The Hang (pronounce \"hung\", which is Bernese for hand), is a very recent musical instrument. It was created round 2000 in Bern (Switzerland) by Felix Rohner and Sabina Schärer of the PANArt Company. It\'s related to other well known instruments like the Steel Drum, Gong and the Cowbell.

The Hang is divided in two sides. One side is called Ding, the other Gu.
On the Ding side there are 8 tone fields, which form together the so called tone circle and in the middle of this circle lays the Ding (which sounds like a Gong).
The Gu side has a hole in the middle for resonance and tone modulation.
Both side can be played with full hand, fingertips, thumbs or any combination of these. Mostly the Hang is played while it\'s placed on the knees of the player.

From 2001 to 2008 five development stages of the PANArt Hang can be distinguished: The early Hanghang of the 1st genereration (2001-2004), the Low Hang (2005), the 2nd generation from 2006 and 2007 and the Integral Hang introduced in 2008, this is the only Hang that is manufactured today.

Airpoles are flexible (fiberglass) tubes used by the Bleu Man Group. When they are moved around in circles they make a \'swoosh\' sound. They are used in a lot of performances of the Blue Man Group and can be heard on the song \"Shadows Part 2\" or on their video \"The Complex Rock Tour\". The Blue Man Group refer to the Airpoles as \'found object instrument\' in contrast to invented intruments.

There are some different kind of Airpoles:
The Sword Airpoles are short and thin, which makes them easier to control and more versatile than the other Airpoles.
>The Angel Airpoles are made by connecting two poles at their thick ends.
Wiper Airpoles are extra long (up to 18 feet) which makes it possible to play the instruments at slower tempos.

The half demolished Cabrini Green Building (Chicago) became one big hissing and whistling instrument.

The Vitthala Temple in Hampi, India is one of the best conserved temples of the area dedicated to Vitthala, a form of Vishnu. The temple was built round 1513 by King Krishna Deva Raya.

The temple consists of 56 solid, musical, tuned pillars which can be tapped to produce sound. These pillars are popularly known as Musical Pillars or SaReGaMa pillars after the Saptha Swaras of the Indian Classical Music.

The Stone Fiddle is an original stoneware instrument that is a hybrid of three instruments from different musical families. It\'s a two-stringed bowed instrument, similar to the violin and the Egyptian rebabba. The neck of the fiddle is a flute (in the picture above you can see the blow hole and finger holes on the side of the neck). The goatskin soundboard or resonator of the fiddle can be played as a drum. As a player, it\'s interesting to explore how the three systems interact. For example, when playing the instrument as a flute or drum, the strings sympathetically vibrate and produce their own sound. (from the Burnt Earth site)

The Sonic Sound Plate is contructed of a plate on which you can dance and a lot of effects. The movement of your feet makes the Sonic Sound Plate generate music and effects. Targetted use is in \'Drum-robics\', some kind of aerobics using this plate.

The Trautonium is a monophonic electronic musical instrument which is controlled by a sort of resistor ribbon instead of a keyboard.The musician presses the ribbon against a conductive plate. The pitch depends on where the ribbon is pressed, which defines the resistance of the ribbon. The musician can create gliding on it or create vibrato with small movements.

The Telharmonium (Teleharmonium, Dynamophone) was invented, patented (Patent 580035) and built by Thadeus (Thomas) Cahill in 1897. It\'s a huge sound generator with a lot of controls and a polyphonic keyboard. This makes the Telharmonium the first real synthesizer.

The Telharmonium generates it\'s sound using tonewheels (similar to the famous Hammond Organ) which generate electrical signals that are added to each other to make different sounds. The signal itself was transmitted via telephone lines and reached it\'s audience via a sort of primitive coned speakers.

The biggest problem of the Telharmonium was it\'s immense size and weight. The first version Mark I weighed 7 tons, the Mark II had a weight of 200 tons and was about 18 meter long. Another big problem was the enormous cost of the instrument, both in building and using it. The Mark II costed $200.000 in 1906 and consumed an enormous amount of power (no vacuum tubes or transistors in those days).

When the broadcasts started to interfere with the telephone line the investors lost their interest and and finally in 1914 Cahill went bankrupt.

Rotozithers are a group of musical instrument that are family of the musicbox.

The speed of the rotation can be changed by the player as can the placing of the pickups, which gives a great freedom to create different sounds, often affected by the Doppler effect. Their is no fixed tuning for the Rotozithers, tuning is done by \'tastse\'.

The Wrenchophone is a matallophone made out of wrenches. The Wrenchophone can be tuned in different keys or can be chromatic.

The Stamenphone is a 16 stringed pendulum-shaped suspended instrument. The strings are attached to a stainless steel resonating chamber. The Stamenphone is played with a bow and utilizes upper partials (harmonics) to change pitch. It creates melodic humming and wailing tones.

The Intonarumori were a group of \'noise making\' instruments invented by the Italian Futurist Luigi Russolo. They were rather big wooden boxes with cone in front of them to amplifie the sound they made. All of the boxes were controlled by means of handles that were moved or turned. There were 27 varieties of the boxes that made noises like howling, thunder, crackling, crumpling, exploding, gurgling, buzzing, hissing,..etc.

The Intonarumori were made to demonstrate the statements of the futurist and in particular Russolo concerning futurist music, described in his essay \'The Art of Noise\'.

The Anaplumb consist of a weight, some magnets and three vibrators, vibrating at diffent speeds. The weight is hung on a string and/or spring and swung over some heavy magnets. The frequencies created by the vibrators make the string and/or spring vibrate. This vibration is changed by the force of the magnets which gives the Anaplumb it\'s final sound.

The Anaplumb is member of the family of Weighted Strings musical instrument invented and made by Neil Feather.

The Holosound is not a musical instrument in the pure sense, but a Musical Interface.

Shinths belong to the family of the Circuit Bend musical instruments. They are circuit boards that are bended to make music. The player is encouraged to bend the board to his own vision before playing it.

The player touches instrument with his body/hands and the instrument sends electronic sound thru your body and out via spoon held in mouth

Drippers are part of audio installations. They are \'Computer Controlled Rain Machine\', where rain is a bit exagerated. They can drip water, where every drip is very well controlled. The computer controls the size of the 16 independent drops and their frequency.

Normally they are installed at some height above what will actually produce the sound. This can be tin cans, drums, crystall glasses, metal plates, ...

The Dripper was first used in Gent, Belgium where 3 modules were hung 9 meters heigh in the concert hall of the Logos Foundation (The Trahedron). The drop hit thin aluminium membranes mounted on a set of plastic tubes that were used as resonator

The Viophonograph was invented in 1976 by Laurie Anderson. It\'s constructed of a violin body on which a turning 7 inch vinyl record was mounted. The instrument was played by putting the needle (that was mounted on the a bow) on the record. The needle picked up the sound that was sent to an amplifier. The vinyl record was specially made for this instrument and contained several bands with violin sounds and phrases.

The Balloon Organ is an organ mostly made with balloons and parts of balloons. The air reservoir is a balloon that is filled with air with a simple pump. This reservoir pushes the air to an array of valves that are operated by the player. When the valve opens, the air is pushed thru double pipe. The end of that double pipe is closed by a balloon, which starts vibrating. See the video for a compleet explanation.

The Cleophone is a stringed instrument built in 2005 by David Krejci.

The musical instrument is derived from the piano and is made up of piano pieces. It\'s mainly a large piece of wood on which piano strings are attached. The stings are played with a piano hammer, violin bow ,metal balls or simply plucked. The sound is picked up by electromagnetic elements and then amplified.

The instrument gives a hypnotic sound, very unpredictable

The Savart\'s Wheel consists of a series of disks attached to a motorized axis. The rims of the disks are rippled. The sound of the Savart\'s Wheel is produced when a resonator with a plectrum is held against the rims of the disks while they are spinning. As the speed of the rim of the bigger disk is higher than the one of the smaller disks, the pitch is higher when the plectrum is held to a bigger disk.

Leonard Solomon describes the Bellowphone like this : \"No description can adequately convey the goose-honking and train-whistle cacophony of the Majestic Bellowphone\". Nothing to add to this :-)

The Gravikord is an electric double harp family of the African kora. The Gravikord is very minimalistic in design, made of welded stainless steel and has 24 string. The alternate tonal structure is similar to the Kalimba. The tone is as variable as other electronic instruments and is between a harp and an electric guitar. Many guitar effects can be added.

The Musical Telegraph consisted of a simple monotone oscillator. The sound was controlled by vibrations of an electromagnetic circuit.

The Musical Telegraph produced sounds by using oscillating metal reeds and the signal was transported by the telephone wire.

Originally constructed in June 1995 as a side instrument for The Lyle and Sparkleface Band, the bikelophone has evolved into a palette of sonic exploration.

The current configuration includes - bass strings, scrap wood and metal, metal bowls, telephone bells, a mechanical foot pedal and a touch sensitive tone generator. With magnetic pickups attached to amplify the sound, anything connected to the bike becomes amplified.

The bikelophone produces sounds ranging from tranquil bliss to cacophonic terror.

from http://members.localnet.com/%7Edorloo/

The Raffinaderij (Refinery in English) is a giant multiple-player clarinet made of plastic sewer piping, plastic soft drink bottles and flexible tubing, mounted on three bar stool frames. The air supply is provided by two bicycle-pumping musicians, and regulated by a valve-and-balloon operator. The pumping seems to have some effect on the tone and pitch, though most of the actual musical decisions are made by the other players - sometimes five at a time - who open and shut the holes (using plugs, hands, rubber gloves with a tuned reed at the tip of each finger), knead the air and sing and moan into the instrument.

from http://www.monastery.nl

The Daxophone can be seen as a much better version of a ruler you place on a table and hit (as we all did some time at school).

It is contructed of a wooden tongue (that comes in 103 different shapes) attached to the end of a wooden block that acts as a resonator. The tongue is played with a violin bow or is plucked. A second piece of wood called \'dax\', with two curved surfaces (one side is fretted) is held against the wooden tongue to change the pitch and tone of the tongue. The sound produced is picked up by some contact microphones and amplified.

The Bazantar is a five-string acoustic bass, fitted with an additional twenty-nine sympathetic strings and four drone strings. The instrument possesses a melodic range of over five octaves, while its sympathetic range spans four octaves. This results in an interplay between melodic, sympathetic, and drone strings which weaves an unexpected landscape of resonance that is remarkably rich in texture.

from http://www.bazantar.com

The Walkotron is a kind of Melotron made of Walkmans.

The Kraakdoos (Cracklebox in English) is an electronic circuit with a number (ususally 6) contacts on the outside on it\'s box. When the player touches one or more of the contacts he becomes part of the instrument and the box starts making noise.

The Kraakdoos was made by Michel Waisvisz and Geert Hamelberg in the 1960\'s, Waisvisz improved it when he joined the STEIM foundation in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

The Car Music Project is both a project and a band. The band plays their music on musical instruments that are made from parts of Cars. The list of instruments include Convertibles,Tube Flutes, Strutbone,Exhaustaphone, Percarsion,Tank Bass and Air Guitar.

The Flaterfoon (Dutch)/Gaffophone (French) is an imaginary musical instrument made by Guust Flater/Gaston Lagaffe (person in the comix of Franquin).

The Flaterfoon/Gaffophone is made of a hollow tree with strings attached. The Flaterfoon/Gaffophone makes such a big waves of air that it is impossible to play the music without causing huge disasters.

The Mellotron is a Walkman version of the Mellotron.

The Scanner is a simple scanner (HP ScanJet 4c) that is able to make music by varying the stepping rate of the scanner motor.

The Moodswinger is a stringed instrument family of the electric guitar and the zither and it is inspired by the third bridge design. It\'s custom made by Yuri Landman.

It has no frets and not really a neck (as the guitar) and all the electronics are build in the neck. like usual electric guitars.

Famous owners of a Moodswinger are Aaron Hemphill of Liars and Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth.

The reacTable is a multi-user musical instrument with a tangible interface build in a table. Several performers control the instrument by moving objects on the interface surface.

The instrument was developed by the “Interactive Sonic Systems Team”, working in the Music Technology Group at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona Spain.

When a car drives the Melody Road, it\'s tyres start playing a tune. The tune is caused by ridges on the road\'s surface. The pitch of the tune depends on the spacing of the ridges (between 6 and 12mm apart).

The Hokkaido Industrial Research Institute made such ridges on road near Hokkaido, Wakayama or Gunma in Japan.

According the information the ideal speed of the car is 28 mph (45 kmh), which makes the Melody Road a nice speed limiter ;-)

The Hydraulophone is family of the woodwind musical instruments but instead of air producing the sound it\'s water that makes the noise.

The Tubatron is a flaming tuba. The flames are played at the rythm of the music.

The Flapophone is a collection of pvc tubes with at one end a wooden flap, covered with rubber. A spring is attached between the flap and the tubes so there is a spacing between them. The sound is produced by hitting the flap so the air in the tubes start vibrating.

The Single String is the name of a collection of stringed instruments made by Iner Souster.

The instruments are a sort of banjos with one or more strings and made out of junk, carparts and other strange pieces. It can be plucked, bowed, or wathever you want to do to make it sound great.

The Sea organ is a stairway near the sea in Zadar, Croatia. The sound of the Sea Organ is created by air that is pushed through a series of tubes by the sea waves. The tubes are hidden under the marble steps of the stairway.

The sound of the organ is a bit chaotic but harmonic, but it never stops.

