Musical Robot Lets You Play The Recorder Hands-Free

Although many people might remember the recorder as just a simple instrument from their introductory music classes, it can nevertheless produce rich and varied melodies in the hands of a virtuoso l…

We’ve Got A Saxaboom At Home Son

Most parents have heard a familiar story. Their lovely child comes up, having seen a celebrity rocking out with a funny $20 toy from the 80s, and asks for it. Of course, you reply, it’s just …

Building A Breath-Controlled MIDI Device

When we think of MIDI devices, we typically jump straight to drum machines, rack synths, and keyboard controllers. However, there’s nothing saying you can’t build your own MIDI controll…

MIDI Interface For NeXTcube Plugs Into The Past

[Joren] recently did some work as part of an electronic music heritage project, and restored an 80s-era NeXTcube workstation complete with vintage sound card, setting it up with a copy of MAX, a gr…

An RPi-Powered Multi-DX7/TX816 Style Synth

[Kevin] over at Simple DIY ElectroMusic Projects has released a complete DIY modular design for simulating the classic 80s Yamaha TX816 DX/FM modular digital synthesizer. This beast of a synth was …

Messing With A Cassette Player Never Sounded So Good

Cassette players and tapes are fertile hacking ground. One reason is that their electromechanical and analog nature provides easy ways to fiddle with their operation. For example, slow down the mot…

Op Amp Contest: Go Down An Octave, No FFT, No PLL, No Oscillator!

We like a project that makes us think, and that was certainly the case with [MS-BOSS]’s octave downshifter that’s an entry in our current op-amp contest. Instead of resorting to an FFT,…

Playing 78 RPM Shellac Records: It’s Not Just About Speed

What is the difference between 78, 45, and 33 RPM records? Obviously most people would say the speed, which of course is true to a degree. But as [Techmoan] covers in a recent video, there’s …

ISD1700 Based Lo-Fi Sampler

Custom music instruments here at Hackaday range from wacky to poignant. OpnBeat by [Hiro Akihabara] focuses on something different: simplicity. There are few buttons, the design and code are optimi…

Building The OhSillyScope

If you have a Raspberry Pi connected to an LED matrix, you might think about creating a simple oscilloscope. Of course, the Pi isn’t really well-suited for that and neither is an LED matrix, …

Compose Any Song With Twelve Buttons

Limitations placed on any creative process often paradoxically create an environment in which creativity flourishes. A simple overview of modern pop, rock, or country music illustrates this princip…

Vinyl Sales Ran Circles Around CDs In 2022

How do you take your music these days? For those in Camp Tangible, it seems our ranks are certainly growing, and in the analog direction. For the first time since 1987, vinyl record sales have outp…

Tiny PCB PiezoPiano Plays Just One Octave

Grand pianos are beautiful instruments, but take up altogether too much space. Upright pianos are smaller, but still fairly hefty. When it comes to the PiezoPiano, though, we suspect nobody could c…

Mechanical Keyboard As Travel Saxophone

Those who play larger musical instruments, things like drums, piano, harp, tuba, upright bass, or Zeusaphone, know well the challenges of simply transporting their chosen instrument to band practic…

A Tape Loop Echo You Can Build

Echo and reverb are now electronic audio effects done in a computer or an integrated circuit, but originally they were achieved through mechanical means. Reverb units used springs, and echo units u…

A More Expressive Synth Via Flexure

Synthesizers can make some great music, but sometimes they feel a bit robotic in comparison to their analog counterparts. [Chris Guichet] built a “minimum viable” expressive synth to ov…

Challenging The Limits Of 3D Printing With Cymbals

We’re big believers in 3D printing here at Hackaday, but it’s important to recognize that there are plenty of applications where additive manufacturing (at least, from a desktop machine…

Lo-Fi Tchaikovsky

[Kevin] over at Simple DIY ElectroMusic Projects recently upgraded his Lo-Fi Orchestra. To celebrate his 400th blog post, he programmed it to play Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. Two Arduino Nan…

A Better Playlist Shuffle Algorithm Is Possible

When listening to music, most of us reach for the shuffle button on the regular. This is then followed by a bunch of frustrating skips as we hear the same four or five tracks that have been regular…

How To Build Jenny’s Budget Mixing Desk

Jenny did an Ask Hackaday article earlier this month, all about the quest for a cheap computer-based audio mixer. The first attempt didn’t go so well, with a problem that many of us are famil…