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[Jeff Keyser] from mightyohm.com got a chance to show off this interesting take on ambient music. He’s using his geiger counter kit to detect beta and gamma radiation. This then sends a pulse down the line to an Arduino to turn it into a musical note. The geiger counters put out a 1.ms 3v pulse [...]

Tags:  geiger radiation music jeff-keyser geiger-counters geiger-counter musical hacks  

[Fred Murphy] has an old Fisher-Price music box/record player that has lost many of its disks over the last 40 years. It’s a very simple device – concentric grooves in a plastic disk have plastic bumps that are picked up by the tines of the record player ‘cartridge.’ Seeing as how this toy is basically [...]

Tags:  fred-murphy fisher-price stairway-to-heaven musical hacks  

It becomes obvious when you listen to this player guitar that it’s not a human being playing. But the only reason for that is the unrelenting precision with which the songs are played. In addition to that accuracy, it’s interesting to note that this tune is normally played by a group of guitarists but here [...]

Tags:  guitar drool player player-guitar guitarists musical hacks  

If you’re running your own recording studio, you’re going to need a lot of gear that seems excessively esoteric to the non-musically inclined. A rack full of synth gear looks just like any other cabinet of technology you would find in a server room. Electronic music is, for the most part, very utilitarian looking, but [...]

Tags:  spring gear diy server-room reverb recording-studio musical hacks  

[Rob Morris] has been hard at working improving his guitar augmentation techniques. Here he’s demonstrating the use of an iPhone to control the effects while he plays. This builds on the work he shared a few years ago where he strapped a Wii remote to the body of his ax. Just like the Wii remote, [...]

Tags:  wii guitar iphone rob-morris wii-remote instrument-control musical hacks  

Fresh from the Arduino subreddit comes [dataplex]‘s 26 string electromagnetic harp. It’s a very cool, ambient instrument that sounds simply phenomenal through the Space Echo and Fender Twin rig [dataplex] has. There’s not much in the way of build details, but judging from this post [dataplex] made several months ago the instrument works on the [...]

Tags:  dataplex electromagnetic instrument fender echo fender-twin space-echo harp musical hacks  

Summer is right around the corner and all the final projects from electronic design classes are rolling into the tip line. This time, we’ve got [Chaorong] and [Siyu]‘s auto-composing keyboard from their time in ECE4760 at Cornell. The keyboard has two modes: a ‘happy’ mode and a ‘tender’ mode, the difference being the tender mode is [...]

Tags:  tip-line own-music electronic-design musical hacks  

[Sam] is working on his Interactive Technology Degree and he made some alterations to this guitar as a class project. It doesn’t look much different, but closer inspection will reveal a handful of extra buttons, and a camera module. He actually added a Wii remote to the guitar which is used to control Max/MSP. His [...]

Tags:  guitar msp inconspicuous max sam max-msp wii-remote camera-module musical hacks  

[Justin Lange's] dad loves playing guitar, but an accident left him with nerve damage that makes it pretty much impossible these days. He just doesn’t have the dexterity needed to form the cords using his left hand. But his son’s hacking skills are helping him get back into it. [Justin] built a button-based add-on that [...]

Tags:  dexterity guitar dad justin justin-lange nerve-damage playing-guitar musical hacks  

In the 60s 70s and early 80s, roadies would lug hundreds of pounds of musical equipment around to gigs. Although the 8×10 Ampeg bass cabinet wasn’t fun in the least, the absolute worst was the Hammond organ. These behemoths of tonewheel organs sounded great, but moving them was a pain. For better or worse, portable [...]

Tags:  lug ampeg equipment bass-cabinet behemoths hammond-organ musical hacks  

This auto-flute does it with steam. Well, electricity gets its piece of the action too as the tone holes are opened and closed using a set of solenoids. We’re at a loss on how the sound is actually produced. We would think that a penny whistle has been used here, except if that were the [...]

Tags:  electricity steam fife penny-whistle tone-holes solenoids musical hacks  

[tinkartank] wrote in to tell us about the chess board step sequencer he built. It’s a great piece of work that combines the wonderful classical erudition a set of chess pieces confers with modern technological musical equipment such as a monome. The build began by routing small holes underneath each square and fitting very small [...]

Tags:  chess-board chess-pieces step-sequencer musical hacks  

Over the past few months, [Magnetovore] has been working on his magnetic cell project. It’s a very interesting instrument that seems right out of the electronic music explosion of the 1970s. Now, he’s ready to share his invention with the world, and we wouldn’t be surprised if we see this instrument being picked up by [...]

Tags:  cello instrument magnetovore music-explosion electronic-music musical hacks  

Whether or not you are a fan of the first installment of the Star Wars prequels, you have to see what [Lorenz Lnggrtnr] and [Renee Hoffmeister] have put together for the movie’s 3D debut. In an attempt to capture the essence of Star Wars in a new fashion, they constructed a large barrel organ from [...]

Tags:  barrel star organ renee-hoffmeister lorenz star-wars-prequels star-wars-theme barrel-organ musical hacks  

Here’s a floppy drive which is being used as an audio sampler. At first glance we thought this was another offering which drives the stepper motor at a specific frequency to generate that characteristic sound at a target pitch. But that’s not what’s happening at all. The floppy is actually being used as a storage [...]

Tags:  sampler floppy drive audio-sampler characteristic-sound first-glance musical hacks  

For all those engineers who dabble in music [Magnetovore] has your back. Musicians simply must know their scales and he came up with a papercraft slide rule for major and minor scales. The system is very easy to use. He’s uploaded PDF files that let you print out the mask for the top layer and [...]

