Mark Applebaum is a musician (and professor at Stanford) who makes incredibly complex sound sculptures from found objects. (Via DeepFun)

The instruments consist of threaded rods, nails, wire strings stretched through a series of pulleys and turnbuckles, plastic combs, bronze braising rod blow-torched and twisted, doorstops, shoehorns, ratchets, steel wheels, springs, lead and PVC pipe, corrugated copper plumbing tube, Astroturf, parts from a Volvo gearbox, a metal Schwinn bicycle logo, and, indeed, mousetraps. It was great fun to collect this stuff and particularly satisfying to cause anxiety and suspicion among the hardware clerks who nervously eyed me as I conducted investigations of the acoustical properties of their wares. It was a feeling of accomplishment when, weeks into my research, the same salesmen would excitedly welcome me into the store, giddy with their own myopia-shedding epiphanies: "Mark, listen to how this thing sounds when you hit it with this!" My project became an informal and unexpected arts outreach program.

GetLoFi points out this interesting instructable - build a feedback add-on for use with cheap digital delay effects pedals. Enter the "Apocatastasis" -

Most expensive analog delay pedals have a feedback knob that lets you drive the output of the delay effect back into the input. My Ibanez DL5 Digital Delay did not have this feature, so I decided to make one and make it cheap.

More:

DIY analog tape delay machine

This homebrew version of the popular Monome is called "upside down and backwards" by its maker, but if you listen to the sound in the video you might come to a different conclusion. Also the buttons are replaced with pressure sensors and the interaction is a bit different as well.

SoundWidgets

Hack-a-Day has a how-to piece on modifying/improving/circuit bending the ThingamaKIT from Bleep Labs.

How-To: Hack a ThingamaKIT

More:

• Retro ThingamaHat
• ThingamaHat
• ThingamaKIT
• ThingamaKIT build photos

Clayton Bailey expands on the classic boinging-twang of the jaw harp with myriad handmade brass variations. Take for instance, the Gunharp -

What do you get when you graft a jaw harp to a deer rifle? You get a very accurate jaw harp called a Gun Harp. You can brace it against your shoulder, point it and pluck it very accurately - with pinpoint precision. It sends an irresistible call into the wild to flush out humans or animals.

The Gunharp has been used by Hodag hunters in Northern Wisconsin, USA. When played correctly, it is said to imitate the mating call of the female Hodag . For this reason, a Hodag in heat is said to be in "Boing".

A maraca with built-in piezo mic played through delay-looper & pitch-shifter effects can make for some good sounds ... but upgrade that shaker with mannequin-limb enclosure and you're in for some stylistically enhanced neo-surrealist good sounds.

[via GetLoFi]

Justin Sabe point us to this item on Music Thing, a Pantograph-like jig for making copies of guitar bodies (and other objects).

eBay of the day: Guitar photocopier

More:

• Happy President's day from MAKE - a look at a President who made things - Thomas Jefferson

Brooklyn musician Moldover shows his approach to converting a standard MIDI controller into something more suited to the fast-paced live loop manipulation - aka 'controllerism'.

For a more in depth info on his hardware and software techniques be sure to check out Moldover's Approach to Controllerism part 1 & part 2

[via Matrixsynth]

A skillful rendition of the classic Super Mario Bros theme as performed by Randy George on a Moog Etherwave Pro theremin with a bit of distortion added. - ooo6 on YouTube

In their video for Return of the Box, musical duo Beatrix*JAR demonstrate that circuit bending is not only fun - but a great way to bring couples closer together. Too cute!

[via GetLoFi]

Sebastian built this new aesthetically enhanced version of his Toriton water surface music controller for display @ the South Australian Museum's Science Week. Nice work - the copper pipe used seems to keep with the instrument's elemental feel, and congrats on the much deserved recognition! - Toriton Version 1.5

More:

- Toriton Plus: Water Surface Music Controller

Architecture in Helsinki's fully embroidered video for their song Like It Or Not as stitched by Mathematics.
(somewhat reminiscent of Megan Whitmarsh's work)

Another cool piece of software from Murat Konar (who brought us the MacBS2), the "GarageRemote" is a free Mac OSX preference pane that allows the control of GarageBand's transport functions from any MIDI Controller with programmable buttons. So if you've built a MIDI device, you can easily get GarageBand to listen to incoming noteon/noteoff messages to produce sounds which can be recorded in the program, etc.. Pretty nice little app that has gone through several revisions since its initial release a few years ago.

