A portable minidisc and a decent stereo microphone can turn your whole
world into an instrument. Sampling the kitchen is a time honored trick,
but there are loads of other everyday sounds worth using. Herbert has
proved that time and again.
As for turning household items into playable instruments in and of themselves...
Sampling them is loads easier. A couple of wicked ideas I've seen used though:
mount an electric motor, hub pointed straight up. Figure out how to
attach an arm of some sort to the hub so that it sweeps a circle as the
motor spins. Now arrange objects at the edge of the circle so that the
arm strikes them as it swings by. You get different rhythms depending on
where you place objects along the circle. You get different sounds depending
on what material the arm is tipped with, and which objects you let it strike.
Another electric motor idea: Build a resisitor ladder keyboard -- basically
a set of switches, each of which, when closed, completes a circuit through
a differently valued resistor. This gives you a 'scale' of voltages.
Run the voltage output into an electric motor with something on it's axle/hub
that rubs continuously against some material. This will give you a pitched
whine, or noise, depending on what materials you use.
The giant PVC Tube Trombone -- this one is by Noli Me Tangere out of Chicago.
They built this 8 foot long monstrosity from PVC waste water pipes of two
diameters. One piece fits snugly inside the other; there's a speaker at one
end and a microphone at the other. They use it as a crude reverb, but also
they'll set up a feedback loop between the microphone and speaker, and then
slide the inner tube out to change the length of the pipe, which produces
INSANE sliding bass sounds.
On Tue, 25 Feb 2003, Paul Ressel wrote:
quoted 11 lines Hi All,
>
> Hi All,
>
> A friend of mine built a synth module using household appliances, he
> had the luxury of studying electrical engineering whereas i can barely
> wire a plug. It did however get me thinking about the wide variety of
> seemingly mundane objects that could be used to make electronic music.
> That again got me thinking about how I can barely wire a plug.
>
> If anyone has any fudgy ideas for alternative instruments, post em up.
>