thingstruments

This guy built his own modular and filmed it all with a time-lapse app for the iPhone. The synthesizer can be also heard on the soundtrack. Amazing work!

The Mixtape Alpha is a $42 synth / sequencer smaller than a cassette tape. It is limited to chiptune style sounds, but is still very cool and very portable - you can easily take it anywhere with you. The schematics and source code are available to download, which makes it possible to even build your own.

Here's a great, in-detail introduction to the Oberheim polyphonic 8 voice synthesizer . It's just... beautiful...

I really have no excuse for not introducing the Teenage Engineering OP-1 until now. It first gained fame being featured in the swedish house Mafia's music video for "One (Your Name)" . It's a quirky portable music workstation. Here's one example of the OP-1 in action: And here's a tutorial to the ridiculous and wide accessories range, which makes the OP-1 even more a real Thingstrument. The unit currently costs 800€, so it's not the cheapest toy you can get, but it can really do quite a lot for the buck.

  The ANS synthesizer , imagined in 1938 and built in 1958 by Evgeny Murzin . It is controlled by glass discs that have the arrangement printed on them. It was used most notably on the soundtrack to Andrei Tarkovsky 's film Solyaris . A curious fact is also that this thing is 720-note (or should I say pitch) polyphonic! Also worth checking is this interesting article on the ANS. Update: now a virtual version of the ANS is available for everyone to play with!

Flamethrower guitars. Need I say more?

In this video, 12 Korg monotribes have a conversation.

Very nice patch! I could listen to this all day.

Not sure if it's the coolest, but it sure is one of the nicest modulars I've come across.

Here's a quick look into the history of the Minimoog . Totally worth the 8-minute watch.

For your enjoyment, here's some more bad guitar playing with ridiculous guitars.

This guitar sure looks good, but they still have to do some tuning work on it...

Pedro Reyes made a robotic orchestra out of dismantled guns. It's controlled with Ableton Live. There's also brief shots of a bass, a violin, and a flute made of old guns.

For the computer musicians out there using Windows,, here's some free russian VST synthesizers for you ! The newest addition is the Grey Apparatus version 2, which is a hybrid between an FM synth and a "wavedraw" synth, where you draw the waveform yourself.