Roots and Branches (full name \'IF VI WAS IX: Roots and Branches\') is a sound sculpture made of 500 musical instruments and 30 computers. Each instrument plays only one note and is controlled by a midi interface that activates a motor to pluck the string.

The Rhythmicon (Polyrhythmophone) was a musical keyboard instrument that generated rhythmic beats according to the intervals of the harmonic series. Pressing a key made the Rhythmicon play a repeated tone, proportional in pitch and rhythm to the overtone series (the second key played the same repeated tone twice as high and twice as fast as the first key.)

The rhytmicon was built in 1931 by Leon Theremin for the American composer Henry Cowell.

I did not find very much info about this musical instrument. It was invented and build by Luigi Russolo and it was used round 1930 to make live music in cinemas in Paris.

The Theremincello (Theremin Cello) is the cello version of the Theremin.

The Theremincello is played by touching a flexible film that is placed where a normal cello\'s strings are. The volume is controlled by a lever at the side of the musical instrument. The musician can change the timbre and tonecolour by adjusting some knobs on the front of the intrument.

The Aeolian harp (Aeolus is the Greek god of the winds) is a stringed musical instrument that is played by the wind.

The Aeolian Harp is made of strings that are attached to a resonator, much like a normal Harp. The Aeolian Harp is placed in such a way that the wind makes the strings vibrate.

The Great Stalacpipe Organ in the Luray Caverns in Virginia (USA) is often referred to as the biggest musical instrument on earth. It\'s no really an organ, it got that name because the stalactites that produce the sound resemble the pipes of an organ and the keyboard looks also like an organ.

The sound of the Great Stalacpipe Organ is produced by hitting the stalactites with a rubber hammer that is activated by the press of a key on the keyboard.

The \"Klavins-Piano Model 370\" is worlds biggest playable piano. The sound board has twice the size of a concert grand of 2,75 m, it weighs 2 ton and the longest sting is 3,03 m long.

The Pencilina is a sort of double neck 3rd bridge guitar/zither. It has two necks, one with 6 strings and one with 4 strings. At the top of the necks there are several bells attached.

The music is produced by striking, plucking or bowing the strings. The sound is picked up by 2 guitar elements placed under the strings near the bridge and by some contact microphones placed near the bells.

The SynthAxe is mainly a MIDI controller chaped as a guitar. The guitar controlled a complete rack of electronics. The complete set fills about 4 flightcases.

The Hybrid Strings are a collection of several hundred string instruments constructed from a bit of whatever. Very good looking musical instruments. They can be seen as assemblages of everyday objects that form a sculptural musical instrument.

The Zendrum is a MIDI controller that is targeted to the drum world.

The musisian gets a more intuitive way and interface to make rythm sound (not limited to drum sounds as this is a midi controller). The music is created by tapping the Zendrum with your fingers.

The Luthéal is the grandfather of the Prepared Piano.

The Luthéal was build using a Pleyel piano but had 4 registers like an organ. When using this registers the sound changed from piano over harp to cymbalon.

The Wave Organ from Morse Robb was the first patented electric organ.

The Wave Organ produced it\'s sound using rotating cylinders.

The Electronic Sackbut is seen as the first voltage controlled synth.

To play music on the Electronic Sackbut the musician played the keyboard with the right hand and used his left hand to handle the controls. The left hand changed the tone colour and timbre in that way.

The Octobass is a very large bowed string instrument. It\'s a three stringed large (+/- 3.5 m in length) version of the double bass.

The Ocotbass is so large and it\'s strings so thick that it\'s impossible for one musician to play it. It\'s normally played by two musicians, one to bow the strings and the other to control the levers and footpedals that control the fingerboard settings.

The Wave Organ is a San Francisco based wave activated sound sculpture.

Using a series of pipes the sound of the ways is transported to the listener at serveral stations. The Wave Organ produces rumbles, gurgles and other typical wave sounds.

The Blaster Beam is a sort of huge slide guitar. It\'s about 18 feet long and made of machined aluminium.

The sound is produced by striking, plucking, bowing the very long strings, sometimes with a artillery shell. Some moveable pickups transfer that sound and music to the amplifier.

The Blaster Beam was used in the soundtrack of different film (e.g. \'Star Trek: The Motion Picture\') and it\'s said that it\'s sound can stimulate a female orgasm.

Klompen is a sound sculpture made of 96 - 120 handcrafted wooden Dutch clogs (klompen is the dutch word for clogs). The wooden clogs have a device in the toe of the clogs that can be activated to produce a clicking sound. The whole installation performs a sort of rythmic dance when activated.

The Wege Symphonice House is a building where the structure becomes a muscical instrument, it\'s a giant stringed instrument.

The instruments are based around specialy designed strings (so called \'long strings\'). The strings are played by using a special glove that has rosin powder on the fingers. The friction of two moving fingers holding the wire creates the sound. The long strings create a sound much like a cello.

The Musicpole is a 3 octave MIDI controller where the keys are arranged around a tube.

The Musicpole is played by moving your thumbs over the keys. The thumbs are covered by \"thumbletz\", which are made of a conductive material.

The Nanoharp is the smallest musical instrument in the world and is carved out of a single silicon crystal.The strings are silicon rods of 50 nanometres (nm) in diameter, from about 1,000 to 8,000nm long.

The Nanoharp is played by touching the strings with a laser. When doing so the Nanoharp\'s strings start vibrating at frequencies as high as 380 MHz (much too high for the human ear to hear it).

The Stylophone is a sort of \'pocket electronic organ\'. It\'s made of an electronic circuit and a stylus. The Stylophone is played by touching the metal keyboard by the stylus.

The Optophonic Piano was not only a musical instrument but projected also colourfull patterns on a wall.

The music and images were made by shining a bright light through some turning painted glass disks. The keyboard controlled what disk and filters were used for the projection and the sound. The sound itself was created by picking up the filtered light with photo-electric cells which in their turn controlled an oscillator.

The Guitarbot is stringed instrument and robot at the same time. It\'s made of 4 stings and a series of motors. The motors are used to pluck the strings and to change the length of the strings.

The Arc is a monochord musical instrument that is derived from the Aeolian instruments. The instrument is mostly bowed but can be plucked.

The pitch of the generated tone can be changed in different ways. The body of the instrument can be flexed which lowers the pitch to produce extreme bass sounds. Another way of changing the pitch is by using the instrument with a slide using glass tubes.

The instrument has a pickup at one end so the signal can be modelled, amplified and transformed.

The Duo-Clave (also Double Piano, Piano Double) is an musical instrument containing two full grown concert pianos in one body.

The Cell Phone Piano is a keyboard instrument where each key of the piano keyboard is connected to a key of a cell phone. Every time a key of the piano is pressed a number is dialed on one of the phones and those are programmed to generate a sound when a number is entered.

The white keys play notes and the black keys are people saying the number out loud (English on the left hand and Spanish on the right). Some white keys make percussion sounds.

The FluteTronic is made of two parts. One part is the flute-like controller and the second part is a wooden box that makes that actual sounds.

The controller is held and played like a flute and uses light sensors to detect finger and mouth position. The finger positions determine the pitch, the mouth position determines the vibrato level.

The Chairello is a stringed instrument that can be played with a bow or by hand.

The Chairello is made from an old officechair and pieces of a bassguitar. The sound is picked up by piezo elements and then amplified.

The Former Guitars are a family of modified electric guitars. Some are made from existing guitars, some are made from scratch.

The former guitars have two strings that are attached to a pivoting head, controlled by a whammy bar. When the whammy bar is activated, the tension of one string raises , while the tension of the other drops.The Former Guitars have a movable bridge that acts as a fret (much like a sitar). The sound is picked up by elements at both sides of the strings.

The SwoofTronic Pi is a small handheld device that allows you to change the frequency and duration of a basic sound wave using your thumbs by controlling two light sensors.

The Swooftronic Pi consists of two small boxes. One box is used to control the pitch, the other one is used to control the length of the note played.

MATRIX is short for Multipurpose Array of Tactile Rods for Interactive eXpression.

The MATRIX is a 3-dimensional tactile musical instrument that reacts to the gestures of a hand. It can be used as a stand alone instrument or in conjunction with a synth or microphone, where the users gestures change parameters of the intrument it controls.

The Radio Baton is musical insterface controller where the position of two \'batons\' (drumsticks/wands) relative to a flat surface define the parameters that contols some MIDI instrument. Each batton contains a different low-frequency radio transmitter and the flat surface that contains receivers.

The Pyrophone (also called \'Fire Organ\', \'Flame Organ\', \'Thermoacoustic Organ\', \'Singing Tubes\', \'Chemical Organ\', \'Organos de Fuego\',\'Burning Harmonica\', \'Chemical Harmonica\', \'Flammes Chantantes\', \'Thermophone\', \'Orgue a Fue\') is a musical instrument where the sound is made by heating up the air in a tube. Depending the width and length of the tube the pitch and tone colour changes.

The Air Song is a viewer activated panpipe sculpture. The wind blows in the big opening at the top and is guided to the pipes in front of the sculpture. When someone closes the bottom of one of the pipes those pipes become panpipes and start to sound.

The Air Song you see here is a model and has not been build in full scale yet.

The Samchillian (full name : \'Samchillian Tip Tip Tip Cheeepeeeee\') is both a musical instrument and a keyboard midi controller. Special about the Samchillian is that pressing a key generates a note relative to another (with most known instruments, pressing a key generates an absolute note i.e. always the same note.)

The Glass Armonica (also \'Glass Harmonica\') is a musical instrument that consists of a series of rotating glass bowls. The player touches one or more of the spinning bowls with his wet fingers and makes the glass bowls resonate by the friction he creates.

The Human Piano player does not touch any keys but other people to generate a sound. Watch the video to see what happens.

The Gittler Guitar (also called Fishbone guitar) is the most minimalistic form a guitar can take. It\'s an electric guitar contructed out of stainless steel bars with strings. There are three forms of the guitar: the one without anybody, the one with a small body and one made out of one piece.It\'s the only musical instrument in the permanent collection of NY\'s Museum of Modern Art.

The Cat Piano is an instrument that probably never has been build, it was invented to amuse an Italian prince. The idea was to have a series of cats, choosen on the pitch of their meows. When a key was pressed a neeedle was driven in the tail of one of the cats, who had to produce a meow, in tune.

The Sweatstick is an alternative MIDI controller that was developed at STEIM.

The BoSSA (Bowed-Sensor-Speaker-Array) is an instrument is played as a violin but has no resonating body and no strings. The instrument can be used to produce music or to control parameters for filters and so change the sound of another source.

Technically the BoSSA is a combination of the R-Bow (violin bow rigged with position and pressure sensors), the N-Body (spherical speakers, resonating body simulation), the Fangerbored (a fingerboard with sensors galore) and the Bonge (an array of bowed sensor-sponges).

The Scratchophone is a portable turntable that is made to scratch. It contains all you need to give a complete scratching performance, turntable, mixer,batteries, speaker, ...

Dimi-H is an instrument which makes it possible to play music in a 3D space.The musician picks his notes and chords out of the air.

Dimi-H is made of 2 or more cameras and a processing unit (made by Thomas Carlsson). Every location in the 3D space corresponds with a note. The musician is place in that 3D space and can literally pick his notes in that space.

The Victorian Synthesizer is an attempt to build a musical instrument using techniques known to the people in the Victorian era.

The Shozyg is an instrument built inside the cover of the final volume of an encyclopedia (\"shoal\" to \"zygote\" and hence \"SHO-ZYG\" on its spine).

The Shozyg contains different \'things\' and oddments (like different pieces of paper, metal blades, ...) that are hit, rubbed, .... The sound that is produced by doing this is amplified by contact microphones.

The Hands are handheld MIDI controllers. The have touch sensitive keys, thumb pressure sensors, and tilt and proximity sensors.

The Hands are attached to the performers hands with velcro so the musician is completely free to move as he wish, controlling the MIDI instrument with the movement of his hands and fingers.

The Hamster Controlled MIDI Sequencer was made by Levy Lorenzo at the Cornell University. It\'s a sequencer where the movement of the hamsters decide what happens and this is translated in MIDI.

The Ondioline (\'Pianoline\' in Germany and \'Orcheline\' in the Netherlands)is a monophonic vacuum tube instrument, one of the fathers of the modern synth.

The Ondiolin has a single oscillator, an eight octave touch sensitive keyboard and a series of filters. The volume was controlled by a knee lever. The Ondioline\'s keyboard is suspended on a series of springs, moving the keyboard adds vibrato to the sound.

During the Brussels World Fair (1958) the Ondioline was played on top of the Atomium.

The Beer Bottle Organ is an organ where the normal organ pipes have been replaced by tuned beer bottles.

The Beer Bottle Organs shown here are made by the Peterson Strobe Tuners company for their 50th anniversary.

The Kaisatsuko is a two string electric upright fiddle. The strings are not bowed but a rotating wheel rubs the strings and makes them vibrate (much like the Hurdy-Gurdy). The name \"Kaisatsuko\" is made up from the words \'Kai\'(Rotation),\'Satsu\'(Rub) and \'Ko\'(Oriental fiddle).

The Optigan (Optical Organ) was sold as a toy instrument by Mattel. The Optigan has a transparent changeable disc on which waveform are written. A lightbeam passes the disc and the light is captured by a photoelectric cell. This generated a variable electrical current that is amplified. Some of the wave tracks on the disc contain sound information, other contain information for filters or effects.

The Wearable Instrument Shirt is a conventional black long sleeve T-shirt that has textile motion sensors integrated in the textile. Those sensors are used to track elbow movements and give signals to the instrument about what is to be played.

