Misc Instruments on Strings And Tines

PVC Native American Flute

Sat, 06 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

There’s plenty of people making these on the internet, and I finally got around to making one. Using a piece of 3/4" Schedule 40 PVC pipe that I had in my garage, I made this Native American style flute. It is tuned as follows: G4 A#4 C5 D5 D#5 F5 G5. I haven’t decided if I’m going to paint and decorate it, or leave it as is so you can tell it’s a piece of PVC. My laziness and interest in moving on to the next project tells me to leave it as is…

Windchime from Junked Trampoline

Tue, 01 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

At the beginning of 2022 our trampoline was thrown into our pond by a windstorm. It got bent to the point of being unusable, so I went ahead and made a windchime to hang in our backyard. 100% made from recycled components.

The finished product

Cassetone

Sun, 07 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I saw Rich Bernett’s “The Sound of Machines” YouTube video where he came up with this thing called a Cassettone, I knew I had to make one. It is a variation on the Mellotron. Whereas the Mellotron has a separate piece of tape that plays a note for each key in the keyboard, this has one cassette player, and each key plays the tape at a different speed. The knobs are used to change the speed of the tape player. Then using a tape loop of a single knob, you can play different notes. I had a tape that was inside an old tape player I got at Goodwill at some point, so I used it for this experiment. I recorded a note from a keyboard for about a minute so I could play around with the notes. I didn’t have the patience to make a tape loop out of it. I added a jack so it could be played through an amp. It is supposed to disable the speaker when you plug in an audio cable. However, the jack was cheap garbage and once you plugged in a cable once, it never returned to the starting position, so I have an alligator clip holding it in place. I used an old record to make a plate for the knobs, and a jack plate for the 1/4″ jack.

Melodica with CPAP Machine

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

My father had this pianica (you may know it as a melodica) that he would play for us when we were kids in the 1970’s. When he passed away in 2020 I inherited it, and it is a treasured keepsake. I wanted to be able to play it, and kept thinking of ways to blow air into it without having to do it myself. I use a CPAP machine, and had a spare one, so one day it hit me…this would be the perfect machine to blow air into it…you can regulate the amount of air that it blows, and is whisper-quiet. Initially I just had the CPAP sitting next to the pianica, but eventually I built a box in which to keep the CPAP.

Kazoo

Wed, 01 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The question is not “why make a kazoo?” It is “Why NOT make a kazoo?” I made this from a paint stirrer I got at Home Depot and wax paper. It’s three layers: a top, a bottom, and sides, so that it is hollow in the middle. I actually messed up and made the tapered part in the wrong end. Your mouth goes near the port with wax paper, not the other side. Oh well, it works as good as you could expect a kazoo to work. Fun fact, you don’t blow into a kazoo, you hum into it to make the sound.

Nintendo Arduino Keytar

Sat, 29 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000

While browsing through Cigar Box Guitar groups on Facebook, I kept coming across this post about a NES that had been turned into a 6 string guitar. I thought it was the coolest idea, and decided I wanted to make one. But then I thought…this has already been done. What else can I do with it? I had also been thinking about making an instrument with an Arduino, and bam! an idea was born. What if I created an instrument that looked like a guitar, with the NES as the body, but made the sounds with an Arduino?

DIY Guitar Pickup

Tue, 14 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

This is more of a test to see if I could make a guitar pickup. I took a motor out of a fan to make a microphone, and kept the coil. I then took a piece of copper wire and wrapped it around the coil, and added a couple of neodymium magnets. Then I hooked up a 1/4″ jack and tested it out. It worked! The sound was very low though, so not likely to use this in an instrument…but it worked!

Windchime Keyboard

Sun, 27 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

This one came from an idea my daughter had. I was building a noise box which has a hard drive platter attached to a springy door stop. She thought it would work well to use a hair beret to strike the platter. When we tried it, the sound was pretty good. After she came up with that idea, I thought about making an entire keyboard with hair berets, each of which would strike a pipe from a windchime.

Noise Box

Sun, 20 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

I wanted to make a noise box for my kids to play with. This one has all kinds of junk on it, including a hard drive platter that I mounted on a springy doorstopper, which is hit when you flick a hair beret at it (my daughter’s idea). There’s also a comb, some rubber bands, a few springs and beer caps. To make the thing even more annoying, I added a piezo (contact mic) on the inside so that you can plug it into an amp and really annoy everyone around you!

Guitar Picks

Fri, 12 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

A few guitar pics I have made

Bone pick

Canadian coin

Tin Can Cymbalum

Tue, 06 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

I watched a video by Musique De Nulle Part where he made one of these and just had to make my own. I had a scrap piece of wood that came from an old cabinet, sanded it down, and cut out notches for the tuners. I attached cans to the board with L brackets, strung it up with some old guitar strings, and that was it! I think different strings would have sounded better, but that’s all I had at the time.

PVC Tubulum

Tue, 30 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

If you have ever seen the Blue Man Group you’ve seen them play this instrument, which consists of PVC tubes of different lengths, which they strike with flat rubber mallets. According to Wikipedia this instrument originates in Papua New Guinea and is called a Thongophone…you learn something new every day!

I wanted the kids to be involved in making this instrument, so they helped as much as possible, mostly in the paint department. Being kids, they of course could not agree on a color, so we painted the frame half pink, and half blue. It was a lot of fun to make, and sounded ok when done. Using tubes of wider diameter would create a deeper and louder sound, which I’ll keep in mind if we ever make another one of these.

Recycled 1800’s Piano

Wed, 01 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

One day we went to visit my friend’s house, and a couple of houses down from his we spotted this piano that had been thrown out. It was in pieces, like it had been dropped from the sky. I asked my friend to come with me and we salvaged as much as we could, knowing that I would be using the parts for projects for some time. I made a piece of art from the keys, saved all the hammers, and all the eye hooks, which I have used as string trees and in my kalimbas for years. I finally ran out of them in 2022. I cut the fall board into a few pieces, made a kalimba our of one piece and hung the piece with the company logo as its own art piece. The coolest part is that while taking it apart, I saw pieces that were hand signed, and had dates in the late 1800’s.

Bucket Standup Bass

Sun, 20 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000

I wanted to recreate the Trashcan Bass that my dad made and quickly threw this Home Depot bucket version. The sound was definitely more muted than the steel drum version

Not quite as cool as my dad’s version

Marimba

Sat, 19 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000

For this one I took a bunch of scrap wood and cut it into individual pieces, trimming them until they made the right onte. Just something I threw together, but my kids seemed to enjoy it for a while.

The kids trying it out

PVC Rain Stick

Fri, 01 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

A somewhat easy project to make with the kids. All you need is a PVC tube and a couple of endcaps to make the stick. Then you nail a bunch of nails in a spiral pattern, throw a cup or two of un-popped popcorn or beans, and you have yourself a rain stick. We decorated this one with black paint and colorful string wrapped around the nails.

One of my favorite pictures. Such sass!

My Father’s Trashcan Bass

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

This may be where I got my interest in making instruments, if delayed by a few decades. My father made this bass out of a galvanized steel trash can, a broom stick and a rope. Brackets covered in tattered duct tape hold up one side to let the sound out. He called it “zafa-bajo,” a combination of the words “zafacón” for trashcan, and “bajo” for bass. I remember he would play this at parties to the delight of the crowd. It was decorated with stickers from Artic-Kar, the family business. After he passed away in 2020 I inherited it, and I have to say it make a nice rumble. I suspect that the galvanized steel construction makes it sound better than an aluminum trash can. I took these pictures in January 2022, showing the wear and tear the years have brought.