According to musician/maker Ruben Dax, “Few things make him happier than being able to create things that create things.” As seen in the video below, what he’s created is a very strange cylindrical instrument with an array of buttons and what appears to be an auxiliary loop controller. 

What he creates with it is music that starts off as simple “plink-plonk” sounds, but builds up into something of an orchestral arrangement.

The DIY device utilizes an Arduino Mega for control, with a bunch of pushbuttons and a dual-axis joystick for inputs. Button info is then sent to his computer over Bluetooth, which takes care of actual MIDI generation. 

As cool as this is, a new gadget is in the works, which uses a Leonardo and other hardware for plug-and-play functionality. Whether this will interfere with the instrument’s unique rotating action remains to be seen!

The Moog Werkstatt-Ø1 is a patchable, 100% little analog synthesizer whose design is based on classic Moog circuits. It was created as an educational tool for teaching electronics assembly and analog circuit design. Recently a series of tutorial projects appeared on Werkstatt website, featuring the use of the Arduino Uno to mod and create effects using  different sensors and components:

We used the Arduino UNO R3 for all mods, and the Moog Werkstatt Arduino Library was written specifically for it. Other micro-controllers with similar bootloaders (Teesnsy, Seeeduino, etc) have not been tested but could work. The Arduino features a USB interface, 6 analog input pins, and 14 digital I/O pins.

The 5 tutorials have also series of videos that demo each mod. For example, they integrated an accelerometer to measure movement in three dimensions:

And they added an arpeggiator/sequencer function:

Check them all >>  And add your own mod!

Ruffletron is a prototype of a wearable musical interface and an experiment in performative interaction.

The project has been developed by a textile designer, Lara Grant, in collaboration with the sound engineer Cullen Miller.

For prototyping purpose, Lara used a LilyPad Arduino, Maxuino, Osculator and Ableton Live.

Project details here.