’s Rumble” from MAKE Volume 02, Craig Engler shows us how he added bass shakers to his home theater chairs to pump up the movie effects. I’m not much of a movie buff, but I love […]
Sailormouth’s site includes a nice collection of circuit bent instruments – many heavily reworked and rehoused in custom enclosures. There’s also an info section covering in depth many of the related mods in detail with diagrams. Some very handy stuff here, like this page explaining how 4017 sequencers work.
Guillermo Iao sent us a link to this project where he recycled a hard drive case into a bottom and a top for an Arduino-based DAC (digital analog converter) used as a preamp. Reusing Hard Disk Parts for the Case
Ray Wilson of MusicFromOuterSpace gives a very in-depth review of the new Sound Lab Ultimate‘s features (skip to the 7min mark for sound samples). The Ultimate is an expanded sequel to the popular Sound Lab analog synth project, which adds a bunch of new features and makes the project fully patchable – Three Musically Accurate […]
Woah, I never knew solenoids could be this good at impersonating audio oscillators! — plus I had no idea copy machines had such advanced easter eggs. Dspdude explains – This test fixture for a photocopier uses solenoids that are driven by a special song. Reminiscent of the Honda commercial for the early 80’s. The easter […]
From the MAKE Flickr pool Mark of Spikenzie Labs points out this unusually styled musical interface/instrument posted by Flickr member juhani_. It sports some interesting controls with nice organic-meets-electronic aesthetics. The wheel controls along its length seem to be vertical rotary encoders. Not much pertinent info to be gleaned from his blog, but it seems […]
Instructables user agent036 made this simple acoustic replica of a Vulcan lyre from Star Trek and broke down the steps to show you how, too.
