Music

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.

Painting pitches with DrawSound

The DrawSound project uses modified drawing and painting implements to interface with touchscreen driven audio software. In effect, this process renders visual art from the users manipulation of the output. Skip ahead to ~4min20s to see the setup in employed for use in the Sine Wave Quartet performance. – DrawSound PDF [via Synthtopia]

The Screechophone

MAKE contributor Larry Cotton fashioned this interesting playing card instrument, the Screechophone – I built this bizarre musical instrument–based loosely on the playing-card-in-the-bicycle-spokes principle–a while back, shot a quick video, then cannibalized it for parts. As you’ll see, the bicycle spokes were scaled down to a small white plastic gear. The card remained. I called […]

Tenori-Off

Tenori-Off

Discouraged by high prices and limited availability, Kentaro knew his chance at owning one of the much-sought-after Tenori-On electronic instruments were slim-to-none. Undaunted by those obstacles he created his own version – free of those extraneous LEDs, function buttons, chips, and well … electronics in general. Hey – everybody loves the feel of popping bubble […]