The Solene is a 7 string tubular tapped instrument. The name is derived from the Greek word solen which means pipe.

The Bellophone (full name: \'96-tone Equal Temperament Conic Bellophone\') is made of 96 conic tuned bells that are arranged in a frame (forming a sort of cage for the player).

FRONT is a modular MIDI interface comprising a large, sliding knob and a bendable plastic flap. The MIDI information can be manipulated by turning the know, sliding it and/or by bending the flap.

The Harpbot is both a musical instrument and a sculpture. The Harpbot has 8 strings that are controlled by 8 motors. The motors are controlled by two balls that hang like eyes in front of the Harpbot. Those balls contains accelerometers which capture the movement of the balls.

The Schediphon is a mixture of a Trombone and an Euphonium. Next to the normal three valves, the Schediphon has a fourth valve. This is used to control to which bell the air will flow. One bell gives a Trombone like sound, the other an Euphonium like sound.

A similar instrument is the Lyrophone, but this produces other sounds.

The Tangible Sequencer is a simple musical instrument where a number of colored boxes are placed in a certain order. The order of the boxes define the sequence of the played notes. The boxes are aware of one another.

The Chapman Stick was invented round 1974 by Emmett Chapman. It\'s a stringed instrument as a guitar but unlike the guitar the strings are tapped, not plugged. As the Stick has more strings the player can use all his fingers at the same time.

The Stick comes in different forms. There is the 10 string Stick, called....well Stick, the 12 string version is called Grand Stick. Then there is the Stick bass which is a 8 string bass version. The NS/Stick is a 8 string multi-mode instrument, where the Alto Stick is a smaller version with a guitar range. Last but not least there is also a stick with a wider spacing, called the Ten String Grand.

The sound of the stick is close to the sound of a guitar, but the possible chords are much more versatile.

The \"Ztar MIDI guitar controller\" is a \'guitar-shaped\' midi controller. The \"Ztar MIDI guitar controller\" comes in all possible shapes and is made either with \'strings\' or \'key triggers\'.

The Audio Tutu is part the electro-acoustic clothes and dresses used by the Audio Gruppe. The Audio Tutu registers the movement of the dancers that wear it and generates a sound accordingly. The tutu is solar-powered and made of plexi-glass with microphones and speakers.

The Kalimbaphones are a mix between Calimbas and stereo headphones. The user can wear the Kalimbaphones and play personal stereo calimba.

The Thummer is a new kind of keyboard that can be played both like a Concertina or like a normal keyboard. The Thummer has a keyboard where the keys are arranged in a patented Thumusic System. The Thummer has besides the Concertina like keyboard also joysticks which can be controlled by the Thumb.

Disques Photosoniques use the Photosonic Synthesis to produce sound. The source of the sound is light. Imaginary waveforms are drawn in circular rings on transparent disks and a light is send via the disk to a photocell directly connected to an audio amplifier. Manual movement of small light sources and also various optic filters in the path of the light beams allow very precise and effective modulations of tone, timbre, and intensity.

Expressive Footwear is a wearable interface. The Expressive Footwear senses 16 different parameters that are sent wireless to a receiver that controlls the sound generating device.

Sonambient® is a collection of more than 100 sound sculptures. Sonambient® was Bertoia\'s term to describe the spatial and tonal environment created by these sound sculptures.

The sculptures can be touched, hit or brusched to make them produce sound.

The Balloonbass is a bass instrument made of two balloons. One balloon is used as the resonator, the other is used as the string. The sound of the resonater is picked up by a contact mic and amplified.

The Keyolin is the combination of a 2 1/2 octave piano-keyboard (played by the left hand), a two string violin and a bow (played by the right hand).

The keyboard controls the pitch, vibrato and glissando\'s, the bow controls the volume and colour. The strings can be plucked to get a pizzicato effect.

The Terminova is like a hybrid of the Theremin, Laser Harp and Dimension Beam. It\'s made of a number of lasers mounted on a robotic carriages, which can be dynamically moved along their track as the tuning of the piece changes.The laser beam are used as a guide to the positioning of the hands. Sensors in the carriages will also detect the hand above the laser changing the pitch. In addition, optical sensors looking along each laser beam can determine the continuous distance of the hand from the laser source, allowing other degrees of control when the hand intersects a laser.(based on http://www.media.mit.edu/resenv/LaserTheremin)

Wreck\'n\'Roll Motorcycle Basses is a collection of standup basses where the resonator is made of a motorcycle gasoline tank. The have nice names like Frankenbass and Venus de Moto.

The Springboard is an electroacoustic coil spring instrument. The Springboard is made of a number of vibrating objects like coil springs of various sizes, combs, tuned wood slats, small metal grill and large rubber bands.All these can be bowed, plucked, rubbed or struck with brushes, chopsticks, friction mallets, or bare fingers.

The Achterslide is a sort of slide guitar having 5 guitar strings and 3 bass strings. The sound is catched by two pickups at the bridge.

The Birds is a sound installations made of a number of \'Birds\'.

A Bird is made of a sheet of aluminum mounted on a pole which is driven up and down by a motor. This causes the aluminum sheet to flap and produce a sound.

The Spoonharp is a kind of harp made out of a Eucalyptus tree branch, tin can , strings and spoons.

The Hydrofridge-a-phone is family of Richard Waters\' Waterphone. The resonator contains water and by moving the water in the resonator the pitch in tone colour of the sound changes.

The Noisy Instrument makes it\'s sound in the way a seashell makes it\'s noise. The aim of the sound made by the Noisy Instrument is to be a wearable feel good instrument.

The Udderbot is made of a bottle (with cut out bottom) which act as a resonator and a rubber glove. The glove is filled with water.

You play the Udderbot by blowing over the rim of the bottle. To change the pitch you squeeze the glove to varying degrees.

The Laser Koto is a laser array that is played by moving the hands in the beams. Interupting a beam triggers a Koto or other processed sound sample on a computer. The laser beams act as virtual strings of a Koto.

The Toneladder is a comman household ladder transformed in a midi interface. Each step of the ladder creates another sound, so the player has to move on the ladder to play his music.

The Planck is a 7 stringed instrument played horizontally by tapping fingers between the frets.

The sound of the Planck is transported to an amplifier via an electromagnetic pickup. As the frets are high the strings can be bend when tapped, creating sounds like a pedal steel guitar, koto or sitar.

The Stealth is an electronic wind controller. It has two main parts: a mouthpiece and a keywork system.

Blowing into the mouthpiece produces an electronic signal that can be used to control the volume and/or also to change other characteristics of the tone. The keywork is used to control the pitch and can also be used to control other characteristics of the sound.

The Son of Stealth evolved from the Stealth and has more controllers and MIDI.

The Kelstone is an 18 string musical instrument. The strings are mounted on two fretboards,mirrors of eachother, placed on a stand.

The Kelstone is played with the hammering technique. Playing it is like a combination of playing a piano, guitar and bass.

The Graphite Sequencer is a turntable where the stylus is replace by two metal brushes and the records by paper discs. The two metal brushes are connected to a sound generating circuit, where the sound changes depending the resistence between the two brushes. On the paper discs drawings are made with graphite and these drawing determine the resistence between the two brushes.

The Damper is a dynamic resistance interface. It\'s made of two handles connected to a brake, allowing a braking force to be applied between the two handles. The user can only open or close the handles.

The GypsyMIDI is a MIDI interface that captures the motions of the body.

The GypsyMIDI is modeled on the human skeletal form using rotational sensors placed on the joints.

Anarchestra is not an istrument but a huge collection of instruments that are all made of metal.

Chitarra Sarda Preparata (Prepared Sardinian Guitar) is a Sardinian Guitar that has been modified with extra strings, footpedals, pickups etc...

Harddisko is an installation made of disposed old harddisks. The hard disk\'s cases are removed and a special pickup is mounted on the drive\'s head, connected to a sound mixer. As soon as the hard disks are plugged to the electricity the head starts to generates sounds, because of the start up procedure basic required movements. The conductor of this futuristic orchestra holds a switch (instead of the classic stick) with which he plugs or unplugs each disk, embodying the same On/Off logic of any computer process.

The Panharmonicon is a keyboard instrument that automates the playing of almost all the instruments used in an orchestra( flutes, clarinets, trumpets, violins, cellos, drums, cymbals, triangle etc).

The Bunker Touch Guitar is a double neck guitar that is played by tapping the strings. One of hte necks has the bass strings, the other the \'normal\' guitar strings.

The Drumitar is a MIDI interface build on the body of a former guitar. The guitar is equipped with piezo pads that are connected to a MIDI drum module.

The best known Drumitar is the Synthaxe Drumitar from Futureman.

The Musical Stones of Skiddaw is a lithophone made of a type of slate (Hornfels) found in Cumbria, England.

The Power Pole Bells are galvanised iron caps from the top of old electricity poles in Australia. The diameters range from 18cm to 32cm with a pitch range of nearly two octaves from aprox 130 Hz to 440 Hz.

The Power Pole Bells are used in the sound installation \'The Bell Garden\', where the bells can be activated by different means and their sound is amplified.

The Aglaopheme is an autonomous, self learning robotic slide guitar. There is no human that controls what and how is played, but everything is controlled by artificial neural networks.

The Trombone Multipavillons (Multi-bell Trombone) exists in two variations. There is the six-valve, seven-bell trombone and the seven-valve, thirteen-bell trombone.

The Violcano is a volcano shaped metal instrument with strings attached all around it. The musician sits in the instrument and plays both the strings and the metal resonator.

The Chandelier is a large-scale robotic musical instrument designed for the opera \'Death and the Powers\'. The Chandelier uses various electronically controlled actuators which makes the instrument sound unique.

The Chandelier was developed by Mike Fabio, Steve Pliam, Brian Demers, and Lucas Hernandez-Mena at the MIT Media Lab.

The Musical Bow is a monostring inspired by the Vietnames Dan Bau. The Musical Bow is played by plucking the string. The pitch is changed by bending the bow and thus changing the tension of the string. The sound is amplified by a large lampshade resonator.

The Uberorgan is a giant bagpipe like automated organ. The musical score of the instrument is printed on a 76 meter long plastic sheet. The instrument reacts also on moverment and the environment.

The Balloon Kit is a set of amplified balloons. The sound is generated by hitting, touching or rubbing the balloons with the bare hands or with other objects.

The Ravezooka is a musical weapon that shoots a wide range of powerful sounds based on the target\'s distance from the instrument.

\'Sculpture Sonores\' is a large collection of original instruments. The \'Sculpture Sonores\' can be big or very small but they all have in common that they combine sculpture and sound.

The Musical Chairs are a set of prepared chairs. They become trumpets, guitars, washboards, ...etc.

The S-Bass is a 5-string upright electric bass fitted with an array of pickups and numerous tactile sensors, such as sliders, potentiometers, and tilt detectors, that track the performer\'s physical movements to process, shape, and mix sounds in realtime. (from http://www.emfinstitute.emf.org)

The Extended Sitar is a normal Sitar with a sensor interface. The Extended Sitar is played through an interactive MAX/MSP performance patch which analyzes the pitch and quality of the notes and maps the sound into musical processes based in abstracted concepts of raga.

The Tritare is a triple neck guitar, but not like the other triple neck guitars. The strings of a Tritare are special. One string run along the fretted neck and is connected to two other strings that run along the unfretted second and third neck.

The Slåttberg is like a high-tech uptodate version of the Hurdy-Gurdy. It\'s made of an iPod, a crank (controlling the iPod wheel), a 60s-era loudspeaker cabinet, and a Moogerfooger FreqBox. The Slåttberg plays some decontructed Norwegian fiddle music.

The Long String Instrument consists of some 100 wires, 28 meters long, connected to a soundboard. The sound created is made by striking the strings with rosin-covered hands and this generates longitudinal/compression waves (plucking strings generates transverse waves).

The Plast-Orgue is a set of ordinary plastic water bottles with a long opening cut out of the side. Depending the opening the pitch can be higher or lower.

The Shruti Stick is a 12 string, 22 fret electric instrument with prepared strings. It tries to combine the melodic aspect of the santoor (the Asian hammer dulcimer), the orchestral possibilities of the prepared guitar and percussion.

The Monome is an open source, reconfigurable grid of backlit keypads which is used as an interface to a computer. There is an interaction between the keys and lights which is determined by the application running on the computer.

The Monome is used with live samples, as drum machine controller, as generative controller, with tonal maps, etc...

The S-1 Premium Stage Controller is a limited edition, hand-made DJ control instrument. The production is limited to 20 pieces. The S-1 is like a combination of a guitar and a turntable, which gives the DJ new possibilities in performances.

The Bubble Organ makes it\'s sound by letting air bubble through water. The length of the pipes define the pitch of the sound.

The Singing Arc is a carbon arc lamp where the voltage is changed, which results in the lamp \'singing\' at a different pitch. The Singing Arc is closely related to the Singing Tesla Coil.

The Pikasso Guitar is a 42 string, multiple neck guitar custom build for Pat Metheny.

Speaker Synth is a five-speaker array with no external audio input. The only components in the system are the instrument\'s speakers, piezoelectric microphones, amplifying circuits, and the hands of the performer. Speaker Synth is played by positioning individual piezo microphones with their corresponding speakers and manipulating their associated on/off and volume controls to induce a variation of feedback effects. (from http://www.seseyann.com/)

The Triolin is made of a triangular resonator perforated with bras rods. The rods are put in a circle and the triolin is held in the hand via a handle at the bottom.

