Homemade
Instruments
For Small Children
Little children can make these with
a little adult supervision. Scissors needed for cutting. Some
gluing. Tuning unnecessary or minimal.
9
Easy to Make Musical Instruments for Kids
Children love music as much as they enjoy making things. Why
not join these two creative forces and make one or all of these
fun and easy musical instruments to encourage play and creativity.
Children's
Music by Nancy Stewart - Homemade Instruments
Here are some musical instruments you can make with your child from
everyday items: Plastic Egg Shakers, Paper Mache Fruit Shakers,
Jingle Sticks, African Tambourine, Sand Blocks, Juice Can Shakers,
Jingle Bracelets, and Quilting Hoop Drum.
Neighborhood
Jam Session
Get together with your family and friends and jam! Use the items
suggested below or create your parade drum set to share with
everyone. Make other instruments as well for your jam session.
Preschool
Musical Instruments
Very simple musical instruments little children can make and
play.
Play Online
Juice
Bottle Jingles
Play some familiar tunes on these virtually-tuned bottles. Requires
Shockwave. Try to make your own set of tuned bottles.
Panpipes
by Phil Tulga
Building pan pipes is a fun way for students to apply their knowledge
of measurement and length. As they will hear: longer tubes produce
a lower pitch, and shorter tubes produce a higher pitch.
Beginners
Children 6-10 will find these easy to
make. Scissors or box cutting knife or glue gun may be needed.
Tuning not difficult.
Guitars
As Sculpture
I'm not sure that these artistic electric guitars can really
play music, but they are fun to look at.
Inventing
Homemade Instruments with Math and Measurement
You will learn how musical instruments vibrate in a series of
fractions called the harmonic series, and how to design your
own musical instruments by measuring length, liquid volume and
weight/mass.
Making Musical Instruments at Home
Multicultural music projects for families: make a Cajon from an old box, a Didgeridoo or a Rain Stick from a long tube or PVC pipe, and a Shekere from a dried gourd or milk jug. Play your new instruments along with downloadable songs from Songs
For Teaching.
Satisfied
Mind
Make a banjo, bass, a dancing lumberjack, dulcimer, drum, rainstick,
or a thumb piano.
Singing
Glasses
What dinner party is complete without a song from the Wine Glass
Symphony? You'll need a few wine glasses, some water, and a tune
in mind to demonstrate the sounds of science. Amaze everyone
and display incredibly bad manners all at once.
Intermediate
Children between 10-14 will like these.
Saw or other sharp tools needed. Low to moderate cost with materials
found at a hardware store. Good ear needed for tuning.
Bleach
Bottle Banjo
The basic idea for the banjo probably developed in Africa hundreds
of years ago and transferred to the Americas during the slave
trade era when simply fashioned stringed instruments were made
by rural folk using whatever was at hand.
Dennis Havlena's
Musical Instuments to Make
Articles here include how-to-build simple & inexpensive but
nice sounding/playing musical instruments. Kids may need a parent's
help.
Flapophone
The flaps are hit with mallets, forcing the flaps to hit the
edge of the PVC tube. Then the flaps bounce back letting the
sound come out both the top and bottom of the tubes.
Let's
Make Yokobue
Yokobue is a catchall term of Japanese transverse flute, including
Shinobue, Ryuteki, Komabue, Nohkan and so on. Shinobue is a Japanese
popular traditional flute, used in 'Nagauta' or 'Matsuri-bayashi'.
Mudcat Cafe - Make
Your Own Instruments
Drums, Blowers (Wind Instruments), Scrappers, Rattles and Such
, Gourd Rattles, Bongos, Banjos, Fiddles and More, and Blocks,
Bells, Box Drums and Mallets.
Advanced
Complicated designs. May be made from
costlier materials. Tricky tuning. Inventiveness required, but
a teenager could make these.
Car Music Project for Ford Focus Ad
While this may be more than you'd want to tackle, I think it makes a point that an instrument can be made from just about anything.
Bret
Hart's Homesmade Instruments
The great thing about a homemade or unfamiliar instrument is
that no one can accuse you of playing it improperly. Some instruments
vaguely Asian in heritage.
Coppers and Brass
It sounds better than it looks; and it looks better than you'd
expect. These pages are focused on building musical instruments
out of, let's say, "modest" materials like plumbing
pipe.
Experimental Musical
Instruments
An organization devoted to unusual musical sound sources. For
the older, more inventive student.
Gametone
Homemade Gamelan Instuments
These are my homemade instruments, the purists among you will
notice that they have little to do with traditional gamelan instruments.
But their sound when played brings gamelan music to my mind.
Gametone
Homemade Gamelan Instuments
These are my homemade instruments, the purists among you will
notice that they have little to do with traditional gamelan instruments.
But their sound when played brings gamelan music to my mind.
Guitar Building
In this MIT class, students learn about physics principles by examining the physics responsible for producing music with electronic stringed instruments, while building, testing, and playing their own electric guitar.
Making
a Clay Didjeridu with Barry Hall
Clay makes an excellent material for didjeridus (and many other
musical instruments as well). Although fired clay is rigid, and
even brittle, compared to other materials like wood, it is also
very resonant and has some unique acoustical properties that
work well for didjes.
Our
Bass Marimba
For about $350 and a lot of work you can build a bass marimba
similar to $40,000 ones on the market. Site also features other
instruments for Orff music teachers.
Utilities
Fret-Placement
Calculator
An applet for use in designing fretted string instruments. You
tell it your string length and what sort of scale you want, and
it'll tell you where to put the frets.
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