Tags:  rule slide music major-and-minor-scales musical-scales slide-rule musical hacks  

[Evilsigntist] combined an old cornet with an old PS2 guitar hero controller to produce the Trumpet Hero. The fragile looking conglomeration really brings a smile to our faces. Just make sure the instrument has already seen the end of its days before drilling holes to mount the various parts. In the image above you can [...]

Tags:  cornet evilsigntist trumpet hero guitar-hero drilling-holes conglomeration musical hacks  

[nikescar] sent in a link to a huge isomorphic MIDI keyboard. We might have missed it the first time around, but that doesn’t diminish such a great looking project. According to the project page, this humongous keyboard is the work people at Louisville Soundbuilders’ efforts to clone the AXiS-64 MIDI controller. Instead of looking like a [...]

Tags:  midi keyboard project louisville midi-keyboard midi-controller piano-keyboard musical hacks  

Last summer we got to have a little chat with [Aaron Taylor] about his automated Gamelan orchestra, Gamelatron. The robotic orchestra features a large collection of Indonesian gongs,  metallophones, xylophones and cymbals actuated using simple pull solenoids attached to mallets.  Gamelatron’s custom controller activates the various 24V solenoids using MIDI,  the whole thing is essentially [...]

Tags:  gamelatron orchestra gamelan aaron-taylor gamelan-orchestra indonesian-gamelan using-midi musical hacks  

If you weren’t already a big fan of quadrotors by this point, we’re pretty sure the video below will get you on the bandwagon in no time flat. The video was debuted this past week at the TED2012 conference, giving [Daniel Mellinger, Alex Kushleyev, and Vijay Kumar] from the University of Pennsylvania GRASP Lab, a chance [...]

Tags:  video quadrotor squadron vijay-kumar alex-kushleyev daniel-mellinger james-bond pennsylvania-grasp-lab james-bond-theme world-domination musical  

A lot of people might turn their noses up at an electronic version of bagpipes. But we see a definite need for them. After all, it’s pretty hard to take your bagpipes on a road trip, but this eChanter will have no trouble entertaining your fellow travelers. The musical instrument is Arduino-based and the builder can [...]

Tags:  pipe use bag definite-need fellow-travelers bagpipes musical hacks  

[Deadbird] wanted to recreate some guitar pedal effects that he heard on a music video. The thing is, you can end up spending a bundle on hardware unless you’re crafty like he was. He grabbed a Whammy 4 pedal, but decided to forego using a $125 MIDI controller and sourced an Arduino to perform MIDI-based [...]

Tags:  guitar bundle arduino midi-controller guitar-pedal whammy musical hacks  

Although MIDI was originally designed for 1 MHz computers with 64 kB of RAM, it’s still an industry standard almost 30 years after its introduction. Even for electronic artists armed with a microcontroller, MIDI is old hat if you want to connect a few buttons up to a music workstation. What if you wanted to [...]

Tags:  mhz midi chomp music-workstation mhz-computers electronic-artists musical hacks  

At Hack a Day, we don’t throw the term genius around lightly. We’re obligated to bestow that title on [Don Gilmore] for his amazingly simple self-tuning piano. To appreciate [Don]‘s build, you need to realize that just because a piano has 88 keys, that doesn’t mean it has 88 strings. Treble notes have three strings per [...]

Tags:  self-tuning piano tuna don-gilmore don tuna-fish three-strings musical hacks  

If you’ve never been to a chiptune show – yes, they exist – you’ve noticed the awesome visuals behind the performers that are usually displayed with a glitching NES. If it’s a really good show, that 8-bit visualization will be in sync with the music and may actually serve as a lo-fi spectrum analyzer. [Andy] [...]

Tags:  chiptune show nes andy spectrum-analyzer visuals musical hacks  

If you’d like a pseudo-mechanical way of producing a droning synthesizer sound, [gijs] is your man. He made a small synthesizer out of nothing but an old hard drive and a few components. Whenever a disk platter is spun manually, the spindle motor inside the drive produces a few out of phase sine waves on its [...]

Tags:  synthesize drive synthesizer synthesizer-sound spindle-motor sine-waves musical hacks  

For all the wonder of dulcet tones coming from a century-old music box, we’ve got to admit that [Markus]‘ wavetable synthesis build is still pretty impressive. Of course, the Internet cred gained by doing a demo of Still Alive helps too. Wavetable synthesis stores a one cycle long waveform in RAM that can be played on a loop at [...]

Tags:  synthesis box music markus dulcet-tones old-music wavetable-synthesis musical hacks  

[Jonathan Thomson] was ruminating on EL wire displays and decided that most he has seen are boring, static fixtures or installations that simply flash EL wire on and off at a fixed rate. He thought that EL wire has far more potential than that, and set off to build something more exciting. Using a graphic [...]

Tags:  box sound-reactive wire jonathan-thomson wire-displays fixed-rate thomson musical hacks  

Weekly Hack a Day feature [Dino] is back again, this time with his very own guitar pedal. It’s modeled on a three-transistor Fuzz Face clone and sounds very good in our humble opinion. Fuzz pedals were some of the first guitar pedals on the market, and for good reason. Their easy construction and simple theory [...]

Tags:  face guitar fuzz dino fuzz-face fuzz-pedals guitar-pedals musical hacks  

[Ian Cole’s] son is learning to play the drums on an electronic drum set, and he wanted a way to continue practicing during his frequent visits to his grandparents’ house. [Ian] had picked up a Spikenzielabs “Drum Kit Kit All-Inclusive” (DKKAI) earlier this summer, and set out to build an easily transportable drum set. The [...]

Tags:  kit portable plastic ian ian-cole electronic-drum-kit electronic-drum-set learning-to-play-the-drums musical hacks  

So do you have an Atari 2600 laying around collecting dust? Perhaps you’d like to have a musical instrument to take up the time that you would spend playing video games if you had a modern console. Well, look no further than the GATARI 2600! [cTrix] made this device with a custom EPROM chip plugged [...]