I-Beam Music is an orchestrated sculpture, an installation, that deals equally inventive with water, high voltage, fire and chemicals as well as with machines, computers and sensors. \"I-Beam Music\" is the tittle of a computer driven machine-performance developed by hamburgian sculptor Nicolas Anatol Baginsky in collaboration with the californian performance-artist Barry Schwartz.

(from : http://www.baginsky.de)

The Junk Yard Organ is made of discarded bottles, an old vacuum-cleaner motor, sections of inner tubing, and other objects from a junk yard. Individual notes are sounded by air from the cleaner motor blowing across small holes in the caps of bottles tuned by partly filling them with water.

The Ashbory bass is an 18-inch scale fretless electric bass with silicon rubber strings. The Ashbory produces a low, resonant bass tone similar to the tone of a pizzicato (plucked) double bass.

The Boghorn is a windinstrument made from a brand new Armitage Shanks toilet bowl as part of the Confluence project. The sound is generated with a trumpet and a trombone mouthpiece and can be played by two musician together.

The range with both pipes is over three and a half octaves. The sound resembles across between a euphonium and a french horn. It has six holed chanters that give the notes between the natural harmonics, plus a neat foot operated lid lifting device that acts as a mute.

Machines à marcher (\'Machines to walk with\') is a collection of simple constructions that make a sound when you start walking with them.

The Machines Sonores (Sound Machines) are a collection of automatons that produce sound. The machines are often displayed together is a room and the public can activate them.

Block Jam is a musical interface controlled by the arrangement of 25 tangible blocks. By arranging the blocks musical phrases and sequences are created, allowing multiple users to play and collaborate. The system takes advantage of both graphical and tangible user interfaces. Each block has a visual display and a combination of a gestural input and a click-able input. Each Block metaphorically contains a sound group that can be chosen via the gestural input, the click-able input changes a block functionally. Thus, musically complex and engaging configurations can be rapidly assembled. The tangible nature of the blocks and the intuitive interface promotes face-to-face collaboration, and the presence of the GUI allows for remote collaboration across a network.

By creating both a tangible and a visual language, Block Jam is able to create endless meaningful musical structures in a novel and intuitive way that predisposes itself to collaboration and exploration, face to face or via a network, pushing interactive music towards the casual user.

(from : http://www.sonycsl.co.jp/)

The Mutantrumpet is a hybrid electro-acoustic instrument with three bells, two sets of valves, and a trombone slide. The Mutantrumpet includes 8 continuous MIDI controllers and 8 momentary MIDI controllers in addition to the acoustic note and volume control from the instrument’s natural sound. The instrument connects directly to the computer via USB

The Amplified Palette is a painter\'s palette with brass rods attached to it. The brass rods can be bowed or hit and the sound is amplified.

Scrapple is an audiovisual installation in which everyday objects placed on a table are interpreted as sound-producing marks in an active score. The Scrapple system scans a table surface as if it were a kind of music notation, producing music in real-time from any objects lying there. The installation makes use of a variety of playful forms; in particular, long flexible curves allow for the creation of variable melodies, while an assemblage of cloth shapes, small objects and wind-up toys yields ever-changing rhythms. Video projections on the Scrapple table transform the surface into a simple augmented reality, in which the objects placed by users are elaborated through luminous and explanatory graphics. The 3-meter long table produces a 4-second audio loop, allowing participants to experiment freely with tangible, interactive audiovisual composition. In the Scrapple installation, the table is the score.

(from : http://www.flong.com/)

The Midi Guitron is a MIDI controller in the form of a double neck guitar. The keys on the necks have the same note layout of a guitar.

The Scapha is 10m long, 0.8m high und 0.4m broad and has 14 strings, each 8.2 metres in length. These are connected at both ends to an electric pickup system. The resulting stereophonic sound is made audible without any further electronic modification.

(from : http://www.scapha.de)

The Tri-borg Slide Sax (aka Triangular-Bore Slide Saxophone) is a windinstrument based on a Saxophone. The bore is not circular as it is in a normal Saxophone but triangular. The tone is changed by moving a slide up or down.

The Skatar is a contraption of a skateboard and a guitar. It\'s best known from the punk band \'Punk as a Doornail\', and exists in an accoustic form also. Keith Irish\'s version of the skateboard guitar differs from others, in that it is a slide guitar with both bass and guitar outputs.

The Sonic Scanner turns drawings, pictures, etc. into sound. It uses an old handheld scanner with the electronics hacked to turn the visual scan-line into an audio waveform, so you can hear whatever you decide to scan translated into sound. The pressure sensors control various parameters (volume, pitch, etc).

There are four modes you can use to translate pictures into sound. The first mode, \"Waveform\" turns the optical scanline directly into sound by literally going through the brightness levels at an audio rate. The second mode, \"Spectrum\" translates the optical spectrum into an audio spectrum. It does this by mapping the scanline onto the frequency domain using a FFT (Fast Fourier Transform). The third mode, \"Rhythm\" is similar to the first in that it directly maps the scanline to audio, but at a much slower rate in order to pull out the rhythmic content of the scanned material. The last mode, \"Sampler\" lets you record a sound and then manipulate its playback with the Sonic Scanner.

(from : http://www.create.ucsb.edu/~dano/)

Plink Jet is a robotic musical instrument made from scavenged ink jet printers. The mechanical parts of four printers are diverted from their original function, re-contextualizing the relatively high-tech mechanisms of this typically banal appliance into a ludic musical performance. Motorized, sliding ink cartridges and plucking mechanisms play four guitar strings by manipulating both pitch and strumming patterns like human hands fingering, fretting, and strumming a guitar. Plink Jet is designed to play itself, be played, or both. The result is an optionally collaborative performance between both the user and Plink Jet, with the user choosing varying levels of manual control over the different cartridges (fretting) and string plucking speeds (strumming).

(from: http://www.seseyann.com)

DrumPants are a set of pants that enable the wearer to produce drum sounds by hitting various parts of the pants with his hands. The wearer thusly becomes a cyborg musician, his body assuming the roles of both player and instrument, allowing for spontaneous electric hambone solos or even collaborations with other musicians in a band setting.

(from: http://www.odbol.com/)

Odbol is an artist that specializes in designing interfaces that bring the body closer to the machine, thus enhancing the user's ability to manipulate digital information efficiently and unobtrusively- some people refer to these users as cyborgs, but the phenomenon is so rampant in today's modern world that the word cyborg really loses all meaning.

He received his undergrad degree in Computer Science and his Master's in Digital Art and New Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is currently residing in San Francisco, CA, playing drums for The Basement Revelations and working on custom VJ software using the Nintendo Wii remote.

The Pianorad is a full polyphonic synth where each key has it\'s own LC oscillator. The oscillators generate a perfect sine wave. Each of the 25 oscillators had its own speaker, mounted in a large loudspeaker horn on top of the keyboard.

The Kosmophone is a gamma-ray spectrometer operating in the range of about 3 to 7 million electron-volts (MeV) controlling a MIDI music synthesizer.

This octave of the electromagnetic spectrum, about a million times higher frequency than the octave our eyes respond to, contains very little energy that originates in our solar system. Almost all of the energy in this band is a result of unbelievably energetic radiation coming from the far reaches of the universe, \'Cosmic Rays\'. Fortunately, they tend not to make it all the way through the approximately 100 miles of air over our heads. As they smash their way through the atmosphere the collisions produce energetic emissions and it is these secondary emissions the Kosmophone responds to. The energy level of each detected event is measured and that information is sent to the MIDI control port of a music synthesizer. The \'cosmic data\' is not altered or supplemented in any way and would be presumed to be completely random.

(from : http://www.kosmophone.com/)

needs no explanation ;-)

The Tarhu is a new form of spike fiddle, created by instrument maker and musician Peter Biffin. The tarhu design uses a unique acoustic system, where the string’s vibrations are transferred to a featherweight wooden cone suspended within the wooden body. This design creates extremely sensitive instruments with an unprecedented range of tone colour variations.The efficiency of the cone system has also given these instruments a very large dynamic range.

von Kempelen\'s Speaking Machines were an attempt to recreate the human voice with a machine.

The machine consisted of a bellows that simulated the lungs and was to be operated with the right forearm (uppermost drawing). A counterweight provided for inhalation. The middle and lower drawings show the \'wind box\' that was provided with some levers to be actuated with the fingers of the right hand, the \'mouth\', made of rubber, and the \'nose\' of the machine. The two nostrils had to be covered with two fingers unless a nasal was to be produced. The whole speech production mechanism was enclosed in a box with holes for the hands and additional holes in its cover.

John Gibbon calls his art : microtimbal explorations of sound patterns.

The Petecube project consists of a series of musical interfaces designed to explore multi-modal feedback i.e. feedback that supports communication with the user through different modalities such as voice, gesture and typing. The Petecube is not a standalone instrument as it is limited in what it can do, but should always be used with other Petecubes.

1-Bit Music probes the foundations of digital sound. An electronic circuit is assembled inside a CD case with a headphone jack on the side. The device plays back 40 minutes of low-fi 1-bit electronic music, the lowest possible digital representation of audio.

(from: http://www.tristanperich.com/)

The Overtone Violin is a radically augmented musical instrument that preserves the traditions of violin technique while adding a whole new set of possibilities for the musician.

The rationale behind the development of the instrument was to keep the expressive elements of the expert violinist, while incorporating the added benefits of gestural controllers via embedded sensors. Any instrument can be augmented to different degrees through the addition of extra sensors; such hybrid instruments offer musicians the familiarity and expressivity of their chosen instrument along with the extended control afforded by the sensors. There are two ways, however, in which the Overtone Violin differs from most hybrid instruments. First, the extra sensors are used to capture a completely separate (yet complementary) set of gestures, rather than just acquiring traditional skills of the performer. Second, it is designed and built from scratch to be an entirely new, specialized instrument that continues the evolution of the violin, rather than retrofitting an existing instrument. The philosophy of this approach is to use gesture sensors to add new functionality to the instrument, in addition to capturing traditional playing techniques with as much nuance as possible - using optical pickups to accurately sense the vibrations of the strings, which virtuosos have spent years perfecting. In fact, the Overtone Violin can be viewed as two components tightly integrated into one: it is both a traditional (electronic) violin, and a gestural computer music controller.

(from : http://www.create.ucsb.edu/~dano)

The Rondolin is a 4 octaves circular harp. Unlike other circular harps the strings of the Rondolin are arranged around a vertical axis that can be spun with a sort of bicycle mechanism.

Gas Tank Orchestra features a wide range of instruments including strings, reeds, horns, and percussion, all constructed with discarded automobile gas tanks from the streets of New Orleans. GTO is an orchestra improvising with improvised instruments.

(from: http://home.earthlink.net/~gjwildes/)

Yokomono (the Staalplaat Mono Erosive Surround Sound Installation) consists of 10 small car-shaped record players, a corresponding set of FM radios and two mixing desks. The cars, known as \"vinyl killers,\" have been customised with wireless FM transmitters. As they spin around the vinyl, they transmit their signal to the FM radios tuned to a special Yokomono frequency. This transmission is then mixed, edited and manipulated in real-time by members of the Staalplaat Soundsystem.

(from : http://www.staalplaat.org/)

Harpes à Nuages is an installation that translates the form of the overflying clouds into music. The translation is done in real time.

The Ez-Eg is a MIDI only guitar. It can be used to play only the chords, only strum the cords or do both. The instrument is targeted at people that want to learn to play the guitar.

kII (Kempelen 2.0) is a voice-topological interface for gestural navigation in linguistic space. The hand serves as the speech organ during the articulation process.

The device is operated by means of the sensory determination of the opened state of both hands, their position in space, their relative height, and other parameters which are assigned to the jaw and tongue position in the mouth as well as to pitch and rhythm.

Phoneme production is based on phonetic laws. A spoken language is produced through the implementation of musical scales and speech rhythms whose context of meaning is not characterized by the conveyance of information but by the abstraction of the voice in tonal linguistic space.

Articulatory-topological phonetics deals with the speech process — parts of the body serve as speech organs during the articulation process. It is therefore historically linked to Kempelen’s motif of speech generation for the voiceless: voice generation for the speechless.

(from : http://www.audiocommander.de/)

Soundnet is a live performance musical instrument of monumental proportions . It is a giant web 11meters x 11 meters, created with 16mm thick shipping rope. At the end of the ropes are eleven sensors that detect stretching and movement. The instrument is played by climbing on it.

(from : http://www.sensorband.com)

The Atari Punk Console (original name \'Stepped Tone Generator\') is a simple noisemaker circuit build around the 556-IC.

The Atari Punk console is an astable oscillator (square wave) driving a monostable oscillator which creates a single (square) pulse. There are two controls. One for the frequency of the oscillator and one to control the length of the pulse.

(partly from Wikipedia)

The WaveSaw is an instrument created for Music 250 (Physical Interaction Design for Music.) It uses flex sensors to measure the curvature at a number of points on a flexible metal \"blade.\" These measurements are used to recreate the shape of the blade in the computer, and this shape can be used as a wavetable for scanned synthesis or as a spectral shape to be applied to another signal.

(from: http://ccrma.stanford.edu/~lukedahl/)

The Vegephone is a percussion instrument whose tones are produced by striking amplified vegetables. Each vegetable has it\'s own contact pickup and amplification syst.

(from: http://infohost.nmt.edu/~jstarret/)

The StarrBoard is a chromatic matrix of strings and frets, whose string spacing is such that thirteen strings span the same distance as an octave on a standard keyboard.By tuning the strings to a particular non 12tet scheme the StarrBoard can play justly in 12 equally spaced key centers, as modulation is easily accomplished by playing within higher or lower fret areas.

