thingstruments

While reading the Google Books preview of Thomas D. Rossing's book Science of percussion instruments , I stumbled across the Verrophone. The Verrophone is quite close to a glass harp made of wine glasses, only it looks much cooler, being made out of big glass tubes. The sound is sharper and with more attack than the glass harp. Here's a nice piece with a verrophone and a glass harp.   For the HC Verrophone fans, here's a Verrophone wallpaper !

Ranjit made a sharp-looking violin with a laser cutter . He calls it "the 8-bit violin", for a reason! Below is a video of it being played. [Found via Hackaday ]

Another musical robot! These guys built a harmonica-playing machine. I got to say it's not very flexible, and seems it can play only simple songs. Anyway, interesting idea, and a lot of work invested into something so crazy! See the video here . [Found via Hackaday ]

glitchDS is a unique freeware sequencer for the Nintendo DS. Like the 2112 sequencer we saw earlier , the glitchDS is also based on Conway's Game of Life. Here's a couple of tasty videos of the glitchDS in action:

This guy made a microphone out of a telephone handset and made an instructable out of it . He used quite simple electronics and the sound quality is not very good, as you can hear in the demo video he posted . Anyway, it's a nice idea and gives some use for the old wired telephones. See also this cool video of a studio performance with two DIY headset mics! Erikino & James Studio Perforance

This crazy sequencer called 2112 switches a 4x8 matrix based on the Game of Life! Why? So you could ask! See below a video of it rigged to a Buchla 200e ! Plus another two videos, if you didn't get enough from the first one! [found via Hack a Day ]

Hi there! This is the first post to thingstruments, a blog about strange instruments, pioneers who create them and virtuosos that play them. There will also be posts about software instruments, sound related programs, do-it-yourself guides and even schematics. The instruments will vary a lot, from acoustic to electronic to electromechanical constructions... Basically if it makes a sound, it fits here. After Tom Whitwell's Music Thing , my all time favourite blog, closed in January 2009, I felt like the internet had a hole in it. This blog will try to fill that hole at least partly, providing some strange & funny news about crazy musical things. It will be no Music Thing, I'm not even a native english speaker, but I'll try my best to make it an entertaining blog!