Tags:  gatari instrument atari eprom-chip ctrix musical hacks  

With 8 drives working in concert, this “floppy drive array orchestra” takes drive music to a whole new level!  As if that wasn’t enough, [SileNT] decided to use the16x64 LED array that he’s been working on in concert with the drives. For those that remember, we’ve actually featured [SileNT], AKA [Pawel]‘s, work before, where we [...]

Tags:  orchestra drive concert pawel aka drive-array drive-music floppy-drive musical hacks  

Chiptunes are great, and we can’t imagine a world without the Mega Man 2 soundtrack, but sometimes we all like a more 70′s style synth. This is where the Roninsynth steps in. It’s an Arduino shield that puts the basic components of a wall of synth into your pocket. Unlike the analog oscillators of yore, the Roninsynth [...]

Tags:  digital roninsynth synth analog-oscillators mega-man-2 digital-synth musical hacks  

Wow. And furthermore, WOW! Just looking at that clean prototype you know that a lot of work has gone into the project, but when you hear this chiptune MIDI device you’ll really be impressed. We know what you’re thinking, but really, you’ve got to hear this to appreciate the quality [Linus Akesson] achieved in this [...]

Tags:  chiptune wow bitbuf linus-akesson midi-device linus prototype musical hacks  

[Michael] is a huge fan of old media formats. There’s something special about quarter-inch thick 78s, fragile blue cylinders holding music, and thin strips of mylar that preserve the human voice. He’s had an idea for a tape-based instrument for a while, and now that the Magnetotron is complete, we’re in awe of this glass harmonica and [...]

Tags:  armonica mellotron magnetotron michael glass-harmonica mashup musical hacks  

[Joe] and [Evan] wanted to have some fun with their FPGA course at Cornell. When faced with what to do at the beginning of the semester, they figured additive synthesis was a worthy pursuit. They ended up building the Ocarina of Time for their final project. The guys started by recording a real ocarina and [...]

Tags:  fpga ocarina time joe evan ocarina-of-time additive-synthesis musical hacks  

While tablature-based music probably annoys “properly” trained musicians to no end, it has given many musicians and musical-hobbyists their first introduction to the world of guitar. The [Tabstrummer] takes this to a whole new level, allowing chords to be programmed into this instrument and played back. Once pre-programmed chord is set, the “conductor-strings” are strummed [...]

Tags:  half tabstrummer guitar hobbyists conductor musicians musical hacks  

Who needs a tactile interface when you can wave your hands in the air to make music? Air String makes that possible and surprisingly it does so without the use of a Kinect sensor. In the image above, you can see that two green marker caps are used as plectra to draw music out of [...]

Tags:  air tactile music tactile-interface plectra hands-in-the-air musical hacks  

Building a violin by hand is no easy task, but constructing one out of carbon fiber is an amazing feat! Carpenter [Ken] had never made a violin before, nor built anything substantial out of carbon fiber, and he figured the best way to learn was by doing. He spent a good bit of time measuring [...]

Tags:  fiber carbon violin ken stunning-work carbon-fiber musical hacks  

Looks like [Dino] is getting the band back together. After a junkyard tube amp and a DIY tremolo stompbox, he’s back again, this time doing a bit of sound treatment in his studio. Most rooms naturally have a bit of flutter echo. You’ll notice this when you move into an apartment or new house – [...]

Tags:  sound bit studio dino tube-amp junkyard tremolo musical hacks  

There’s a lot of builders around whose first foray in electron manipulation was building effects pedals for guitars. It looks like [Dino] might be getting back to his roots with his tremolo effects box how-to. Last week, [Dino] found an old 5-watt tube amp in someone’s trash and decided to bring it back to a [...]

Tags:  guitar fabbing tremolo dino guitar-tremolo watt-tube tube-amp musical hacks  

With a Sound + Vision exhibition coming up, the folks over at Seaweed Factory decided they needed something big. Somehow they landed on building a giant pinata that responds to being walloped with a stick by playing MIDI notes. The end result is called the Trojan Chorus. Instead of Greek soldiers, though, the pinata is filled with electronics and [...]

Tags:  pinata trojan horse midi-notes greek-soldiers trojan-horse musical hacks  

Why, oh why, oh why do people toss out awesome retro hardware?? Luckily, [Dino] visited the junk depot himself at just the right time. Even though you’re not supposed to take things others have dropped off he poached the retro portable turntable that was just sitting there. He cracked it open and figured out how [...]

Tags:  junkyard gold retro dino portable-turntable tube-amp musical hacks  

As we wrote the title to this feature we can see why [Jeff Ledger] calls it an electronic flute and not a recorder; this is a musical instrument and not something for archiving audio. Confusion aside, we’re all familiar with these plastic ‘musical’ instruments. Many elementary schools in our area require students to buy one [...]

Tags:  recorder conversion title jeff-ledger electronic-recorder musical-instrument elementary-schools musical hacks  

Sometimes you just don’t have space for a baby grand. [Abdullah] got around this problem and built a virtual wireless MIDI piano. Unlike it’s inspiration, it’s not bad but we still love it. [Abdullah] got his hands on some flex sensors and attached them to a glove. These resistive sensors are put through a voltage [...]

Tags:  glove midi piano abdullah flex-sensors resistive-sensors wireless-midi musical hacks  

[Rob] has been working on his drum trigger build, and he’s finally decided to share it with us. His drum heads and triggers don’t look like anything we’ve ever seen, but he’s pretty confident he has a good kit in the works. The first unconventional of the build is the drum triggers. The triggers are [...]