(from: http://infohost.nmt.edu/%7Ejstarret/)

The Accordiatron is a new MIDI controller for real-time performance based on the paradigm of a conventional squeeze box or concertina. It translates the gestures of a performer to the standard communication protocol of MIDI, allowing for flexible mappings of performance data to sonic parameters. When used in conjunction with a real-time signal processing environment, the Accordiatron becomes an expressive, versatile musical instrument. A combination of sensory outputs providing both discrete and continuous data gives the subtle expressiveness and control necessary for interactive music.

(from: http://ccrma.stanford.edu/~gurevich)

The Flathand wants to be a \'universal controller\' interface that would be useful as a means of sending data into MAX/MSP, Processing or any kind of software capable of receiving variable controllor information. The Flathand could also be considered as an alternative to the ubiquitous trackpad, offering a more ergonomic means of controlling cursor position. The uniquely useful aspect to the design is the fact that the potentiometers can be used to control infinite as well as relative data. In other words, the user can increment their position relative to the last position their finger was placed, or they can increase their position infinitely. The range can be scaled to the appropriate application so that the data input is as natural and easy to use as possible.

(from: http://itp.nyu.edu/~zl316/PCOMP/)

LucyTuned instruments (guitars and software) are musical instrument that use a musical microtuning system derived from Pi and the writings of John \"Longitude\" Harrison. This system enables users to modulate and transpose using any scales or keys that they may choose.

The Blackbird is a violin made of stone (Diabase), a \"leftover\" Gravestone of Lars his Grandfather. The violin was constructed to the designs of Stradivarius.

The belly of the violin is only 2.5 mm thick at its thinnest point. The ribs were made in one piece by first sawing out a 30 mm thick plate shaped to form the external contour, and then, with infinite care, removing the inside using water-drill and hand-tools so as to create a thin rib, no more than a couple of millimetres thick at its thinnest point.

(partly from: http://www.widenfalk.com)

The Hosaphone is a trumpet like instrument contructed out of plastic garden and kitchen equipment.

The Drumbar is a 60-pad midi controller used to play/trigger drumsounds.

FlexiGesture is an embodied multi-degree-of-freedom gestural input device. It was built to support six-degree-of-freedom inertial sensing, five isometric buttons, two digital buttons, two-axis bend sensing, isometric rotation sensing, and isotonic electric field sensing of position. Software handles the incoming serial data, and implements a trainable interface by which a user can explore the sounds possible with the device, associate a custom inertial gesture with a sound for later playback, make custom input degree-of-freedom (DOF) to effect modulation mappings, and play with the resulting configuration.

(from: http://www.media.mit.edu/resenv/amc/)

The lyricon is a breath controlled analogue synthesizer. Some models have lip pressure controls and all have a Saxophone like fingering system.

The midiGun is a handheld, gun shaped midi controller. The user of the midiGun can trigger and control sounds and effects on a PC without watching a monitor or using a mouse and keyboard. The controllers and sensors can be individually customized to fit the connected software or to serve individual user preferences. The midiGun offers 16 different controllers which can be incorporated in 16 switchable sets. This allows for a total of 256 independent sound and effects controls at the reach of the users fingertips. Additional lighting effects and a visible distance measuring laser beam guarantee the attention of the audience.

(partly from: http://www.midigun.com/)

The Photo-Electric Marimba is an electonic instrument where lightbeam are captured with photo-electric cells, which in turn command some electronic cirtuit that produces a tone that is played in marimba tubes. Each note has an oscillating circuit which produces a tone when light is directed on that circuits photo-cell.

The Llechiphone is a sort of crossing between an African marimba and a western xylophone but the sound bars are made of slate instead of wood, and the resonators are tubes made from wood, plastic or aluminium rather than gourds. (partly from : http://www.willmenter.com)

The Pepe is a MIDI controller, much like the EWI. The Pepe has a mouthpiece to control parameters with the breath, buttons to control the note and 6 buttons to control the sound played. There is only one version of the Pepe and the only example was owned by Joseph Zawinul

The Schizotron / Bass Skitz is the combination of an electric bass guitar and a keyboard. Both can be played at the same time. By turning a switch the bass guitar pickups are desactivated and the bass guitar neck becomes a midi controller.

Tsukuba is a series of musical instrument where the sound is created by the movement of motors and electromagnets.

The series contains:

• On-Geng : drum machine
• (R)Octbass : bass
• Guitar-La : electric guitar
• Taratter : tap shoes
• Ultra Folk : remote controlled folk guitar
• Takadamaru : saxophone shapes claxons
• Saw-two-bow : electrical mucical saw

SO.GR.O.U.P. is a collection of wonderfull instruments that listen to names like \'acroasis\', \'airy\', \'axial\', \'body phone\', \'sexual bubbles\', \'hand\', \'hart rythmics\', \'pithagoras\', \'plevriosis ..a\', \'DROP\', \'GONGY & FINGER-TAM\', \'ISSO\', \'KOUNIA & BOCK\', \'LYRES\', \'MISCELLANEOUS 2\', \'PLEVRIOSIS b , SISTRONIC\', \'POISON & ANTIDOTE\', \'RECKON\', \'RESONS & MIC-MASKS\' and \'breathm\'.

The Valiha is a bamboo tube zither from Madagascar. It is played by plucking the strings, which may be made of metal or (originally) the bamboo skin which is pried up in long strands and propped up by small bridges.

(from Wikipedia)

Dewanatron: a family of instruments which hazard unpredictable behaviors and self playing tendencies. They make all previous and future instruments obsolete. Ideal for home, church, school, or the electronic music laboratory.

The Dewanatrons are devided in subcategories being : Melody Gins, Swarmatrons, Folk Synthesizers, Courtesy Modules, Dual Primate Console and Wall Gins.

(partly from : http://www.dewanatron.com/)

The Hapi (Hand Activated Percussion Instrument) is a percussion instrument that looks a lot like a Tongue drum, but is made out of steel (which gives it a complete other sound). The sound of the Hapi is similar as the sound of Dennis Havlena\'s Propane Tank Hang Drum (Hank).

The Bandit is a music machine that is played by the feet of the musician. The left foot selects the chords and the right one decides when and which strings are strung.

Stumpf Fiddle (also Polka Cello, Pogo Cello, Pogocelle, Poco Cello, Hum Strum, boom-ba, boom bass, Teufel Stick, Devil\'s stick, ...) is a folk musical instrument derived from the rhythm stick. It is made of a stick with a set of attributes and is played by hitting those attributes with a drumstick.

Reel to Wheel is an interactive installation that uses old, abandoned bicycles and salvaged bicycle parts to control reel-to-reel tape machines and play 1/4\" audio tape.

The work explores the intersection between found objects and found sound. It is meant to be a playground environment where people can interact with common objects in new combinations that create interesting sounds and novel associations.

(from: http://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jcarlile/bicycleMusic/)

The Tip Tap is a small metal tapper housed in this hammer-like object taps out a rhythm on any object or surface that you hold it near to. The rhythm is set either by the user or can be defined by the computer. Alternatively, a beat can be taken from your favourite record, allowing you to play along while keeping perfectly in time. The TipTap can also synchronise with other users to make a social tapping experience.

(from : http://www.yurisuzuki.com)

The Zipper Orchestra is an interactive video installation that combines a combination of the Zipper Canvas as a physical controller and the Zipper Collage Video as a musical display. Users can play music by zipping and unzipping the physical zippers. The screen is a fashion collage, filled with nine video clips of different people zipping and unzipping their clothes. By moving nine sub zippers and one main zipper attached to a canvas, users can control the individual zipper motions on the screen as a conductor. The main long zipper will control nine motions all together. Playing Zipper Orchestra enables users to create acoustic and visual harmony with others, and experience openly sensual feelings.

(from : http://jooyounpaek.com/)

Velo d\'Appart is a sound installation where an exercise bicycle is used to generate an airflow tha can be controlled by a set of switches on the bicycle or somewhere in de room where it is placed.

The Loom is a USB interface (to be used with SuperCollider) which has 13 sensors (ten-bit), of which five are to monitor bending/pulling/plucking of the strings, five for intricate movements of the fingers on the palm-rest, and three to react to movement of the left arm as it wraps around the frame to play the strings.

Atomic Sonic (will be changed to \'Kaiser Electric Instrument Company\' soon) is a collection af weird beautifull sound generating devices. Please explore Tim Kaiser\'s website as there is just too much to say about this stuff.

The Uncello (also remade as Mol-cello) is like a remake/reinvention of the cello. The Uncello has a glass globe as a resonator, the rest is made out of curved wood. Just like with a cello the Uncell is played with a bow.

The Toeterix is a 2.5 octave chromatic instrument made of old car horns and bells. It\'s used by it\'s inventor to play both classical music and more popular tunes.

Musiscope is a set of installations where stethoscopes are used to create special sounds. Tabloscopes, Tablassons, Table d\'Hotes are all Musiscopes. (see http://www.evolplay.org for more details)

Visual Accoustics is a Java Applet, which allows you to play several instruments (including Piano, Strings, Flute, Bass, Harp, etc.) by moving your mouse on the canvas. You control delay, volume and pitch, and the program does the harmony.

(partly from : http://weirdinstruments.blogspot.com)

Kosmolyre is related both to the electric slide guitar (played with a slide and plectrum) and the harp (because of the many strings on each side). The Kosmolyre is a stringed microtonal instrument with four side which are all tuned differently. The instrument can be turned easily during performance by means of the wheels at either end of the playing board, to expose the different sides to the player.

(partly from: http://www.afn.org/~sejic/DGinstr.html)

Anaphorian Instruments are a collection of idiophone, reed and string instruments from the \'visionary geographical\' country of Anaphoria. Their tuning is based on the work of Erv Wilson who the Anaphorian people discovered as paralleling their own.

Microtonal Guitars are guitars where the frets are place in such a way that the notes in between the normal notes of a guitar can be played. This is done by refretting the guitar or by simply removing the frets.

I guess the name explains it all ;-)

The Slide-o-phon is a ribbon controlled mini synth that is based on the 555-chip.

The VW Beetle Harp is made out of the chassis of a VW Beetle car filled with pianostrings which are played like a \'normal\' harp wit the difference that the \' body\' ( metal piece ) is also used as percussive instrument. Beside that this special harp can be extended with other accessoires that are also used as musical instruments which enrich the visual aspect.

It has a very wide range of sounds that varies from the sound of an Indian sitar to the street sounds of a modern city during rushing our.

(from : http://www.visualsoundart.com )

Playing the Building is a sound installation where a building is transformed into a clanging, vibrating sound sculpture. Several devices (selenoids, vibrators, ...) are attached to the structures in the building. All those devices are controlled by a organlike keyboard. The devices cause the building elements to vibrate, resonate and oscillate turning the building into a huge musical instrument.

The Windless Pipe Organ is a pipe organ where the sound is made by controlled feedback. Each pipe has a speaker and microphone, where the sound of the speaker is picked by the microphone, fed through an amplifier and given back to the speaker.

The Whalefish is a sort of one-man-band. It can be played sitting , standing or walking, because it is totally connected to the body. Around the neck there’s a thong to which two piano strings attach to the soundboard. From the soundboard there are two wooden legs connected with a foot piece. The movements of the instruments are thus directly connected to the neck, foot and lap.

Apart from playing the strings, there are a number of objects to be played on the sound board (amplified with a contact microphone). There are telephone bells, piano strings, almond grinder, toy music box, fire alarm bell, door bell, wooden rods, a spring, protruding pieces of piano wire, butter ball maker, hacksaw blades and an egg slicer.

On the rear side of the Whalefish there are an African mbira, egg slicer and parts of a coffee grinder. The resonator plate comes from an old piano.

To go with it, a great number of tools are used like a cigarette lighter, coffee stirrers, nail files, playing cards, piano tuning pins, screws, miniature saw, table duster, rubber bands, steel brush, plastic forks, knives and spoons, cake cutters, shell, tooth brush, combs, onion holder, cone, holder for mock-flowers, back scratcher, piano hammers, hoof scraper, ice strainer, barbecue sticks, food sticks, straw, saw blades, necklace, teat, toy guitar, toy horse, onion saw, feathers, nut grater, screwdriver and bows.

(partly from: http://www.bergmark.org/)

AMK is a modular sound toy designed for preschool children. In combination with a computer, single sounds and sound sets can be transfered to sound blocks, called \'Klangbausteine\' (Sound Building Blocks).

Childrend can play independently with each module, or combine the sounds by plugging blocks together.

(partly from: http://www.pknts.com/)

The AirPiano is an innovative musical interface which allows playing and controlling software instruments simply by moving hands in the air.

Above the AirPiano is a virtual matrix of keys and faders, each assigned with MIDI messages and ready to be triggered. The length of a triggered note is equivalent to the time a hand is placed on the corresponding virtual key. This is also confirmed by LED feedback.

The AirPiano Software allows easy setup, loading/saving presets and transposing notes.

(from : http://www.airpiano.de)

The Screechophone is loosely based on the playing-card-in-the-bicycle-spokes principle. The bicycle spokes were scaled down to a small white plastic gear that is driven by a rotating disc. Depending on where the plastic gear is place on the disc the speed changes and thus the pitch changes.

The Drum Table is a modular wooden table. You can design your own personal drum table with durable, interchangeable and rearrangeable percussion inserts.

The Pétomane (see also \"Flatulist\", \"Farteur\", \"Fartiste.\") is not a real instrument but a persons that can by farting make music.

The Beast in the Basement is a homemade special-effects pipe organ. Some of the sounds are done pneumatically and other are just made by hitting or stringing an attached instrument.

