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.
Peter writes “Gijs Geiskes has posted his latest monster creation: a sequencer that syncs to Game Boys running LSDJ, and controls other goodies like Walkmans, Stylophone keyboards, and more. He’s posted full circuit diagrams so you build on your own. (See his tutorials for LSDJ, too.)” [via] Link.
Video of a wireless MIDI glove…“haduz is a 24 year-old computer engineering graduate and musician from Bologna, Italy. He’s developed the 3DID wireless MIDI glove, with 5 bend sensors (I’m guessing that’s fingers), 3 gyroscopes, 3 accelerometers and 18 hours of battery life. As he says: “The most exciting thing is that the cost of the actual prototype (the glove shown in the video) together with the wireless receiver is about 150 euros.” Thanks Tom! Link.
There’s something appealing to running Linux on a $8000 Korg… MFenkner writes “Knoppix is a CD-based Linux distribution. I figured I’d give it a try to see if the Oasys would boot it, and sure enough it did! It even recognized a USB keyboard, USB mouse, and USB Ethernet adapter! The only problem is it doesn’t recognize the display correctly by default, so it would require some customizing of the Knoppix CD. As it is, the screen is off-center and “blurry” due to the wrong resolution.” [via] Link.
“Mark McKeown loved the classic RCA Theremin so much that he built one to spec from scratch, down to the vintage power supply, coils, and cabinet. With authentic tubes and other details, this near-perfect replica can reproduce the instrument’s sound far better than a cheap kit. Mark includes links to resources for specs and supplies if you want to try it yourself.” [via] Link.
MAKE photo pool member Shufflehacks writes “I built my own radio-transmitter for my Shuffle, I nicknamed it “iMouse”. It works quite easy, there is a power switch on the bottom to turn it on. Just press play on the Shuffle and tune your radio to the right frequency. The range is about 100 to 150 meters.(500 feet) Now I can enjoy my Shuffle on my car stereo.” Link. It’s made out of an old mouse, excellent.
Justin Frankel (Winamp & Ninjam creator) has a new multitrack recording software called REAPER. This is a pretty good PC program to try out, small, fast, looks like it can tap in to your system sound for recording Skype or other VoIPs too, that could be useful for podcasts, etc. Don’t fear the Reaper, it’s free, for now. [via] Link.
“A laser harp is basically a big frame resembling a real harp. There are no strings. Instead, beams of laser light are projected from the bottom of the harp. These beams strike light sensors at the top of the frame. When something (a hand, foot, etc.) blocks the beam, a note is triggered on a synthesizer or some type of tone generator. Theoretically the harp could control anything but I’m interested in its musical possibilities.” Here’s how to make one! [via] Link.
