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.
Lorin Parker, creator of the Phantastron, describes his starting point for diagnosing problems with electronic keyboards using an invaluable tool – the human ear. Keep in mind that potentiometers will sometimes still crackle after a thorough cleaning. This usually means the resistive layer has worn through, and the who;e pot needs replacing – but hold […]
Now here’s a good example of musicians adding value to their tangible music release – Jari writes in regarding the new record from the band Shogun Kunitoki. The custom record features printed art that deisplays an animation when lit by the accompanying 555/LED owl kit, otherwise known as “Mystical Shogun Kunitoki Strobe Light” of course. […]
From the MAKE Flickr pool Industrious experimentalist Eric Archer shares more of his synth dreams made real with this sequencer based on the Lagged Fibonacci number generator – Fans of the Golden Ratio know that it is built-in to the Fibonacci Sequence, being the ratio of S(n)/S(n-1) when n is very large. But lets make […]
Instrument-a-day maker Ranjit demonstrates a fresh idea for bending with his Bent Music Box – A strong magnet distorts the sound of a music box by warping the tines. It’s recorded through a hand-wound magnetic pickup, and it sounds like this. (There’s no processing added to the sound except for noise reduction.) Hmmm … using […]
Freaking rad – AT-AT Boom Box via BBG.
The EMPP project outfits a traditional piano with electromagnets mounted in close proximity to its strings. The electromagnets are controlled via audio signal from a software synthesizer (or forseeably any other audio source) – As with other piano preparations, the range of sounds available to the pianist in some ways resemble the sound of the […]
It was another fun week in the Maker Shed. We managed to sneak in a few builds even though we spend the early part of the week at the 2009 NYC Toy Fair. Next week I am going to continue my How-To Tuesday series on programming the Arduino [part1, part2] and we will feature more […]