Octopulse shows that noise is music. It is the principal musician of \'The Alien Noise Orchestra\', being the first of 4 different looking toy instrument characters that all produce different sounds. With this cuddly \'alien bagpipe\' you can control analogue sound synthesis through unconventional means, transferring movements into information for an analogue synthesizer to convert into cacophonous noises. This unconventional soundscape alters perceptions of what music could be and allows the electronic sounds of a synthesizer to be accessed by anyone.

Octopulse is in practical terms a knitted synthesizer that turns unapproachable technology into an easily approachable, tactile and emotional object. Experiencing the joy of instant creative expression and not being put off or defeated by over-complicated technology is why Octopulse is a great therapeutic tool for those with a wide variety of special needs, as well as being the perfect creative playmate for children and an innovative new instrument for creative music and studio soundscape-recording.

(from : http://www.shootthestylist.net)

The SP-01 is a mono string instrument where the string is hit by a motorized plectrum. The pitch is changed by changing the tension of the string. Teh sound is amplified via a guitar pickup element.

The Bambuso Sonoro is an agglomeration of (bamboo) pipes, tubes and valves roughly the size of a kitchen block. Standing behind its tables of switches and pedals, the artist elicits a cacophony of whistles, grunts and flutters from his machine. Driving air through all the components is a windblower, similar to those used in church organs.

(partly from : http://www.hansvankoolwijk.nl)

The Bubblegum Sequencer is a physical step sequencer that lets you create drumloops by arranging colored balls on a tangible surface. It generates MIDI events and can be used as an input device to control audio hardware and software.

(from : http://backin.de )

The Technopipes are the all electronic variant of the bagpipe. They come in different settings matching the classic bagpipe variants.

Possibly the most undignified musical instrument ever, hipDisk exploits changing relationships between torso and hip to actuate sound.

Simple horizontal disk-shaped extensions of the body exaggerate, so make highly visible, the interdependent relationship of the hip and torso. Soft switches, strategically placed around the perimeter of each disk, allow the wearer to play a chromatic scale, and so play simple melodies, restricted only by flexibility and speed of swing.

hipDisk is designed to inspire people to swing their hips and explore and extend the full range of movement available to them through a simultaneous, interdependent exploration of sound. In creating hipDisk, the interest was to move beyond limb- and digit-triggered switches and explore full-body movement for actuation. The resulting body-instrument interconnects choreography and composition in a fundamental way, and hopefully opens up new areas of exploration.

(from : http://www.daniellewilde.com)

The Rijnhoorn is a 15 meter long horn that is played both as a wind instrument and as a percussion instrument.

The ANS is a early synthesizer (named after the composer Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin). The ANS is a photo-electronic musical instrument which uses cinematography ( a technique which makes it possible to photograph a sound wave) to store sounds. The drawn sound is then read and synthesized back to sound.

The Violimba (violin/kalimba) is a bowed instrument that is made of steel straps mounted on a resonator, much like the steel straps of a kalimba. The resonator gives it\'s sound to a pickup and that sound is amplified.

Full name is \'The Incredible Stupephone - Featuring the amazing THER-E-THING\'.

In Stupephone mode, it\'s played by playing the \'keyboard\' with the metal fingerpick at the top right. The pitch is determined by the resistance, so it has to be retuned for each person playing it.

In Therething mode, you ground yourself on the red stud and play the metal plate like a theremin. The harder you press, the lower the pitch.... drumming your fingers on it sounds like someone hit R2-D2 with a tazer. Has about a 5-octave range if you can control it....

(from : http://www.flickr.com/photos/metropolismusic/2735722034/)

The Quirl is a collection of cappucino maker devices that turn around in different cups. The cappucino maker devices are midi controlled and the generated sound is amplified via contact microphones attached to the cups.

The Tromba Marina (En. marine trumpet, Fr. trompette marine; Ger. Marientrompete, Trompetengeige, Nonnengeige or Trumscheit, Pol. tubmaryna) is a triangular bowed string instrument used in medieval and Renaissance Europe that was highly popular in the 15th century in England and survived into the 18th century. The tromba marina consists of a body and neck in the shape of a truncated cone resting on a triangular base. It is usually four to seven feet long, and is a monochord (although some versions have sympathetically-vibrating strings). It is played without stopping the string, but playing natural harmonics by lightly touching the string with the thumb at nodal points. The Tromba Marina has a very special bridge that vibrates against the soundboard and gives it it\'s typical \'trumpet\' sound.

(partly from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tromba_marina)

The name of the H\'arpeggione is a combination of the names of two unusual and relatively obscure instruments, the Hardanger Fiddle (a Norwegian folk fiddle with sympathetic strings) and the Arpeggione (a guitar-shaped, fretted, bowed, \'cello-like instrument invented by Viennese luthier Johann Georg Staufer in 1823)

(from : http://www.beyondthetrees.com/hartext.html)

The Joy-stick Cello is a \'Cello-like\' interface that measures: left-hand finger position with a (1) Force Sensitive Resistor; neck position in two dimensions with a (2) Joy-stick; bow speed with a (3) multi-spin Potentiometer; Bow pressure with a (4) potentiometer; and inward pressure of the knees with (5) two pressure sensitive resistors. (see second image for reference)

(from : http://homepage.mac.com/lvickery)

The The Singing, Ringing Tree is a sound sculpture made of tubes. The ever present wind at it\'s location make the tubes resonate.

The Choralcello was was a hybrid electronic and electro-acoustic instrument and was marketed as a hi-end home instrument.

The Choralcello was a direct contemporary of the Telharmonium using a similar electromagnetic tone wheel sound generation to the Telharmonium used in the \'organ\' section of the instrument as well as a set of electromagnetically operated piano strings. The Choralcello consisted of two keyboards, the upper (piano) keyboard having 64 keys and the lower 88 (piano and \'organ\'), controlling (in later models) 88 tone wheels and a set of piano strings that were vibrated by electromagnets and a set of hammers that could play the strings in a normal piano fashion. The keyboards also had a set of organ style stops to control the timbre and fundamentals of the tone that could then be passed through cardboard, hardwood, softwood, glass, steel or \"bass-buggy\" spring resonators to give the sound a particular tone.

The Choralcello also incorporated a pianola style paper roll mechanism for playing \'pre-recorded\' music and a 32 note pedal board system. The entire machine could occupy two basements of a house, the keyboards and \'loudspeakers\' being the only visible part of the instrument.

(partly form : http://120years.net/)

Telematic Drum Circle is an interdisciplinary art project which combines Tele-Robotics, Computer Science, Pneumatics and Music. The project explores the rupture of deeper communication in the technology meditated world, and addresses the issue of global harmony by sharing participants’ rhythmical spirit produced through the telematic live drum ensemble. It consists of two main components: a set of sixteen robotic drums arranged in an installation space and an interactive website networked with these drums. Each drum is representative of a geo-cultural region. Regardless of age, sex, religion, race, and culture, we all have a universal rhythm which is a heart beat. The drum is an instrument of rhythm, and I believe it can stand in for a person’s heart. The heart to heart communication expressed on drums cuts through all the differences, and blurs the boundaries. By tapping the computer keyboard while at the website, participants around the world can remotely play the robotic instruments together, while watching a live streaming video of their ensemble broadcast through the website.

(from : http://www.telematicdrumcircle.net/)

Materials: Stainless Steel, Steel, Electrical Ceramic Insulator, Various Bearings & Hardware, Various Hardwoods, Wheelchair Wheels, Brass Wire, #13 Piano Wire & Contact Microphones (more info later)

The DOT Matrix Synth is an interactive installation piece.

The user presses buttons on an attached control interface to play different notes. As the printer is played, it\'s also printing a set of images that are programmed into the printer\'s EPROM with the software.

The printer creates sound from the print head firing pins against the paper and the vibration of the stepper motor driving the print head back and forth. To generate different notes, the software adjusts the frequency of the printing process. Higher pitches tend to come from the firing of the pins against the paper, and lower pitches come from the rattle of driving the stepper motor.

The external eight-button interface plugs into the printer\'s font cartridge port. Each button has an assigned pitch, and pressing multiple buttons simultaneously activates the arpeggiator that quickly cycles through the notes you are holding down. The software also has the ability to run without the button interface, using the three buttons on the printer\'s front panel instead.

There is interaction between the images and music. The image dithering patterns fluctuate depending on what notes are played, and the music\'s volume and rhythmic patterns change depending on the pattern in the current horizontal section of the image. The printer can store about three pages of black and white images which print in order and then repeat.

(from : http://qotile.net/dotmatrix.html)

The Electrochemical Synthesiser makes it\'s sound by letting salt water flow over a copper and aluminum parts. This creates a patern of currents that is fed to a amplifier.

The Excalibur is a homemade MIDI controller built around the 8032 microcontroller. The Excalibur is made out of old electronic waste parts. It has 7 touch controls, a joystick, 3 strings and sensors to feel the position of the controller. Each of the controls can be programmed to be translated in any MIDI signal desired.

The Parker Steam Synthesizer is a synth completely powered by a steam engine. The engine rotation makes a dynamo turn and the output of this dynamo is passed via an amp to the speakers.

Absolut Quartet is a music making machine like no other. The audience becomes part of the performance, while watching something that appears impossible. At this moment no interaction is possible but from January 2009 on this will work again.

The main instrument is a ballistic marimba, which launches rubber balls roughly 2m into the air, precisely aimed to bounce off of 42 chromatic wooden keys. The second instrument is an array of 35 custom-tuned wine glasses, played by robotic fingers. Finally, an array of 9 ethnic percussion instruments rounds out the ensemble.

(from : http://bea.st/sight/absolutQuartet/)

The Saraga-Generator was developed by Wolja Saraga at the Heinrich-Hertz Institut Für Schwingungsforschung in Berlin, Germany around 1931. The Saraga Generator was an unusual photoelectrically controlled vacuum tube instrument. The instrument consisted of a photoelectric cell mounted on the white painted inside surface of a box with a small slit cut on one face. low voltage neon lamp was placed at some distance from the box and the performers movements interrupting the light beam caused variations in pitch.Envelope and timbre were affected by manipulating a hand held switch device, the overall volume being controlled by a foot pedal. The instrument had a tonal range of four octaves.

(from : http://120years.net)

The Rhythm Ring interactive rhythm sequencer is an engaging musical device that enables the user to create a plethora of rhythms and beat patterns with the touch of their own fingers.

Besides being fun to play with, the Rhythm Ring provides a tangible method of arranging a musical rhythm. In our design, the user can arrange beats and modify them in real time by moving steel ball bearings between holes—a physical representation of notes on a musical staff. The Rhythm Ring continuously loops up to three tracks, each with its own voice. A central ring of LEDs provide the user with live feedback for current \"playhead\" position, and bright LEDs pulse when a note is played due to a detected bearing. The three tracks allow the playback of three different percussion sounds: snare, hi-hat, and bass drum.

(from : http://www.blufiresoftware.com/)

\"The Sound Machines\" are an automated, electrical string quartet with a drum. The four string instruments sound and function like electric guitars, the difference being that each sound machine only has one string.

21 micro-cylinders from Festo are used in each sound machine. The micro-cylinders imitate the mechanical movements of a musician\'s left hand on the string instruments, determining the pitch of the tone by changing the length of the strings. Various drumsticks and a jazz brush are moved on the drum by micro-cylinders.

(from : http://www.festo.com)

The CyberWhistle is a complete instrument consisting of a windcontroller based around the traditional penny whistle, and computer based software synthesis. The main motivation was to create an instrument which could naturally capture the partial covering of tone holes in whistles and other instruments, and make use of this musically. Continuous variation of coverage occurs unavoidably when moving between notes. Players also control coverage while a note is sustained to generate a variety of effects, the most obvious of which is pitch bending, but also including subtle variations of timbre. This controlled coverage is called shading.

(from : http://www.zenprobe.com)

AudioCubes is a tangible user interface (TUI) consisting of a number of cubes made out of a plastic material. Each cube contains a digital signal processor (DSP) with optical sensors and emitters (infrared, red, green and blue LEDs). The sensors and emitters receive and send audio signals which are generated or processed by the signal processor in the cube. Each cube is powered by a rechargeable battery pack. By positioning the cubes relative to each other and moving them around, a signal processing network can be created. A musician can use this interface to learn a new way of interacting with sound and music.

(from : http://www-ccrma.stanford.edu/~bschiett/audiocubes/)

The Lightboard LB1 is an Infrared MIDI keyboard controller. The MIDI info is manipulated by placing you hand at a certain height above an infrared sensor, the info can be assigned to various parameters like e.g. velocity or filter control.

Electric bass harmonitar is a new instrument developed by Scott F. Hall on December 25, 2006 from a parent instrument--a standard four-string electric bass guitar. Unlike the bass, the harmonitar has no frets and no fretless fingerboard--it is played polyphonically only through the sounding of harmonic partials. Within just one tuning, it produces a full chromatic scale of harmonics which may be used to play any melody and/or chord that is possible on piano. Like a chromatic harp, the notes sustain and fade away gradually to silence.

(from : http://www.geocities.com/scottfranklinhall)

The Bass-Oon (Inflatable Instrument) is a fully functional, chromatic bass wind instrument that can be worn like a guitar. The three fingerholes on the horn are useful in changing the volume and tone character, but they don\'t really interact to cause a pitch change. Family of the Bass Horns.

The Orgue Electro Mécanique is a sound installation with 45 key that can be pressed and that control different motors, lights and sounds.