Tags:  bonzo vistalites diy rob musical hacks  

“I can’t hear myself in the mix,” “yeah, man, I’ll be there at 8,” and “dude, we need like four more mics.” Each and every one of these words is documented in actuarial tables and doesn’t bode well for your sound tech’s risk of a stroke. Luckily, there’s an even better way to kill your [...]

Tags:  sound guy annoy actuarial-tables mics stroke musical hacks  

[Roberto Barrios] has a Korg Triton sampling keyboard which he enjoys very much, but has grown tired of using media of yesteryear to store his work. He had the option of floppy disk or Jazz drive and for a time he was using a floppy-to-USB emulator, but the keyboard still insisted on a 1.44 Mb [...]

Tags:  korg triton keyboard roberto-barrios compact-flash-reader korg-triton sampling-keyboard musical hacks  

[74hc595] just finished his entry in the 7400 logic contest. It’s a drum machine built entirely from 7400-series logic chips. He hasn’t quite reached full completion of the project yet. The hardware works just fine, and he’s built a foam core face plate with many more controls than you see here but much of the [...]

Tags:  delight logic machine logic-chips foam-core drum-machine musical hacks  

[Fish] is really proud of his newest creation, the Hydrocrystallophone. This new instrument reminds us of an even more steampunk version of [Benny Franklin]‘s glass armonica – an instrument that reportedly plunged the player into a, “dark and melancholy mood.” The build is based around a 1920s hand-cranked phonograph motor. The phonograph motor spins a [...]

Tags:  hydrocrystallophone instrument phonograph benny-franklin glass-armonica insane-fish melancholy-mood musical hacks  

When we first saw the live cover of Skrillex Scary Monsters And Nice Sprites by the band Pinn Panelle, we had to know how a band is able to play live dubstep on real instruments. We emailed the band and they spilled the beans on how to process the hell out of an instrument in [...]

Tags:  dubstep band cover nice monsters scary-monsters panelle musical hacks  

[Mark] had seen a few examples of algorithmic music generation that takes some simple code and produces complex-sounding results. Apparently it’s possible to pipe the output of code like this directly to audio devices on a Linux box, but [Mark] decided to go a different direction. His project lets you play simple algorithms as audio using [...]

Tags:  code project music mark music-generation linux-box algorithms musical hacks  

Although many have made some sort of music with improvised electronics, few sound as cool as this Imperial March from Star Wars played by two floppy drives. According to [Pawel], “It’s nothing new” and quite simple. This may be true as we’ve featured an Imperial March-playing floppy drive here before, but it was only one [...]

Tags:  march imperial wars pawel star-wars-imperial-march dual-floppy-drives star-wars-imperial musical hacks  

[Andy] came across this guitar midi controller project from way back and decided to send us a tip about it. The English version, translated from the original Russian, is easy to follow and documents the build process from first prototypes to the version you see above. It can connect via a standard MIDI cable and [...]

Tags:  controller guitar midi andy guitar-midi midi-controller midi-cable musical hacks  

[gijs] sent in the control voltage sequencer he’s been working on that uses the TVout Arduino library to provide a graphical interface. The sequencer doesn’t produce any sound on its own. Instead, it outputs a Control Voltage so other synths can be sequenced with [gijs]‘ TVSCV. Before MIDI came around, CV was the standard to [...]

Tags:  voltage control sequencer control-voltage graphical-interface gijs musical hacks  

[magnetovore] made himself an electronic cello. Instead of pulling a few cello samples off of an SD card, he did it the old school analog way. The finished build is really impressive and leaves us wondering why we haven’t seen anything like this before. [magnetovore] uses a permanent magnet to play each ‘string’. A lot [...]

Tags:  cello wasn magnetovore electronic-cello analog-way permanent-magnet musical hacks  

Reading this week’s ATtiny-themed builds, [Thomas] was reminded one of his coolest builds. His midi808 project used an ATtiny2313 to sync a vintage Roland 808 drum machine to his Logic workstation. Even though MIDI had been around for a few years when 808s were being made, the CPU in the 808 isn’t exactly up to [...]

Tags:  week midi attiny-themed roland thomas roland-808 808-drum-machine synced musical hacks  

[Olli] sent in his writeup of a musical instrument he made called the Black Deck. [Olli]‘s instrument was inspired [Jimi Tenor]‘s photophone – a transparent disk attached to a fan and photocell. A transparent disk is placed on the turntable [Olli] rescued during a dumpster diving expedition. A light shines though the optical disk and [...]

Tags:  instrument olli disk jimi-tenor dumpster-diving optigan photophone musical hacks  

This week, with a little help from a Roomba, [Dino] built a guitar pickup and preamp that sounds marvelous. A pickup takes vibrations from the guitar and turns them into an electrical signal which can then be amplified and broadcast. He grabbed a long-dead Roomba which has slowly but surely been donating its organs for [...]

Tags:  preamp guitar pickup dino guitar-preamp guitar-pickup jfet musical hacks  

[Julian] picked up an old record player that was sitting in somebody’s trash pile, and brought it home to see if it could be restored to working order. When he got it home he discovered that it didn’t work at all, so he and his wife decided to modernize it a bit. In an effort [...]

Tags:  player home record julian trash-pile vintage-record record-player musical hacks  

After a bit of inspiration, [Pete] decided to build a solid body electric guitar for himself. Instead of assembling a conglomeration of off-the-shelf parts, he plans on building just about everything from scratch. This includes the guitar pickups, so he built himself a pickup winder that has measures RPM, ETA until done, and auto stop [...]