Garage Remote

Matryomin is the unique, original erectronic musical instrument invented by Masami Takeuchi in 1999. It is a type of theremin - oldest electro-musical instrument invented in Russia - shaped Russian traditional wooden doll, Matrioshka. It hold form of Matrioshka perfectly, moreover, performing five octaves range. The distance of 1 octave at Low-Middle range is equal to Etherwavetheremin of Moog Music Inc. If you have acquired the basic technique to play theremin by Etherwavetheremin, you can enjoy playing Matryomin by same way. Matryomin is only pitch controlled theremin.

as Mike Dixon recently reported, the matryomin is popular with the robot crowd -

Here's a machine that plays the Matryomin (Matryoshka doll + Theremin, made by Mandarin Electron). Instead of a hand controlling the Theremin, it uses a metal plate attached to a servo to control the pitch. The sound that the Matryomin produces is sampled into a Mac, this sound is converted to MIDI (using Miller Puckette's "fiddle~" audio-to-MIDI external) and then compared with the target MIDI file in Max/MSP to determine the servo's movement.

The Solar Powered Theremin (Heliophone) Kit

I'm very fond of the Protech Drum Toy (or the "RY-1286T" if you read it's most likely peeling label on the back), and it has special significance for me, as it was the first toy that I ever circuit-bent. With instruction from Patrick from Roth Mobot at a free workshop in 2005, I was able to find and figure out how to wire a pitch bend and a noise/buzz bend. Thus was born the Drum Invader, and it remains one of my favorite projects to this day.

Read more about Circuit Bending the Protech Drum Toy RY-1286T

If you've used a Korg Kaossilator, you may have noticed the device's 2-bar loop length can wear out a melodies welcome quite quickly. David Battino shares info on a simple hack which extends that length to a relatively luxurious 4 bars -

If you power up the Kaossilator while holding down the Tap and Loop Rec buttons, the loop memory doubles from two bars to four. That may not sound like much, but it gives you time to set up tension and release; I find four-bar loops just breathe better.

Detailed step-by-step instructions here - Korg Kaossilator 4-Bar Loop Hack [via Create Digital Music]

Update: Cyenobite points out this video example/how-to on using the above hack -

This instructable outlines steps for creating your own clone of the popular 'tube screamer' guitar distortion stompbox. Even if you're not keen on making tubes cry out, it's a good introduction to the DIY effects box process (and what motivates players to make their own) -

I never really considered building my own guitar pedals. I always thought that it was best if I left it to someone else to build the tools which would build my tone.
When I first got into guitars, I played accoustic and the funny thing was that even though I had been playing for about 2 years, I still knew nothing about gutiars.
My first distortion pedal was the FAB Metal pedal. It was cheap. Thats really all I can say about it. The next pedal I got was the classic Boss DS-1. WIth the DS-1, I began to wonder about it and finally came accross a website which show me how to mod the pedal. At this point, I decided that I create my own tone and that is exactly what I will be doing in this instructional.

More:

DIY Guitar pedal effects

Fuzzy logic guitar effects pedal

Guitar pedal prototyping kit

Canadian artist Joe McKay's "Cellphone Piano" conects up each key on a standard synth keyboard to a corresponding key on a cell phone. As you play each note, you are dialing a number on the phone and each black key played speaks the number out loud. Just don't get carried away or you might see your minutes disappear pretty fast.

Cellphone Piano

Nodal is a free OS X application which allows one to design their own note generating system - outputting data to any MIDI synthesizer software such as Garageband. -

Nodal is a generative software application for composing music. It uses a novel method for the notation and playing of MIDI based music. This method is based around the concept of a user-defined graph. The graph consists of nodes (musical events) and edges (connections between events). You interactively define the graph, which is then traversed by any number of players who play the musical events as they encounter them on the graph. The time taken to travel from one node to another is based on the length of the edges that connect the nodes.

More:
Online generative music … generator
Computational, generative art

While not conventionally musical, the Electrochemical Synthesizer's process for generating sound is unusually interesting -

Pressing a key causes salt solution to flow over a copper and aluminium connection generating a low signal which is filtered by a capacitor and then amplified, creating a complex white noise, with amazing fluctuating oscillations.

The device demonstrates how complexity can be generated using simple "analogue" and wet components.
The inspiration for the synthesiser came from the website "Peculiar sounds from Aluminium " by Nyle Steiner.

This open source serial to MIDI converter lets you easily get MIDI data from your Arduino to any Windows MIDI application of your choice over USB. Pretty cool hack that avoids the need for a MIDI out circuit for your Arduino or USB/MIDI converter to your computer.

S2MIDI: Open Source Serial to MIDI Converter for Windows

Macetech writes -

Some speakers from the TechShop junk shelves held together with zip ties. I should actually wire this up and put LEDs inside too! :)

From the pages of MAKE:

MAKE:11, p.141 Ball of Sound - Subscribers—read this article now in your digital edition!

Flickr user [fluxa] put an Arduino board to work outputting control voltage to a DIY SoundLab synthesizer.

