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.
From the MAKE Flickr photo pool Flickr user [fluxa] put an Arduino board to work outputting control voltage to a DIY SoundLab synthesizer. While the PC software has yet to be released, the Arduino code is pretty straightforward – using a pulse width modulated output through a simple resistor/capacitor filter. – CVAirSequencer Project on Flickr […]
Dorkbot Seattle recently played host the Catastrophic Cacophony Workshop: Josh Kopel, former co-organizer of MakePhilly, brings the maker challenge to Seattle. The theme is catastrophic cacophony and the challenge is to build the loudest, craziest, flashiest automated “musical” instrument ever. You will have to be able to step back and let your creation play by […]
The My Home 2.0 crew seems pretty amped about their MIDI wall harp project – implemented here as a sort of musical kid’s room enhancement, the design requires quite a few ingredients before enabling you to ‘play the wall’ as it were. Relevant setup instructions could serve as a good starting point for those interested […]
This giant wooden Zen stone sports 4GBs of MP3 storage and a nice interface homage to the ipod. Of course this would need to be sanded very well otherwise you would most likely get MP3 splinters when trying to advance tracks. Captain’s Quarters
For most circumstances, an old battery exhibiting ‘voltage sag’ is a bad thing – but many fuzz pedal aficionados take interest in an aging 9-volt’s effect on a circuit’s tone and behavior. The very excellent Geofex guitar-DIY site shows you how to make a pedal board supply that allows the user to dial in that […]
The WolframTones algorithmic composition generator creates a new multi-instrument sequence with every click – WolframTones works by taking simple programs from Wolfram’s computational universe, and using music theory and Mathematica algorithms to render them as music. Includes options for style, instrumentation, pitch and time controls – you can even email each piece as a MIDI […]
From the MAKE Flickr photo pool Eric’s “Big Box o’ Techno†packs a whole lotta audio ciruitry into a wooden box “about the size of a medium pizza”, including 2 synthesizers, a drum machine and sequencer – Everything in the box plays in synchronized rhythm. A whole-note tempo clock input drives it all. This works […]