Tags:  workstation pickup guitar pete guitar-pickup guitar-pickups auto-stop musical hacks  

[Niklas Roy] is rolling out some water-powered music for Berlin’s Museum night. It seems that this water-wheel is attached to the side of the Museum. It’s got a stream flowing past it and the wheel is constantly turning. The thing is, that work isn’t being used for anything. Now we’ve already seen [Niklas] making electricity [...]

Tags:  water-powered museum music niklas-roy niklas berlin water-wheel electricity musical hacks  

Feeling a bit left out because he didn’t have a PICAXE on hand, [Rob Miles] decided to port the Luna Mod code so that it would work on an AVR chip. He chose to build his around an ATtiny45, but also mentions that this is Arduino compatible. This case layout is a bit different from [...]

Tags:  arduino avr bit luna-mod rob-miles avr-chip picaxe mod-code musical hacks  

The 4DOF CXN-I anthropomorphic robot arm in the Mechatronics Lab at FICES-UNSL (Engineering faculty, San Luis National University, Argentina) was built from scratch, and it is still a work in progress to teach and learn about mechatronics , in order to build another, more robust and precise arm in the future. When one of the [...]

Tags:  singing ARM robot argentina anthropomorphic-robot mechatronics-lab robot-arm musical hacks  

[James] built himself a robotic band from obsolete computer parts. The band needed something to play, and [Marilyn Manson]‘s Beautiful People fit the bill. While it’s not the Rock-fire Explosion, having the [James]‘ band cover [Marilyn Manson] is nearly as terrifying. [James]‘ original plan was to cover Mad World, but the stepper motors were drowning [...]

Tags:  robot band computer marilyn-manson james rock-fire-explosion stepper-motors fire-explosion musical hacks  

[Peter Brinkman] is working on a circuit that makes it easy to interface MIDI and Bluetooth devices. His target hardware has been a MIDI compatible keyboard and an Android phone. He was inspired to tip us off about the project after reading about yesterday’s Bluescripts project. We’ve embedded two demo videos after the break. They [...]

Tags:  midi bluetooth project peter-brinkman target-hardware interface-midi compatible-keyboard musical hacks  

Instructables user and Community Manager [Randy Sarafan] recently put together a tutorial on how to build an ages-old musical standard, the “Fuzz Pedal”. He says that the secret to rocking out is fuzz, so if you can handle both a soldering iron and a guitar, this project is for you. When you take a close [...]

Tags:  guitar fuzz diy randy-sarafan guitar-fuzz fuzz-pedal soldering-iron musical hacks  

[Chris] at PyroElectro sent in a great 8-part write-up of a miniature infrared theremin. The theremin is based on a PIC microcontroller and an infrared distance sensor.  The build log goes through the theory of operations for the IR sensor and tone generation. [Chris] definitely does a great job showing the math that went into the design. [...]

Tags:  mini theremin sensor chris infrared-theremin pic-microcontroller ir-sensor musical hacks  

[Sebastian Steppeler] has been hard at work on his optical sensors for an electric piano. When we looked in on the project back in October he was testing reflective sensors to increase responsiveness and MIDI data resolution for his electric keyboard. Since then he’s finalized the sensor circuits and produced enough boards to monitor all [...]

Tags:  piano update work sebastian-steppeler sensor-circuits optical-sensors electric-keyboard musical hacks  

Hacking and digital music seem to be very much related arts. This very well built hack goes through the process of creating a MIDI synthesizer using a field programmable gate array (FPGA) and several other components. A laptop is used as the MIDI interface which runs through a filter and then to the FPGA. This [...]

Tags:  fpga midi interface programmable-gate-array field-programmable-gate-array midi-synthesizer musical hacks  

For over 25 years, [Len Solomon] has been performing a one-man variety show that features crazy-looking, hand-made musical instruments that operate on air. Some of his more famous instruments include a callioforte he constructed, as well as his Majestic Bellowphone, both powered by some form of bellows, of course. His most recent musical creation is [...]

Tags:  variety behold oomphalapompatronium len-solomon musical-creation variety-show bellows musical hacks  

After [Luke] built a suitcase mini-ITX rig for LAN parties he was left with one problem: he didn’t have any speakers and he didn’t want to use headphones. Not wanting to do something boring like a USB-powered speaker setup, he built a PVC Boombox. Built around 3 inch PVC pipe, the boombox houses an off [...]

Tags:  boombox pvc didn luke lan inch-pvc-pipe potato-cannon speaker-setup musical hacks  

The crew over at Teague Labs was talking about musical instruments and how digital music creation seems to get bogged down under user interfaces littered with increasing numbers of buttons, knobs, and sliders. They decided to build a musical device that has its own musical inclinations and personality, while also allowing for two-way interaction with [...]

Tags:  instrument crew teague musical-inclinations music-creation knobs musical hacks  

As anyone who’s been to Chuck E Cheese’s knows, robotic bands have been under development for years. Patrick Flanagan’s cyborg percussion ensemble, Jazari seems to take things to a new level. As Patrick describes it, Jazari “fuses African rhythms, algorithmic composition, computer music, and electro-mechanics into beat-driven steamfunk.”  The controls are quite unique as well.  [...]

Tags:  jazari jazz anyone patrick chuck-e-cheese patrick-flanagan african-rhythms percussion-ensemble e-cheese musical hacks  

This is [Robert Jarvis'] new MIDI controller which he has christened the Archaeopteryx. It makes its home (quite nicely might we add) in a discarded wooden cutlery case. This provides a strong and stable base for the controls while keeping the electrical connections close at hand for any rewiring or repair work. The interface is [...]

Tags:  archaeopteryx controller midi robert-jarvis midi-controller new-midi musical hacks  

[RichDecibels] wrote in to share a new device he built called the “Sinster Tone Generator”. It’s basically a bass drone synthesizer that uses two pairs of heterodyning oscillators to generate the output. If you swing by his site, he has a long audio demo of the device in action with a bit of reverb and [...]