Sound Lathe explores the sonic properties of woodwork.The Sound Lathe produces audio data, saw dust, noise and wood chippings. With this human powered machine, turned spindles are shaped into complex sounds such as tones, glitches and beats..

The Sound Lathe uses a video input and a muio interface (muio.org) to convert the shape carved into the wood into digital signals that generate audio within custom software written in MAX/MSP. The shape of the audio waves produced is directly related to the shape turned on the Lathe. The pulse of Lathe being used is sensed as the wood-turner pumps the drive pedal, this is converted to a midi clock pulse which is passed to custom written sequencing software written in SuperCollider.

(from : http://www.variableg.org.uk/owlweb/Owl_home.htm)

The Runaway Harp is a harp where the strings are replaced by 1mm water streams. When the water streams are interupted a sound is triggered.

The idea of Runaway Harp came from the thinking that an instrument can have her own personality also and therefore wish to express herself in another form.

Out of the symbiosis of pumps and computers comes a new instrument that alienates the meaning of both. Pumpbeats is the connections between an ancient art (music) and a new medium.

(translated from : http://xciba.de/pumpbeats/)

Electronic Drum Kit Shirt is an electronic t-shirt with a picture of an actual playable drum kit on the front. You can hit the drums on this shirt with your finger and they play through the built in speaker. The Electronic Drum Kit Shirt has 7 different drum sounds for a personal drum solo on your chest.

The Talking Ring is an engagement ring that has a 20 second recorded message (the proposal) etched onto its surface and can be played back with a miniature record player. The ring is also a homage to Thomas Edison who made the first sound recording machine- the phonograph in 1877.

(partly from : http://lukejerram.com)

These are the children\'s gloves that play musical notes when the fingertips are tapped against any flat surface. Each glove can play an entire octave in the key of C; pressing on the heel of the hand changes the middle three fingers to the final notes A, B, and C, completing the scale. Both gloves connect with a wire to an integrated speaker unit that provides volume and tempo control for eight different tones, including piano, violin, mandolin, and more (including an additional six different percussion tones); 30 different rhythms are provided. Learning and demonstration functions allow children to tap along with the speaker unit\'s songs while perfecting their skills. The speaker unit clips to a belt.

(from : http://www.hammacher.com )

The vBow is a haptic musical controller human-computer interface, which simulates the forcefeedback of a bow on a violin string, while driving a bowed-string physical model. It is both a musical instrument for expressing the musical gestures of a performer, and a tool for testing friction and vibration models, and the responsiveness of physical model sound synthesis.

(from : http://www.charlesnichols.com/)

Installation Sonore Méchanique (Mechanical Sound Installation) is made out of a group of suitcases that contain motors that are suspended. The motion of the motors on different surface generates the sounds that are mixed to the final result.

The Tango Synth Controller is a synthesizer controller/interface. It has many axes of large-gesture control (pressure of thumbs, rotation of hands, bending of main staff) plus a two-dimensional finger controller (each black/white dot is a trackball), and a \"function-key\" pedalboard.

The engineering part of the Tango was done by Bob Moog.

(partly from : http://www.musanim.com/tapper/ConductorProgram.html)

Fold Loud is a (de)constructing musical play interface that uses origami paper-folding techniques and ritualistic Taoist principles to give users a sense of slow, soothing relaxation.

Fold Loud interconnects ancient traditions and modern technology by combining origami, vocal sound and interactive techniques. Unlike mainstream technology intended for fast-paced life, Fold Loud is healing, recovering and balancing.

Playing Fold Loud involves folding origami shapes to create soothing harmonic vocal sounds. Each fold is assigned to a different human vocal sound so that combinations of folds create harmonies. Users can fold multiple Fold Loud sheets together to produce a chorus of voices. Opened circuits made out of conductive fabric are visibly stitched onto the sheets of paper which creates a meta-technological aesthetic. When the sheets are folded along crease lines, a circuit is closed like a switch. Thus, the interface guides participants to use repetitive delicate hand gestures such as flipping, pushing and creasing. Fold Loud invites users to slow down and reflect on different physical senses by crafting paper into both geometric origami objects and harmonic music.

(from : http://jooyounpaek.com/)

Untitled Sound Objects are sound installations or live performances in which physical materials are made to generate sound by vibrating them using computer controlled machines and robots. The artists focus on creating acoustic architecture with an organic feel, investigating the properties of sound, materials, resonance and generative systems.

(partly from : http://www.untitled-sound-objects.ch/)

The TrampoLine is made of a suspended structure and 8 flexible sensors. The sensors can be plucked to produce sounds, whilst the bowl itself can be rotated through varying degrees to adjust the pitches. Each sensor can be controlled separately, or through the movements of the bowl. The rotational position of the bowl can also control other parameters.

The PianoBike is an perfect match of a bicycle and an old full functional piano.

GieskesTT is an instrument that uses tone wheels to generate sound. The pitch can be changed by moving the pickup over the different tone wheels or by speeding up the tone wheels.

The Digital Bra is a feedback instrument mounted worn as a bra. The player has piezo elements on his/her fingers and those elements pickup the sounds generated by the bra. The sound is fed back to an amp the drives the speakers on the bra.

Furby Gurdy is a synth/sequencer made out of a number of Furbies. The sequence and action are defined by turning a wheel that controls the furbies.

The Musical Siren is a type of mechanical air-gating system, converting a steady air stream into a rapid series of pulses that we hear as a tone. It’s possible to make a siren that is not as loud as a warning siren, but that produces controllable, steady pitches and can be used to play melodies.

(from: http://www.windworld.com)

The Blackpool High Tide Organ is a 15 metre tall tidal organ situated along Blackpool\'s New Promenade. The Blackpool High Tide Organ is constructed in concrete, steel, zinc and copper sheet. The instrument is played by the sea at high tide through eight pipes which are attached to the sea wall. These are connected under the promenade to 18 organ pipes within the sculpture. The swell of seawater at high tide pushes air up the sea-wall pipes and causes the organ pipes to sound. The best time to hear the High Tide Organ is 2-3 hours before or after high tide. On very calm days the organ is silent for part of its cycle. The pitches of the pipes are based on the harmonic series in B flat, a naturally occurring series of harmonics.

(mostly from : Wikipedia)

FROM SCRATCH instruments are sound and sign, signals to ear and eye. The tonal vocabulary has evolved from random-pitched to finely-tuned, just, harmonic and micro\'. Central to this development have been the tuned percussion stations, rack-supported, four-tier combinations of PVC pipes, tuned-tongue bells, roto-tom drums, and tuned tongue bamboos, along with some quirky and original methods of playing. First four and later three of these stations, along with various other original struck and spun acoustic instruments, made up the FROM SCRATCH sound that gained it international recognition. FROM SCRATCH contains instruments like Zitherum long stringed instruments (drummed and bowed), the metal pronged Nundrum, the stroked RodBaschet, Gong tree, Foley-trays, WaterCooler–Drumkit, Water-bells & kitchen sink. . . and more recently the Gloopdrum family, spring-gongs, ostifans.

(partly from : http://www.sonicsfromscratch.co.nz)

The Drawdio is described as \'A Pencil that Draws Musical Instruments\'. While you draw with the pencil the sound of the instrument changes.

Zoybar is a unique platform for developing innovative music instruments and effects. The Zoybar components provide research and development tools as a sustainable, playable prototype platform. The same modular parts can be assembled as different instruments, can be change during the performance and also be mounted with numerous special effects, just by adding and changing their position across the profile groves.

As an independent developer you can use the Zoybar hardware platform to integrate your application and become relevant to the whole Zoybar community.

The whole concept of the Zoybar is inspired by the Open Source movement, well known in the software world.

(from : http://www.zoybar.net)

Audio d-touch is a collection of 3 tangible interface applications for music composition and performance: the Augmented Stave, the Tangible Drum Machine and the Physical Sequencer.

They can be though as toy-like computer music instruments. Each instrument includes a number of wooden blocks, and the interaction takes place on a flat surface, like a table top. The blocks represent different sounds, by spatially arranging the blocks on the surface users can create sequences of piano notes, drum sounds or generic audio clips.

(from : http://web.media.mit.edu/~enrico/)

The Fender Bender is a bended Fender Stratocaster. All \'normal\' guitar parts have been removed and replace by electronics from www.musicfromouterspace.com

The Floppy Disk Drive Guitar (FDDG) is an instrument that creates it sound by manipulating the movement of the parts in an old floppy disk drive.

See the links for a list of Patents concerning musical instrument I found on Google Patents.

Musical Dining Table is a table that acts like a marimba. Placing objects on the table will make the table sound. Depending on where you put the object the tone will change.

The Sound From Wind is a bicycle accessory that will make music will you drive. They are a pair of flutes that attach to either sides of the handle bar. As you ride you bike, air rushes thru chambers producing sounds similar to an ocarina. You manipulate those sounds by pressing keys on both flutes.

(partly from : http://www.yankodesign.com)

AU Design Project is a new concept phone born out of the collaboration between Yamaha and KDDI. The phones are more than just phones and are also musical instrument.

\'Band in my Pocket\' is a mobile phone with different modules like a trumpet module, trombone module and mouthharp module.

\'Sticks in the Air\' is the drum version of the phone, where the phone can be split in two and each half is used as a drumstick.

\'Key to Touch\' is a phone that can be opened and reveals a piano keyboard.

\'Strings for Fingers\' slides open and show some strings that can be played as a guitar or a harp.

The Electric Xylophone is an electro-mechanical xylophone. It\'s played by inserting a probe in the instrument, this closes a circuit that activates a selenoid that strikes a glass tube.

The Harmonic Generator is an experimental electronic instrument. It consists of five main components. First, 64 piano strings chromatically tuned to 32 notes. Second, 32 corresponding motors with 1/2 bristle paint brushes beating the strings at controlled speeds. Third, a keyboard, played like a piano, controlling the motors. Fourth, 12 pick-ups that focus on one octave of strings. Finally, a transducer at the end of the instrument that feed back the sound of the pick-ups into the resonance hull. So far, the result of this new instrument can only be described as a symphony inside the belly of a whale.

(from : http://www.isaczal.com)

The Earth Harp is a large-scale, architectural stringed instrument. The Earth Harp can be set up in a multitude of environments, directly incorporating the surrounding architecture and environment.

In a theater, the resonating chamber of the instrument rests on stage and the strings go out over the audience and attach to the architecture of the theater.

In an outdoor plaza, the strings of the Earth Harp travel from the ground level and attach to the roofline and architecture of the surrounding buildings.

The Earth Harp is played using rosin covered, cotton gloves. The performers run their fingertips along the strings to generate a longitudinal vibration that literally pushes the music through the molecules of the string. This action is similar to running your fingers around the end of a crystal glass and creates beautiful cello-like tones.

The Earth Harp is used in performance and is set up as an interactive installation. At certain events and festivals, the public gets to play the giant strings of the Earth Harp.

The Earth Harp received its name when it first ran its strings across a valley, 1000 feet, literally turning part of the Earth into a giant harp.

The Earth Harp holds the record for the Longest Stringed Instrument in the world with strings that have run over 1,000 ft in length.

(partly from : http://www.massensemble.com/)

Big Daddy is a giant hand-made circuit bent playable keyboard.

Datasound offers an alternative and more sensual interpretation of electronic data by exploring their musical potential. Datasound is a fully functional musical instrument that enables you to hear, mix, scratch and perform digital data signals, from a picture, an old program floppy, a computer virus, a love letter, or a drawing…

On the right side of the deck stands a turntable that plays 5.25” floppy disks.The datasound mixing deck is completed with a sampler that reproduces in real time samples obtained from a variety of objects that contain or generate data: a Winchester hard drive, a neon light, a 3.5” floppy disk drive, a flatbed scanner, data cartriges, travel cards…

(from : http://www.troika.uk.com )

The Optophonic Lunaphone a musical instrument made of specially adapted telescopes which collect lightwaves from the night sky. These lightwaves are translated into sound through a mixer and sequencer.

TRATTI is a wearable noise instrument for kids and/or mobile wearable art. One’s own voice can be recorded; the TRATTI will transform it using the surrounding world as a score. TRATTI sets up a connection with the stars and the universe; actual events from space can be heard via TRATTI as specified sound-signals.

The current version of TRATTI contains a custom written software for a mobile phone with camera, microphone and modified speaker-megaphone, and rechargeable batteries - all in a custom-made wearable object.

(from : http://tratti.attacksyour.net/)

A set of a recorder, a glove with sound sensors and a pair headphones helps musicians create and record their own sounds and rhythms.

The point is in friction between surfaces and sensors. Different types of surfaces enable to make sounds and to create a rhythm by tapping. The recorder attached to the glove runs a software which records sounds in preset modes and plays them via wireless headphones in real time. Such record is an input for further editting and electronic music creation.

(from : http://www.coroflot.com/pipin )

This is a collection of gadget musical instruments.

Tomoring is not an electronic but an electric instrument. It has many springs, metal wire, strings and so on. The Tomoring can be hit, scrubbed by fingers, touched with small sticks, brushes and so on. The sound is amplified by 4 piezo pickups attached on the acrylic plastic body.

The Melody Stairs are situated in the Sony Building in Ginza. Stepping on one of the steps of the stairs generates a soudn. Apparently if you step on the top or bottom stair 30 times in a row it goes into an Arpeggio chord - wherein the notes of a chord are played fast in succession.

There seems to be an identical staircase called Soundstair in the Boston Science Museum.

