The simplest possible midi instrument: just jam the speaker cable into the midi out connector.

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NYCResistor rescued a battered old upright piano that was destined for
the dumpster. There were 6 missing hammers right in the middle, so I
made a quick and dirty set of replacements. Surprisingly, they have a
sound that’s pretty close to the original hammers.

The hammers are lasercut from 1/4" poplar, glued together in
pairs to be 1/2" thick and then sanded down to 0.4" to match
the original hammers. The extended slot in the bottom allows me to
glue the hammer onto the old broken shafts instead of replacing them,
and to tilt them to the right to hit the strings at the right angle.
The felt is some wool stuff from a craft drawer. Real hammer heads
are mostly felt, but I made these ones mostly wood because it was
easier.

Plans and instructions at www.thingiverse.com/thing:6242

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I’ve always loved the sounds made by makerbots as they print out
little plastic gewgaws. Tonight I miked up Jeff’s custom crystal
Thing-o-matic as it printed out a shot glass. Acoustic mic is panned
left, and contact mic is panned right.

I know people have programmed their makerbots to play music, but I
like best the sounds they naturally make when they make objects.

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This humidifier runs next to my bed all night in the winter.
Sometimes its groans and whirs are so interesting that they keep me
awake and I have to turn it off. It plays little cadences, drones,
and repeating beats that constantly change. Or I’m just hallucinating
in my half-asleep state.

I’ve been meaning to record it for months. It didn’t do anything
particularly exciting during these 45 seconds, but you can hear it
subtly change even in that time.

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An improvised ocarina design, laser-cut and assembled from
cross-sections. It’s much less ergonomic but easier to assemble than
last year’s laser ocarina.

Plans and instructions are on thingiverse: www.thingiverse.com/thing:6182

p.s. I’m teaching a laser whistle workshop this Saturday in Brooklyn!

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CAUTION: LOUD AND UNPLEASANT NOISE!

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Materials: drumsticks, wooden dowels, wood glue.

Plus a bonus sound for today–crunching through snow with a crispy crust of ice:

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For all four years of the instrument-a-day project, my noisy
refrigerator has plagued me: I have to unplug it whenever I record a
new instrument at home.  Well, today I exploited it.

Materials: refrigerator noise, filtered by resonant tin cans.

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Found wood, guitar strings, zither pins, scrap acrylic bridges, and a weird overhead pickup made of crudely-wound wire and a magnet out of a dead hard drive.

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