While the PC software has yet to be released, the Arduino code is pretty straightforward - using a pulse width modulated output through a simple resistor/capacitor filter. - CVAirSequencer Project on Flickr

Hmm ... If that R/C filter slows down response time too much, one could always use a simple SPI or R2R DAC, and forego the PWM altogether.

More:

- HOW TO make a Sound Lab Mini-Synth

Dorkbot Seattle recently played host the Catastrophic Cacophony Workshop:

Josh Kopel, former co-organizer of MakePhilly, brings the maker challenge to Seattle.

The theme is catastrophic cacophony and the challenge is to build the loudest, craziest, flashiest automated "musical" instrument ever.

You will have to be able to step back and let your creation play by itself, even if it destroys itself in the process. The most amazing instrument wins. Extra points if it sounds musical.

For this workshop, we'll break up into teams of 6-8 people, and each team will be given a "kit" made up of basic tools and materials.

We'll be supplying basic motors, battery packs, and switches. Bring your own "robot vomit" to make the building more interesting. (i.e. metal and plastic wheels,
gears and other parts, working electronics components, colorful shiny glowy things, and anything else you think might enhance your creation.) You never know what may get destroyed, so leave the expensive stuff at home.

From the MAKE Flickr photo pool

The My Home 2.0 crew seems pretty amped about their MIDI wall harp project - implemented here as a sort of musical kid's room enhancement, the design requires quite a few ingredients before enabling you to 'play the wall' as it were. Relevant setup instructions could serve as a good starting point for those interested in adding MIDI functionality to a broad area, or even a sculptural element. - Digital Wall Harp

More:
Midi control - A Primer @ MAKE

This giant wooden Zen stone sports 4GBs of MP3 storage and a nice interface homage to the ipod. Of course this would need to be sanded very well otherwise you would most likely get MP3 splinters when trying to advance tracks.

Captain's Quarters

For most circumstances, an old battery exhibiting 'voltage sag' is a bad thing - but many fuzz pedal aficionados take interest in an aging 9-volt's effect on a circuit's tone and behavior. The very excellent Geofex guitar-DIY site shows you how to make a pedal board supply that allows the user to dial in that sweet spot. - A Super Pedalboard Power Supply

The WolframTones algorithmic composition generator creates a new multi-instrument sequence with every click -

WolframTones works by taking simple programs from Wolfram's computational universe, and using music theory and Mathematica algorithms to render them as music.

Eric's “Big Box o’ Techno” packs a whole lotta audio ciruitry into a wooden box "about the size of a medium pizza", including 2 synthesizers, a drum machine and sequencer -

Everything in the box plays in synchronized rhythm. A whole-note tempo clock input drives it all. This works because its based on phase-locked loop (PLL) technology that multiplies an incoming tempo clock up to faster rhythmic divisions. Its not MIDI, and there are no microcontrollers, Arduinos, yadda yadda. (Does anybody else find the word Arduino annoying?) Someday I’ll figure that stuff out but for now I’m using the good old CD4046 phase-lock loop chip. The chief limitation of this method is that the system takes time to stabilize (lock) when the incoming tempo changes, and the results can be pretty cacophonous as the PLLs hunt for the new tempo… about 30 seconds in the worst case. Its analog technology, folks. Once they stabilize though, it is rock solid.

- Big Box O' Techno

- Polyrhythm on Flickr

If you're interested in building an analog synthesizer then the VCO (voltage controlled oscillator) circuit is the best place to start. Oscillators form the core of the instrument, generating basic waveforms which are then shaped and shifted by accompanying components like LFOs, VCAs, and filters and then delivered to our ears as tasty electronic audio candy.

I recently picked up a copy of synth-designer Thomas Henry's VCO Chip cookbook from SMS Electronics. The 100+ page book covers three chips - the 566, 8038, and XR-2206 function generator. The cookbook covers several recipes for attaining sine, triangle, and square waves from each chip with difficulties ranging from beginner-friendly to advanced-worthy. As a bonus, instructions for some unusual wave-shapers (rampoid, anyone?) and basic test devices are drawn out as well. Most of the plans included are intended for use with a +/-15V power supply. It's also worth mentioning that the 566 and 8038 IC's are no longer manufactured but can be purchased via ebay, and several rare/surplus electronics dealers.

I sat down and assembled one of the XR circuits on a breadboard in about an hour. Once I had things powered up and oscillating, I removed the pitch control potentiometer and replaced it with a couple force-sensing resistors which I'd been waiting to put to good use. You can see the scratchtastic results below -

It's refreshing to have a nice spiral bound manual at the workbench instead of referring to the multitude of webpages and printouts I'd begrudgingly grown used to. I found Henry's explanations and schematics easy to follow and I plan on using that XR-2206 circuit for a few upcoming projects.

- The New VCO Chip Cookbook

- SMS Audio Electronics