Electric Junkyard Gamelan is the brainchild of bandleader and composer Terry Dame, and fuses Dame's passions of composing, inventing and building. Originally inspired by traditional Gamelan music from Bali, the group recycles and repurposes everyday objects into musical instruments. While some of their songs do indeed resemble the hypnotic percussive melodies of a Balinese/Javanese gamelan orchestra (The Nutbutter Challenge), other tunes strike out into new, distinctly urban American directions (Ode to Fred Beans). Following the band's motto, "Reuse, Recycle and ROCK," instruments are fashioned from coat hangers and rubber bands, bed frames, old farm equipment, turntable platters, clay pots, saw blades and truck springs. The "Big Barp" rubber-band harp makes a particularly unusual sound. [more inside]
posted by ocherdraco on Oct 12, 2009 - 5 comments

From bagpipes to xylophones, Dennis Havlena's legendary website will show you how to make musical instruments, cheaply. Some of them sound pretty good [YouTube].
posted by mecran01 on Sep 24, 2009 - 20 comments

Free Friday Frantic (Music) Fun: Ergo Phizmiz & The Midnight Florists cover five 1990s chartbusting, dancefloor filling smash hits with arrangements of acoustic, electronic, homemade, and toy instruments. [More musical mischief inside] [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief on Aug 14, 2009 - 7 comments

In Bb 2.0
posted by loquacious on May 12, 2009 - 60 comments

R. Stevie Moore likes to stay home and play himself some music. Having done so for over 42 years--that's over 2000 songs and 400 albums--he has become the undisputed grandfather of do-it-yourself psychedelic pop and punk. Tagged for decades as underground, an outsider and criminally ignored local genius, R. Stevie is now exploiting and exploding that myth, no short thanks to the internets. Here's where he has scattered his recordings; here are two places where he keeps his home-made videos. WFMU archives his pioneering appearances on their great radio station from 1978-1998. Finally, here are two complete albums' worth of his Greatest "Hits": Hobbies Galore (1973-2005) and Tra La La Phooey (1959-2003). Long Live R. Stevie!
posted by not_on_display on Jan 7, 2009 - 26 comments

Live from the Pink Couch: Punks, Girls, Boys, Warriors, Witches, Kids, Comptrollers, and your new favorite band Best Friends Forever! (boyzone comment flamewar included) [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue on Jan 5, 2009 - 16 comments

The Futility of Flogging Music "I was pondering the other day whether I actually have a field of expertise. I thought for ages, and couldn't come up with anything, and then in a blinding flash I realised, with a slight sense of despondency, what it might be: being in bands that people have never heard of." Actually you may have heard of Rhodri Marsden if you're caught the current Scritti Politti line-up in action, if you've ever followed the broadcasts of the late DJ John Peel, or if you've read Rhodri's technology column in UK newspaper the Independent. This week, in a speech to the Oxford Geek Night, Marsden shared his caustic yet heartfelt observations on DIY music from the early 90s through to the digital age, sighing "I can think of nothing more soul destroying" than social networking and quoting post-punk icon of Pere Ubu as saying musicians should "screw the audience".
posted by skylar on Aug 29, 2008 - 43 comments

What do you call capturing sound the way the human head hears it, that is, three-dimensionally? Nope, not stereo. Binaural recording. Holophonics. Dummy head (no, not you) recording. [more inside]
posted by artifarce on Jan 29, 2008 - 14 comments

Surely this must be a double, right? I mean, you've got this great and strange program, Addi's Inflatable Minute, and this incredibly strange but somewhat haunting instrument and its all in one You Tube Link? People don't actually make this sort of content in real life, do they?
posted by Ogre Lawless on Jan 11, 2008 - 30 comments

It's that time of year again. The RPM Challenge has been opened again for 2008. Can you record an album of 10 songs and/or 35 minutes during the month of February and send it in by the end of the month? Previously
posted by pyramid termite on Jan 9, 2008 - 19 comments

Guitarweek is quite easily one of the best, if not the best, guitar education websites on the web. Check out the Chord worksheets. The load of free lessons, plus some members-only flash lessons. It's a real labor of love by a pretty interesting guy, who like a lot of people who work more for a passion than money, appears to have trouble making ends meet on it. Membership is amazingly cheap to boot.
posted by bluevelvetelvis on May 22, 2007 - 9 comments

The Toriton Plus A new electronic music interface using water and light. (YouTube). Make your own. From Little-Scale, which is chock-full of cool and wonderous stuff.
posted by loquacious on Nov 11, 2006 - 8 comments

Roses on a piano, tulips on an organ (as mentioned here), but who knew that there are so many people who make their own pipe organs or illustrate how to make pipes (simple or complex).
posted by plinth on Oct 15, 2006 - 3 comments

C86: Side A and Side B.
posted by jack_mo on Aug 24, 2006 - 29 comments

DIY Instruments: Guitar, Bass, A Drum, Yokobue, Pipes, analog synth sound effects. And for those of you who don't want to build anything - you can play the spoons.
posted by bigmusic on May 16, 2006 - 8 comments

John "Paia" Simonton died late last week. His company, PAiA is one of the grandfathers of the DIY synth scene. I have one of his modular synths half-constructed in my garage. He helped create an American buzz for electronic music and DIY music gear in the 70s, and was highly influential till his passing away.
posted by blackvectrex on Nov 29, 2005 - 10 comments

"What did you do to my Intelligent Synthesizer?" Wonderful collection of DIY sound gizmos from Mike Walters at Mystery Circuits. Includes the Pena-Tron, the Electronic Earthball and detailed instructions for the Moog Source Membrane Switch Cure. Most recent: The Melloman, a hilariously elliptical DIY Mellotron. [note: 3rd, 4th and 8th links are mp3s] [via]
posted by mediareport on Oct 17, 2005 - 7 comments

How To Be A Jug or String Band MVP - starting with guitar: It's all in tablature, by the way, something easy enough to understand. Three finger fingerpicking guitar is easy to learn--start with Mississippi John Hurt: Payday was the first song I ever learned. Of course, it's a cinch, being in Open D--but open tunings are a cinch, too. With open tunings, how about learning some slide guitar? Beyond John Hurt, slide or not, open or standard, , there are the ever expanding Fahey Tablatures at John Fahey.com, where Melissa keeps the flame burning ever brightly.
There's Much More Within...
posted by y2karl on Sep 5, 2003 - 17 comments

Lost or broken CD case? Ripped a disc and now it's just floating around on your desk? Freewheeling College students to the rescue! You give 'em the lowdown and you get a formatted paper CD case as a .pdf file. Input your own song titles or run an album search through their DB. They even archive mixes for you to share with others.
posted by donkeysuck on May 11, 2001 - 4 comments