Posts on Hackaday sometimes trend a little bit retro, but rarely do we cover hacks that reach back into the Bronze Age. Still, when musician [Peter Pringle] put out a video detailing how he replicated an ancient Sumerian instrument, we couldn’t wait to dig in. The instrument in question is the “Golden Lyre of Ur”, […]
For those who experienced any part of the 1960s, even if it’s just experiencing the music from that era here in the future, the sound of the Mellotron is immediately recognizable. The Moody Blues were famous for using the tape-based instrument, and the Beatles and David Bowie produced hits with it as well. It’s haunting […]
In the early years of electrification, when electricity was beginning to shape the modern world, this new technology was being put to use in many more places than turning motors and providing lighting. Some things we can see as obvious missteps like electrified corsets marketed as health tonics or x-ray treatments for eye strain, but […]
[kida] has a highly innovative set of 3D-printable, musical fidget toys that play classic video game tunes. Of course there’s the classic Super Mario ditty, but there’s loads more. How they work is pretty nifty, and makes great use of a 3D printer’s strengths. To play the device one uses a finger to drag a […]
There are some that enjoy the human element of a musical performance, delighting in the unique way an artist teases the desired sound from their instruments. Then there are those of us who listen to random bleeps, bloops, and buzzes tortured out of some crusty sound chip pulled from an 8-bit computer. It’s all very […]
String instruments have a long history in civilization, helping humans make more complex and beautiful music. We wonder what our forebears would think of this guitar strummed with 1000 picks? [Mattias Krantz] wondered what the best number of picks was to play guitar and took the experiment to its illogical extreme. Starting with zero picks […]
[Gijs Gieskes] is certainly no stranger to hacked cassette players, but his latest triumph may well be the most approachable project for anyone looking to explore the world of unorthodox tape unspooling. By attaching a fairly simple add-on PCB to a modern portable cassette player, the user is able to modify the playback speed of […]
Many everyday objects make some noise as a side effect of their day job, so some of us hack would them into music instruments that can play a song or two. It’s fun, but it’s been done. YouTube channel [Device Orchestra] goes far beyond a device buzzing out a tune – they are full fledged […]