Les Boites Mécaniques are a set of four automated boxes that produce music out of wood and metal. These experimental instruments enable anyone to explore the magic of making sound by pressing buttons on a remote, which activate each respective device to vibrate, knock, and rub materials.

The boxes were developed by Kogumi‘s Anatole Buttin and Yan Godat for educational electronic music workshops, and can be played either solo or in unison. There’s even a mode that allows users to control it all via MIDI notes on a computer.

In terms of hardware, each box is equipped with an Arduino Uno, a TLC59711 LED driver, step motors with AccelStepper library and a 3D-printed microstep driver.

You can watch how it all comes together to create a unique sound below!

I love playing table tennis, but my backhand topspin is average at best. I'll play for an hour and grow tired of chasing wayward balls, knowing that I'll never have a smash quite like Peco from Ping Pong. Never mind -- now I can cut loose with a game of "Ping Pong FM" instead. The modified bats, which have contact microphones inside, log when you've hit the ball and remix music accordingly. Exchange slices too slowly and the song will drop to a lower tempo; likewise, driving the ball with some vicious top spin will cause it to speed up. You can try to match the beat or purposefully remix the music in weird and wonderful ways -- it's entirely up to you.

Via: designboom, The Verge

Source: Ping Pong FM

I love playing table tennis, but my backhand topspin is average at best. I'll play for an hour and grow tired of chasing wayward balls, knowing that I'll never have a smash quite like Peco from Ping Pong. Never mind -- now I can cut loose with a game of "Ping Pong FM" instead. The modified bats, which have contact microphones inside, log when you've hit the ball and remix music accordingly. Exchange slices too slowly and the song will drop to a lower tempo; likewise, driving the ball with some vicious top spin will cause it to speed up. You can try to match the beat or purposefully remix the music in weird and wonderful ways -- it's entirely up to you.

There are a lot of unusual listings on eBay. If you’re wondering why someone would have a need for shredded cash, or a switchblade comb, or some “unicorn meat” (whatever that is), we’re honestly wondering the same thing. Sometimes, though, a listing that most people would consider bizarre finds its way to the workbench of someone with a little imagination. That was the case when [tinkartank] found three pipe organ pipes on eBay, bought them, and then built his own drivers.

The pipes have pitches of C, D, and F# (which make, as far we can tell, a C add9 flat5 no3 chord). [tinkartank] started by firing up the CNC machine and creating an enclosure to mount the pipes to. He added a church-like embellishment to the front window, and then started working on the controls for the pipes. Each pipe has its own fan, each salvaged from a hot air gun. The three are controlled with an Arduino. [tinkartank] notes that the fan noise is audible over the pipes, but there does seem to be an adequate amount of air going to each pipe.

This project is a good start towards a fully functional organ, provided [tinkartank] gets lucky enough to find the rest of the pipes from the organ. He’s already dreaming about building a full-sized organ of sorts, but in the meantime it might be interesting to use his existing pipes to build something from Myst.

With an accelerometer and capacitive sensing, even a beginner can produce some great tunes with this DIY device.

If you like making beautiful music, but would rather not actually practice this skill, perhaps this thumb piano and controller by producer/DJ Rob Blazey would be a good instrument to pick up. His project, called “Kalimbo,” employs an Arduino to translate manipulations of metal rods, along with movement of the piano itself, into Open Sound Control (OSC) messages. These are then be used to produce music.

You first hear its awesomeness around the 1:00 mark in the video seen below. Even just moving it around sounds good, but it becomes incredible when he really starts playing just before 2:00!

Inside the instrument there is an Arduino with an accelerometer and a capacitive sensing wire, which is connected to the insulated bridge at the back, so touching the edge of that bridge acts as a trigger or switch or can control things more precisely depending on how hard you press it.

Intrigued? You can find more background on this project in mrblazey’s video description.

Paint a fun and funky MIDI input device for making music on a pizza box.

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The post Making a Pizza Box MIDI Controller with Conductive Paint appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers.

The MR-808 robotic drum machine looks like a gigantic Roland synthesizer, but plays with real instruments!

The Roland TR-808 was released in 1981 and was meant to replace a human drummer for practice purposes, but was instead used to produce music itself, helping to birth the electronic, techno, and hip hop genres. Moritz Simon Geist and the Sonic Robots collective, however, decided to turn this on its head, with a machine made to look like a gigantic ‘808, but containing real instruments.

With a variety of hardware, including an Arduino Uno and Mega, an audience can program the MR-808 using a tablet and get down to the grooves they create themselves!

In 2013 I [Geist] found Sonic Robots a loose group of friends, hackers, technicians and artists and we had the idea of reversing the concept of the ‘808 and putting the physical aspect back into this gorgeous drum machine. For the Installation MR-808 we began to replaced eleven sound with mechanical actuators like motors and solenoids, so that reals drums (snare, BD ..) could be played live.

You can read all about the device on the Sonic Robots page, as well as find more information on how it works here.

While exploring new tangible interfaces, designer Martin Hertig wanted to do something a bit different. He chose to transform the zippers on a guitar bag into a fully-functional instrument. Rather than strum the strings of the guitar, he simply pulls the bag’s zippers to jam: one zip for playing notes or chords, another for changing the bar, and a third for the vibrato.

As Hertig explains, the case was converted into a MIDI controller using an Arduino and conductive thread stitched along the zipper, while a Raspberry Pi synthesizer hidden inside produces the guitar sounds.

Intrigued? Head over to Zippy’s project page, and be sure to see it in action below!

One of the classics of circuit bending is to mess around with the clock chip that drives the CPU in simple noise-making toys. [Goran] took this a step further with his Furby hack. Skip down to the video embedded below if you just want to see the results.

After first experiments modifying the Furby’s clock with a string of resistors (YouTube), [Goran] decided to opt for more control, overriding the clock entirely with a square wave coming out of an Arduino. And then, the world became his oyster.

The Furby’s eyes were replaced with ultrasonic distance sensors, and what looks like a speaker was hot-glued into its mouth. Since this particular Furby only “talks” when you pull its tail, he naturally wired in tail-switch control to boot. As [Goran] suggests, a light show is the obvious next step.

If you haven’t pulled apart an electronic toy and played around with glitching it, you don’t know what you’re missing. We’ve got a classic intro to circuit bending, as well as projects that range from the simple to the ridiculously elaborate. It’s a fun introduction to electronics for the young ones as well. Grab a toy noisemaker and get hacking.