Auto Xylophone Uses Homemade Solenoids

Want to play the xylophone but don’t want to learn how? [Rachad]’s automatic xylophone might be just the ticket. It uses homemade solenoids to play tunes under computer control. Think o…

Playing The Guitar Of DOOM

Over the years, we’ve seen DOOM run on pretty much everything from an 8088 to a single keycap. We’ve also written up one or two controllers, but we don’t think we’ve ever se…

Just What Is Tone, In A Microphone?

As long-time Hackaday readers will know, there is much rubbish spouted in the world of audio about perceived tone and performance of different hi-fi components. Usually this comes from audiophiles …

One-String, One-Trick Pony Plays “the Lick”

Wouldn’t you love to be able to play a song on a stringed instrument even though you don’t have an iota of musical talent? That’s the idea behind Strumli, a single-string instrume…

Cyanodore 6 Is A Rad Commodore 64 Synthesizer

The Commodore 64 is celebrated to this day for its capable SID sound chip, which provided the soundtrack for some of the best video games of its era. Even today, it’s still in demand as a chi…

The Reverse Oscilloscope

Usually, an oscilloscope lets you visualize what a signal looks like. [Mitexla]’s reverse oscilloscope lets you set what you want an audio waveform to look like, and it will produce it. You c…

Tear Apart Your House For $200 With This Rotary Subwoofer

Many movies and songs use a lot of of bass to make it feel more real to the viewer or listener. Because of this, subwoofers are common in high-quality audio setups, often costing a substantial part…

Where Did Electronic Music Start?

A culture in which it’s fair to say the community which Hackaday serves is steeped in, is electronic music. Within these pages you’ll find plenty of synthesisers, chiptune players, and …

Spooky Noise Box Has Post-Halloween Potential

There’s more than one way to scare people on Halloween. Sure, there’s always the low-brow jump scare, but that will generally just annoy the person and possibly cause a heart attack. No…

Re-Creating Pink Floyd In The Name Of Speech

For people who have lost the ability to speak, the future may include brain implants that bring that ability back. But could these brain implants also allow them to sing? Researchers believe that, …

Guitar Distortion With Diodes In Code, Not Hardware

Guitarists will do just about anything to get just the right sound out of their setup, including purposely introducing all manner of distortion into the signal. It seems counter-intuitive, but it w…

An Effects Pedal For Keyboards (and Mice)

Effects pedals for musical instruments like electric guitars can really expand a musician’s range with the instrument. Adding things like distortion, echo, and reverb at the push of a button …

Modeling A Guitar For Circuit Simulation

Guitar effects have come a long way from the jangly, unaltered sounds of the 1950s when rock and roll started picking up steam. Starting in large part with [Jimi Hendrix] in the 60s, the number of …

A Turing-Complete CPU In Sunvox? Why Not!

Day-time software engineer and part-time musician, [Logickin,] knows a thing or two about programming the SunVox modular synthesiser and tracker software. Whilst the software is normally used for c…

GETMusic Uses Machine Learning To Generate Music, Understands Tracks

Music generation guided by machine learning can make great projects, but there’s not usually much apparent control over the results. The system makes what it makes, and it’s an achievem…

RoboPianist Is A Simulation For Advancing Robotic Control

Researchers at Google have posed themselves an interesting problem to solve: mastering the piano. However, they’re not trying to teach themselves, but a pair of simulated anthropomorphic robo…

Building The Cheapest MIDI Home Studio From 1988

These days, there is a plethora of cheap hardware and software which you can use to make digital music. Back in the 1980s, though, this was still a nascent field, with new gear changing the game fo…

Roboticized Zelda Ocarina Plays Itself

[3DSage] has long been obsessed with a certain type of musical instrument after playing The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. It spawned a project to robotically control an ocarina, which turned ou…

Horror Instrument Is Truly Astounding To Listen To

Truly new musical instruments don’t come along every day; much of the low hanging fruit has already been taken. [Simon the Magpie] has been working on something that’s just a little inn…

Ferrofluid Drum Synth Dances To The Beat

[Love Hultén]’s work often incorporates reactive sound elements, and his Ferrofluid drum synth is no exception. Sadly there are no real build details but have no fear: we’ve gathered pl…