Beat Blinds are xylophone window blinds. These wooden window blinds have a secondary purpose as a musical instrument. Beat Blinds encourage children to embrace the world of music

(from : http://www.yankodesign.com)

Lapbeat is a digital percussion instrument that can be played anywhere, in any position, and at anytime. Lapbeat has been designed with precise ergonomic considerations for playing in a sitting position. This digital percussion instrument has adapted and innovatively redefined the sound structure of classical percussion instruments where sound of the drumming echoes and flows out from below. By installing built-in speakers at the bottom and v-drum (advanced electronic MIDI drum trigger) technology into the touch pads, the timbre of the sound is made deeper and richer.

(from : http://www.yankodesign.com)

The Double Bell Trumpet uses the standard three valves, plus a fourth and fifth valve. The fourth valve is uded to play quarter-tones, fast and over the whole range of the trumpet. The fifth valve is for changing between the two bells, it gives many extra possibilities:

• the double bell makes very fast changing between an open- and muted trumpet easy (colour-change and echo-effect). This effect suggests the existence of a second trumpet......
• the 5th valve can make a gradual change between open and muted, a large scale of exciting colours arises....
• changing between two open bells gives a tremolo effect, possible on any note in the register
• you can play a regular piece with two different trumpets! because the bells are made of slightly different material
• sitting in an orchestra or ensemble you can change your direction of playing just by using the fifth valve; use the \"bells up\"-effect without changing your sitting-possition.

(partly from : http://www.marcoblaauw.com)

Arduinocaster is a an Arduino based MIDI instrument modelled on a guitar sometimes called a keytar. It uses switches and LEDs to control six \"strings\" which are held down in guitar like chords. Triggering the strings is through an opto reflective switch for a continuous repeating strum and four touch sensitive switches for a one off sequence. There are three banks of four picking / strumming / arpeggio styles and a three octave capo. Voice change information can also be sent.

(from : http://blog.makezine.com)

The Clubhouse Strummer is a fretted electric string instrument that uses drone tuning. The clubhouse strummer uses GDG tuning (the Gs are one octave apart). The instrument is made of a broken table, the frets are made of wood and the pickup is a simple piezo element from a toy.

The Chameleon Guitar -- so named for its ability to mimic different instruments -- is an electric guitar whose body has a separate central section that is removable. This inserted section, the soundboard, can be switched with one made of a different kind of wood, or with a different structural support system, or with one made of a different material altogether. Then, the sound generated by the electronic pickups on that board can be manipulated by a computer to produce the effect of a different size or shape of the resonating chamber.

(from : http://web.mit.edu)

Symphony for 54 Shoes (Distant Echoes)is a kinetic artwork that involves 27 pairs of shoes collected from a variety of second hand and thrift stores. Each shoe has a toe and heel tap used in tap dancing attached to it. The shoes move or dance independently of each other. The mechanical motion of tapping is created using solenoids (tubular magnetic sensors) that move up and down when activated by a switch. Each switch, 52 in total, is controlled by a microcontroller and software that activates the sequence of the tapping of the shoes.

(from : http://www.ciam-arts.org)

The Nellophone is an instrument made of tube (1,8 to 9 meters long), arranged in a circle of 3,6 meters wide. The player is standing in the middle of the instrument and slaps the opening of the tubes with some special paddles. The pitch if each tube is defined by it\'s length.

The Altoids Tin Guitar is a tiny guitar made out of an Altoids can.

The Guitare à crayon is a guitar where you draw what you want to play. The Guitare à crayon is made of an ordinary guitar, a drawing tablet and some software (Pure Data (for sound) and Gimp, Blender and Flash (for visual))

The Physical Sequencer is a grid-based, human-scale interface that allows you to transform your movements and gestures into techno-trance sounds. It features 56 proximity sensors arranged in a 7×8 grid that convert the gestures into music via a software.

(from: http://www.yankodesign.com)

The Secretary\'s Nightmare is a musical sculpture, a sculpture that makes interesting sounds when struck. It evolved out of a mirror-like hollow steel ball found washed up on a beach and some antique typewriter parts.

You can play The Secretary\'s Nightmare in different ways, such as by dragging pieces of mattress foam over it or strike it with a ping pong ball on a string.

The music it makes is always somewhat out of control and random. Because the sounds it makes are low-volume it\'s used with a stethoscope as a means of amplification. Playing it is a very personal experience. People without the stethoscope only hear a weak suggestion of what goes on inside it.

(from: http://www.instructables.com)

The Prism is a bit like a guitar with some synthesizer mashed in. It has aspects of a theremin and a laser harp thrown in to boot. In short, it\'s not like anything else, and you can use it to make some really neat sounds. Anything from cold Sine and harsh square waves to heavily distorted noise.

At its heart the Prism features a VCO (Voltage Controlled Oscillator), based around the very shiny XR2206 monolithic function generator. The octave range is selected by blocking one of four laser \"strings,\" and the pitch is controlled by the position of the musician\'s hand on the fretboard. The musician has the option of selecting a sine, triangle or square wave. The sine and triangle waves can be skewed using a separate Skew control.

It also has two other controllable oscillators, one acting as an LFO (Low Frequency Oscillator) and the other acting as a Sync generator.

The Prism plugs into any regular guitar amp, with no computer required. In fact, there is no programming involved at all in this project! It is just as portable as a regular guitar, and meant to be used at gigs or wherever else an \"alternative\" instrument is needed!

(from: http://www.instructables.com)

The Concertinome is a custom made instrument combining the concertina accordion with the monome style keyboard and electronic air pressure sensors.

(from: http://alog.net/)

The Silent Drum Controller is a transparent drum shell with an elastic head. As one presses it, the head deforms and a variety of shapes with peaks are created reflecting the shape of the mallet or hand. These shapes are captured by a video camera that sends these images to the computer, which analyzes them and outputs the tracked parameters.

(from: http://www.realidadvisual.org/jaimeoliver)

Typing The Sound is a typewriter that transforms the act of typing in sound.

BeatSneaks are a pair of modified shoes and an Arduino circuit. Tapping your feet results in MIDI signals that can be sent to a synth.

The Egotar is the combination of a bass guitar and a slide guitar. Both have to be played at the same time, which makes the slide guitar something special. The slide itself is mounted on a carriage and is moved with the palm of the hand, the strings are played with fingers of the same hand.

The Swiss Army Bass is a bass guitar with a midi keyboard mounted on it. The two are played simultaneously. The bass is played with the left hand alone by means of a guitar technique known as \'hammer-ons\' while the keyboard (which emulates a distorted slide guitar most of the time. among other things) is played with the right hand.

(from: http://jaysmuseum.com )

The Fractal Harp is a 24 string instrument that features a central pivoting slide providing its player access to innumerable musical possibilities.The slide travels through 27 chromatic fixed increments offering over two octaves of notes for each position. These notes are laid as a pentatonic harp but can be addressed in limitless ways as an electric/acoustic guitar. The instrument also has a group of strings that function as a rudimentary pedal steel guitar.

The players right hand controls the pitch while picking, plucking and effecting modulation. Single or two-handed play allow for the simultaneous manipulation of other instruments and effects. Lush harmonic clusters and intervals occur at various positions when the strings are sounded to the right of the slide producing two harmonizing notes from each string. The simplicity of its design is remarkable when weighed with the range of expression possible with this elegant instrument.

The Double Piston, Triple Neck Wheeling Violin (DPTNWV) is made of a triple neck violin mounted on a \'wheeling\' device. The DPTNWV has a piston mechanism as a steam engine. Two bows are attached to the pistons, and as the wheel goes round, it pushes the bows up and down in an arpeggiating movement. The violin has three necks, two in the main playing part, with a bridge dividing down the middle, and a third with five resonating strings. A vital environmental consideration on the music is the condition of the road. Small bumps give rise to interesting spiccato affects.

As the pushes it along, and depending on the speed, he gets the sense of not how long is a piece of music but of how far is a piece of music. Of course, by walking backwards, the performer could hear again what he had just played in retrograde. Thus, with this instrument a new dimension was added to the parameters of musical structure, that of distance.

(partly from: http://www.jonroseweb.com)

The Nail or Peg Violin (in Dutch \'Nagelviool\' , in English \'Nail or Peg Violin\', in Italian \'Violino a Chiodi\', in German \'Nagelgeige\', in French \'Violon de fer\') was a very popular instrument in the 18/19th century. It\'s made of a resonator box with on top \'nails\' from different length. The nail were played by bowing them like a violin.

Echo Kitchen is a sound installation created for the exhibititon \"Echo\" in Galerie Dum Umeni, Opava, CZ in 2002. It turn all the objects found in a kitchen in one big musical instrument.

Puncture Kit is a bicycle that can be turned into a drum kit anytime.

Beat-Bike v.1 is a bicycle-controlled drum machine. Sensors mounted on a bicycle frame are activated by spinning the bicycle\'s front wheel. Once activated, they trigger a momentary sounding of a single drum sound- kick drum, snare, tom-tom, and \'disco-bleep\' from a kids\' toy drum machine. As the wheel spins, the sensors are triggered in a sequence which becomes an audible, repeating drum beat. The rider controls the tempo of the beat as well as the sequence of sounds from controls mounted on the handlebars. Because the sounds are controlled by riding a bicycle, Beat-Bike v.1 rewards exercise and coordination with funky outer-space disco beats. And it\'s fun!

(from : http://una-love.com)

The Harmonic Bridge is an art project where the sound of the traffic is filtered in an analogue way. The filter is made by attaching two 16-foot (4.9m) long tube along a bridge which result in a 16-foot long wave (very low C) . Inside each tube, a microphone is placed at a certain harmonic interval (the 5th in one tube, the 4th in the other). These locations emphasize the harmonic and give a slightly different timbre to the two Cs.

As traffic passes by, its noise generates a sympathetic resonance in the columns of air inside the tubes. High-pitched sirens and even voices generate higher harmonics, while the low rumble of trucks creates low ones. The sound is carried from the microphones in the tubes to a control room, where the sound signal is then amplified and transmitted to the concrete cube speakers under the bridge. There are no electronic effects added. The sounds have been simply extracted from the traffic noise above, as one might extract precious metal from a baser substance. The pedestrian hears one tuned layer of city sounds, and strains to separate the harmony from the traffic on Marshall Street. The work requires that we focus our ears on it, and we walk away from the experience as the composer John Cage would have us: hearing music everywhere. The bridge becomes an instrument played by the city revealing hidden harmonies within the built environment.

(partly from: http://www.massmoca.org)

The Tuned Stairs is a staircase where the steps of the users a turned into sound.On each of the stairs is a matt-switch which activates the instrument-playing mechanism attached on the outside of the banister. The armature is made of steel with a pull-thust solenoid attached to it. Above the solenoid is a tuned resonating bar facing down. As the matt-switch is activated, the solenoid momentarily strikes the resonating bar - resulting in a soft delicate sound resonating through the local area. The matt-switch\'s signal gets fed into an arduino board which then activates the solenoid mechanism through a transistor circuit. Each arduino has its own conduit board built to easily connect the switches to their corresponding solenoid mechanisms.

(from : http://www.plankman.com )

EVI is short for Electronic Valve Instrument. The EVI is a brath controller that reacts as an ananlogue instrument would react. The EVI can control a synth directly or send out MIDI info.

The SuperSoaker Car Organ is built with the entire right side paneling of a Toyota 4Runner SUV. The outside panel is created with red duct tape and conductive aluminum foil tape to serve as a large-scale circuit board attached to the switches controlling the instruments and the inputs to turn on the lights and sounds. An Arduino controlls the lighting sequences when it sensed input from the closed switches. This triggers 10 lights to flash in pulses as well as six sound samples.

(partly from: http://www.coin-operated.com)

The Poor Man\'s Bagpipe uses two big inflated balloons as an air reservoir and two harmonicas to generate the sound that resembles a bagpipe.

The Sounding Windmills can be found in Portugal. They are regular old windmills that are fitted with Buzinas, Jarras and Canas, which all have their own design and sound. As the mill spins around the wind that travels along those Buzinas, Jarras and Canas makes them sound.

The Guitaret is a kind of reed autoharp. It had buttons to select chords and a lever to activate the plectrum mechanism, and was intended to replace the rhythm guitar in dance bands. A similar mechanism applied to a conventional piano keyboard produced the Cembalet.(from \"cembalo\", the Italian word for harpsichord).

(from: http://members.lycos.co.uk/karenlbeck/vkmag/issue3/html/orher_eps.html)

This project was inspired by the following question: \"How can sound have a physical value?\" Sound grooves are etched into this necklace, bracelet and brooch. The sounds can include precious memories, such as the laughter of someone with their grandma, a telephone conversation with a girlfriend, or sounds recorded during travels/holidays and so on.

(from : http://www.yurisuzuki.com)

The DJMachine is a muscical interface targeted to DJ\'s. The system features seven, 360° rotatable joysticks similar to a synthesizer that modify music in a \'haptic and playful way.\' Each of the joysticks can be personalized with individual sound effects and can transmit the sound to a receiver via Bluetooth. The system is modular so several modules can be hooked up together.

The Drying Rack is a clothes drying rack with two accoustic guitars attached as resonator. The Drying Rack is played with a cello bow. Different sound can be made by bowing different parts of the drying rack with different bow pressures and positions. The tones can be tuned by applying a pressure on certain points, as you would do with a guitar string.

The Car Horn Organ is comprised of 25 car horns operated by a homemade keyboard and powered by a car battery charger. The car horns were selected with a pitch pipe and purchased from junk yards, with the exception of the Cadillac C-Trumpet and the \"ahooogah\" horn which were purchased new.

(from : http://www.wendymae.com)