Tags:  tone generator bass bass-drone audio-demo tone-generator musical hacks  

[Dirk] let us know about this fantastic music synthesis experimentation setup (translated). Turn your computer speakers off (to avoid the auto-playing music when every page loads) and dig into the wealth of information in this repository. Literally dozens of modules have been built and superbly mounted on a rack system. Each can be connected with other [...]

Tags:  synthesizer modular music dirk music-synthesis computer-speakers fantastic-music musical hacks  

[Dino Segovis] is at it again!  For this week’s installment of his “Hack A Week” series [Dino] is holding a guitar pickup winding 101.  Professional guitar pickups can cost hundreds of dollars, but are all essentially a permanent magnet wrapped in a bunch of wire. Using some cheap headphones, magnet wire, and a spare bolt [...]

Tags:  week pickup guitar dino dino-segovis magnet-wire permanent-magnet holding-a-guitar musical hacks  

When you think of Memorial Day weekend, what comes to mind? Well around here, all we can think about is this tank cum boombox that Instructable user [Elian_gonzalez] put together. This build is actually the third version of his Music Tank, and it comes with all sorts of improvements over previous models. The tank is [...]

Tags:  boombox tank music music-tank memorial-day-weekend musical hacks  

Quite often, we see project boxes that seem to be constructed more as an afterthought than anything else. That’s not to say there is anything wrong with stuffing your latest creation into a nondescript black box, or even cardboard if it happens to fit your needs. Sometimes however, an enclosure embodies the spirit of a [...]

Tags:  case anything project project-boxes cool-project afterthought musical hacks  

The Optigan and Orchestron were a pair of electronic organs built by Mattel in the 1970s which used swappable optical discs to store instrument information. The discs can still be found today, but the organs are extremely scarce, much to [Gan’s] dismay. After researching the organs for a bit, he decided he could probably build [...]

Tags:  disc optigan resurrecting electronic-organs optical-discs disc-format musical hacks  

Long before drum machines played samples from an SD card or EPROM, drum sounds were analog – just filtered waveforms and noise. To the modern eye, these are very primitive machines, but for [Andrew], they’re the inspiration for this brilliant hack. [Andrew] took a Roland CR-68 drum machine from 1978 and added MIDI input with the [...]

Tags:  machine card midi roland-cr- andrew roland-cr midi-input drum-sounds musical hacks  

When it comes to Rock Band, our friends suck at singing. No, really. We’re cool with them beating on the drum set completely off-time, but the sound of them trying to sing “Tom Sawyer” makes us want to cut out our eardrums. We’re willing to bet that Cornell students [Gautam Kamath and Dominick Grochowina] have [...]

Tags:  cornell-students kamath eardrums musical hacks  

[Steve] was tired of looking at the speakers in his workshop and began searching around for something a little more aesthetically pleasing. Having recently received a set of hollowed out books used for hiding things as a gift, he thought that he might be able to solve his speaker issue in a similar fashion. He [...]

Tags:  bookshelf workshop diy steve bookshelf-speakers hollowed aesthetically-pleasing musical hacks  

The folks at [anyma] have been working on an analog video processor called Synkie for a while now, and we’re amazed a project this awesome has passed us by for so long. Like a Moog or Doepfer synth, the Synkie was developed with modularity in mind. So far, [anyma] has built modules to split and [...]

Tags:  synkie video anyma doctor-who video-hacks video-signals glitched musical hacks  

Hacker [Dino Segovis] is back again with the fifth installment in his “Hack a Week” series. This time around he has put together a 1/2 watt audio amplifier that would make for a great weekend project. He’s a big fan of the LM386 amplifier chip because it does so much in such a small package. [...]

Tags:  amplifier altoids tin dino-segovis audio-amplifier fifth-installment hack musical hacks  

Hackaday reader [Tyler Laseter] wrote in to tell us about an event that he and his fellow Tesla Orchestra team members are hosting next month. The “Open Spark Project” is a concert event taking place on May 14th, which melds together electricity and music in spectacular fashion. The event features two large Tesla coils which [...]

Tags:  tesla event concert tyler tesla-coils spark-project spectacular-fashion musical hacks  

Hacker [Dino Segovis] wrote in to share the latest hack from his HackAWeek series, and this time around he has constructed a talk box for his bass guitar. Providing you are old enough, you probably remember when the talk box made its way into mainstream music, on the “Frampton Comes Alive” album. The concept of [...]

Tags:  talk box bass dino-segovis guitar-talk mainstream-music frampton musical hacks  

[Dan] likes Rock Band, but playing it makes him feel as useful as a one-legged man in an ass-kicking a drumming contest. He says that even using his friend’s ION kit leaves him searching out excuses as to why he’s not as good as he should be on the drums. Eventually, he decided that he [...]

Tags:  midi-drum legged-man rock-band musical hacks  

A few years back, [Gio] decided to try his hand at building a couple of tube amplifiers. The first amp was more of an experiment to see how well a DIY single-ended tube amp would sound. The amp is based off the 6T9 design created by Spare Time Gizmos, and incorporates a pair of 6T9 [...]

Tags:  amp tube baking tube-amplifiers tube-amp gizmos musical hacks  

If you have ever seen capoeira, you have undoubtedly heard the music of a berimbau. If you are not familiar, Capoeira is a Brazilian art form that melds martial arts, acrobatics, and music. This graceful fighting form is often accompanied by the sounds of a berimbau, a single-stringed musical instrument comprised of a gourd, a [...]

