Collaborate Disseminate
Creating music is a perfect hobby for anyone into hacking, and the amount of musical hacks and self-made instruments we come across here makes that supremely evident. It’s just a great match: you can either go full-on into engineering mode as music is in the end “just” applied physics, or …read more
Continue reading Axe Hacks: New Sounds For Your Electric Guitar Beginning From What Makes Them Tick
We’re okay if you call out Not A Hack™ on this one, because “hack” really doesn’t do justice to the creations of [Martin] from [Wintergatan]. You’re probably familiar with the Marble Machine that went viral a few years ago, and while it was impressive as-is back then, and most …read more
Continue reading All About That Bass – Marble Machine X Keeps Growing
It’s no secret that we have a soft spot for musical instruments here at Hackaday, especially for the weird and unusual ones. An instrument that definitely fits the unusual category is the four-string tenor guitar, which — as legend has it — originated back in the 1920s by frankensteining a …read more
Continue reading Some Strings Attached: Electric Tenor Guitar Built From Scratch
Convenient and inexpensive, plastic beverage bottles are ubiquitous in modern society. Many of us have a collection of empties at home. We are encouraged to reduce, reuse, and recycle such plastic products and [Kaboom Percussion] playing Disney melodies on their Bottlephone 2.0 (video embedded below) showcases an outstanding melodic creation …read more
Continue reading Pouring Creativity Into Musical Upcycling Of Plastic Bottles
Singing in the shower is such a common phenomenon, rarely anyone ever bats an eye about it. Singing in the toilet on the other hand is probably going to raise an eyebrow or two, and it’s not for nothing that the Germans euphemistically call it “stilles Örtchen”, i.e. the little …read more
The bagpipes, most commonly seen in their Great Highland form from Scotland, are a loud and imposing musical instrument. Known for being difficult to practice quietly, they’re not the ideal thing to pick up in these times of quarantine and isolation. But, if you must, here’s how you can craft …read more
Continue reading DIY Bagpipes Made From Common Household Items
A keen-eyed commenter pointed us to a homemade bottle organ that plays like a piano. The complexity gets turned up with foot-powered bellows and custom keys, but the magic of [Mike] and [Simon Haisell]’s garage-built instrument is not lost in the slightest. We also have the video below the break …read more
[Gijs Gieskes] is certainly no stranger to hacked cassette players, but his latest triumph may well be the most approachable project for anyone looking to explore the world of unorthodox tape unspooling. By attaching a fairly simple add-on PCB to a modern portable cassette player, the user is able to …read more
Continue reading Hacked Tape Player Makes for a Unique Instrument
Many everyday objects make some noise as a side effect of their day job, so some of us hack would them into music instruments that can play a song or two. It’s fun, but it’s been done. YouTube channel [Device Orchestra] goes far beyond a device buzzing out a tune …read more
Continue reading When Toothbrushes, Typewriters, and Credit Card Machines Form A Band
A piano’s keyboard doesn’t make sense. If you want to want to play an F major chord, just hit an F, an A, and a C — all white keys, all in a row. If you want to play a B major chord, you hit B, a D#, and an F#. One white key, then two black ones. The piano keyboard is not isomorphic, meaning chords of the same quality have different shapes. For their entry into the Hackaday Prize, [CSCircuits] and their crew are working on a keyboard that makes chords intuitive. It’s called the Kord Kontroller, and it’s …read more
Continue reading Redesigning the Musical Keyboard with Light-Up Buttons