I had a 20 by 1.5 inch slab of oak, so I designed an ocarina that could be assembled from cross-sections that would fit on it.  I cut the parts on the laser cutter, glued them together, and it still didn't work until I took Bre's suggestion and coated the entire thing with glue to plug up any tiny holes.

If you have access to a laser cutter, you can get the plans and assembly instructions from http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1816

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It's a bunch of bottlecaps on a string.  It sounds ok, looks pretty (I love the colors), and smells like a party!

p.s. I'll be performing with many of these instruments at Barbes in Brooklyn, Wednesday March 3rd, along with Chris Williams and thing-a-dayer Jason Das, who are the Glass Bees!

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Some aluminum bars from another project, string, rubber bands, and a
fruit basket I found in the trash. I didn’t tune the bars, just
picked my favorites from the pile.

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The traditional rubber-bands-on-a-box instrument, with a piezo contact
microphone. I didn’t try to tune the strings, just worked with what I
got.

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I don’t know why I kept all those walnut shells. Finally, here’s a
use for them.

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Since my first horn was a failure, I tried again, this time in
acrylic, with a narrower tube and larger holes. But it still doesn’t
work as anything but a kazoo. Third try soon!

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Can you take an audio waveform, laser-cut it into a piece of acrylic,
and then play it back by scraping the waveform?

(Spoiler: NO.)

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“bass” because it makes a low note and because it’s made of basswood.
The reed is cut from the plastic lid of a takeout soup container. The
thing only makes one note – I put in some random finger holes but they
make no difference! I suspect the horn is way too wide for its
length– I’ll try to make a skinnier one soon.

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picking up noise from the guts of remote controls.

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