Tags:  capoeira berimbau music stringed-musical-instrument brazilian-art musical hacks  

Add a retro light show to any MIDI instrument with this Antique Light Bulb Organ, twelve 30 watt antique style light bulbs correspond with the 12 notes in an octave with a simple on or off action. The organ is also monitoring the pedals, so the lights will stay on as you use the sustain. [...]

Tags:  light antique organ midi-instrument light-bulbs antique-style musical hacks  

Ever wish you could DJ on the fly while using equipment that your already wearing? Well neither have we but heck now we can, cheaply and easily with the Wristwatch Turntables. While being functional and stylish, this interesting project is fairly easy to construct and if need be, even sports a full function digital watch. [...]

Tags:  fly turntables wristwatch digital-watch musical hacks  

If you are in the market for a nice pair of Hi-Fi headphones, it is not uncommon to to find price tags in the range of $300-$500. [Stacy] loves her music, but she had no desire to pay that high a price for a pair of good portable cans. Instead, she upgraded a set of [...]

Tags:  audiophile pair price stacy quality-headphones price-tags hi-fi musical hacks  

It seems that nearly everything is automated these days. Everywhere you look, people are being removed from processes in order to make them more efficient and less prone to mistakes. [Jon] however, saw one process that automation has yet to touch in a significant way – playing the harmonica. He constructed a harmonica-playing machine that [...]

Tags:  harmonica automated everything jon playing-the-harmonica automation tunes musical hacks  

The tabulaRasa is a digital wave table oscillator, and features control of frequency, wave table selection, and interpolation. The device is split up into 2 parts. One is a pcb with a healthy amount of resistors, 3 potentiometers, ST TL074 JFET op amp, atmega328 and a SD socket. The second part is software for your [...]

Tags:  oscillator table wave wavetable-oscillator tl074 wave-table musical hacks  

[NeoTenchi] wrote in to share the new game peripheral she built, dubbed the NES Paul. The ultimate goal of the project was to build a NES-styled controller for an upcoming game she is working on, tentatively titled 8-bit Hero. The guitar is constructed primarily from wood, as well as some scrounged bits she had around [...]

Tags:  controller game nes hero paul game-controller new-game musical hacks  

The white parts that make up the body contours of this guitar have been 3D printed to meet [Bård S D's] personal specifications. He started designing the pieces last year to add to his Zoybar guitar. Each of the three parts has its own function. The tail piece serves as a floor stand, as well [...]

Tags:  guitar printing body s-d body-contours personal-specifications musical hacks  

[Andrew] recently offered to help out a friend who was looking to get her husband a SNES controller belt buckle. Rather than simply slap one together, he decided that it would be far cooler if the belt buckle played audio as well. He gutted a broken SNES controller, removing most everything inside, leaving just the [...]

Tags:  buckle belt snes andrew belt-buckle musical hacks  

[Steve Hobley] built a Theremin interface board that tracks pitch and volume. Using this setup he’s able to pass data over a midi interface which effectively converts the instrument into a non-contact midi controller. As we joked in the headline, this does allow for the use of autotune, by snapping notes that are sharp or [...]

Tags:  board theremin midi steve-hobley midi-board midi-interface midi-controller musical hacks  

When [falldeaf] set about making his own homebrew Mp3 player, he ended up at the same place we most do while looking into the subject, the wonderful Minty Mp3. Basing the design on [Adafruit Industries] popular board, we are presented The Mp3 Garbler. First change of the project was to replace the sometimes difficult to [...]

Tags:  homebrew bonus player minty-mp3 bonus-features musical hacks  

This isn’t strictly a MIDI input hack; [Furrtek] pulled off an alternate input hack for the Kaossilator that he’s currently using with a MIDI connection. In its unhacked form the Kaossilator is a small touchpad-based sound manipulation tool. [Furrtek] sniffed out how the touchpad data is read and used on the little device. He then [...]

Tags:  kaossilator midi input midi-input sound-manipulation midi-connection musical hacks  

Here’s a guitar wah-wah pedal that [Christian Munk] built. Inside you’ll find a circuit board that he etched and populated based on this design but he chose to build the housing out of LEGO. The video after the break gives you an idea of what it sounds like, but for those who’ve stepped on a [...]

Tags:  wah-wah-pedal munk lego musical hacks  

[Tristan Chambers] picked up an old speaker box some friends acquired at a yard sale. It didn’t have any inputs, and there weren’t any tuning knobs like a radio would have, so it’s a mystery what this was originally used for. [Tristan] traced out the circuit and figured out where he could input audio signals which [...]

Tags:  junk speaker guitar tristan-chambers tristan audio-signals tube-amp speaker-box musical hacks  

Audio Crossovers are an essential tool for any high end speaker system. Because most individual loudspeakers are unable to cover the entire spectrum of audible sound as well as multiple drivers are, it is necessary to split the input signal into low and high frequency parts. When a friend of [Anthony]‘s was about to send [...]

Tags:  audio service crossover anthony audio-crossover audible-sound input-signal musical hacks  

[Raphi Giandiulio] grew tired of designing expensive things for Texas Instruments, so he quit his job and built this organ. Now there is some back story here, [Raphi's] dad was a professional musician and [Raphi] played trumpet through college. He is a mechanical engineer by trade and that’s where a lot of the expertise for [...]

Tags:  job organ raphi professional-musician mechanical-engineer pipe-organ musical hacks  

What do you do with 100 player piano rolls but no player piano? You come up with a way to digitize the information for MIDI playback. The rolls have 90 columns worth of holes, 88 for the keys and two more for pedals. Voids in the paper cause a note or pedal to be played, [...]

Tags:  digitizing player piano player-piano-rolls midi-playback holes musical hacks  

While there are many ways to produce audible sound, Plasma Speakers have to be one of the coolest. Usually very complex and expensive, we received a tip for a beginners guide to making one of these impressive novelties. Handily included are a set of schematics (one very simple schematic, the other with a few artistic illustrations). There [...]

Tags:  singing sound plasma artistic-illustrations beginners-guide novelties musical hacks  

Rock in the new year with a guitar pedal you built yourself. [Doug Kovach] took the time to share his project with us in the video after the break. He starts with a bit of history of the artists that have used fuzz pedals similar to this one. It seems great guitarists have been hacking [...]

Tags:  guitar germanium fuzz doug-kovach rock fuzz-face great-guitarists fuzz-pedals musical hacks  

[Sebastian] is trying to improve the responsiveness of an electric keyboard. He was unsatisfied with the lack of adequate sensitivity to keystroke. The first step in his process was to measure how fast the quickest keystroke actually is. By setting up an LED and phototransistor and taking some measurements he found that sampling at 1 [...]

Tags:  keystroke piano keyboard sebastian electric-keyboard optical-sensors adequate-sensitivity musical hacks  

[Jarek Lupinski] wanted an instrument that would let him play chiptunes live, without a need for pre-programming a cartridge for playback during a concert. His preferred hardware is an original Nintendo Entertainment System because of its familiar nostalgic sound. After picking up a lot of 5 broken NES units he set out to build a [...]

Tags:  chiptune instrument nes jarek-lupinski nintendo-entertainment-system nostalgic-sound preferred-hardware musical hacks  

[Doug Jackson] just finished building an analog Stylophone. We’ve seen this instrument a few times before, most recently with an Arduino-based controller, but this one makes use of 555-timer, resistors, and potentiometers to generate the waveform for each note. If you’ve got the copper-clad and the means to etch the board everything else should be [...]

Tags:  stylophone analog instrument doug-jackson potentiometers musical hacks  

This robotic band has just the right amount of drums. [Liat] and her colleagues fit a group of Darbuka drums with a pair of servo-driven mallets. We’re quite surprised that the servo motors achieve such a successful strike and rebound without dampening the vibrations of the drum head. This is more often accomplished with solenoids [...]

Tags:  band darbuka amount darbuka-drums drum-head servo-motors musical hacks  

[Jonathan Crawford] is ready and willing to fire things up with his flaming trombone. A couple of years back his band teacher was going through the storage room triaging instruments. This trombone suffered from a bad case of red rot and would never function well again so [Jonathan] was able to get his hands on it [...]

Tags:  trombone couple parade jonathan-crawford jonathan band-teacher storage-room bad-case musical hacks  

Behold the Bodystick, an instrument built and demonstrated by [Erich Lesovsky]. It’s a bit like a string bass but instead of strings there is a strip of VHS tape. Apparently not all VHS tape will work, but if you have the right kind you can run voltage through it and then change the resistance with [...]

Tags:  vhs tape videotape erich-lesovsky string-bass resistance musical hacks  

This thrift shop organ gets a new life as an 8-bit music maker. Called the Chipophone, it relies on an ATmega88 to produce sounds that you might associate with classic video gaming. [Linus Akesson] takes us through all of the different sound settings in the video after the break, including performances of your theme music [...]

Tags:  chipophone video music linus-akesson video-game-classics classic-video-gaming musical hacks  

This sequencer, called Drumssette, uses audio tape to churn out some beats. [Mike Walters] built this around a Tascam four track cassette recorder. The tape inside has a different drum sound on each of the tracks, with a corresponding row of red buttons. Pushing a button adds the drum sound to the loop on that [...]

Tags:  tape sound programmable mike-walters track-cassette-recorder drum-sound musical hacks  

[Diego Stocco] makes music with instruments he assembled. For instance, his Bassoforte uses piano keys, the neck and strings from an electric bass, and what look like some cymbals. Throw in a hammer from that piano and a double bass bow (plus heavy use of audio software) and he’s in business. Big business actually, his [...]

Tags:  bass bassoforte piano diego-stocco bass-bow stocco piano-keys musical hacks  

[Lain Sharp] modified this guitar tuner so it can be used by his blind friend. In the picture above you can make out a small white project box that houses the additional electronics. Inside is another battery and an ATmega168 providing a connection for an earphone. The AVR chip connects to each LED on the [...]

Tags:  audible lain tuner avr-chip blind-friend earphone musical hacks  

[Erich] rethought the use of a megaphone and ended up with this Mega-Tape-O-Phone. His first move was to ditch the megaphone’s amplifying circuitry in order to add his own based on an LM386 chip. From there a radio receiver joined the party followed by the guts of a tape player. He relocated the head of [...]

Tags:  tape megaphone radio erich radio-walkman radio-receiver musical hacks  

[Brian McNamara] fed the output of his guitar pedal back into its input creating a looped synthesizer. He started with an effects pedal he made but now we think he’s ended up with an electronic stomp box. Check out the results in the video after the break. Now he needs to make the knobs foot-friendly so [...]

Tags:  stomp box synthesizer brian-mcnamara guitar-pedal knobs musical hacks  

[JP Carrascal] hacked his guitar by adding motion control while removing the need for wires. He’s using a dual-Arduino system with an Mini Pro inside the guitar and a Duemilanova for the receiver connected to a computer. Wireless is provided by the XBee module seen above and a gutted Wii remote accelerometer is in there [...]

Tags:  xbee accelerometer guitar wii-remote carrascal musical hacks  

[Shu Uesugi] is filling a controller void that Nintendo has yet to address. He picked up a golf glove from Target and incorporated it into an air guitar interface. Give the video after the break a chance, you’ll start to see the full potential of this build about three and a half minutes into it. [...]

Tags:  wii glove golf golf-glove uesugi musical hacks