I know a lot of you are into the idea of home made instruments.  I found a video on YouTube that gives some instructions on how to build a membrane pipe out of CPVC tubing.  I thought you guys might be interested.

I haven’t tried this.  If any of you do, please let me know how it works!

Here’s a video of someone who used a guitar tuner to “tune” his glasses of water so that he could play Beethoven’s Fur Elise.  It’s a simple concept for a home made “instrument”, but this video shows how practical and usable it can be

I can tell by the blog statistics that a lot of people out there are interested in home-made instruments, so I’m going to try to start featuring them more often.  Sometimes I’ll post links to web pages, sometimes I’ll just post videos, but I’ll make sure for those of you who are interested in home made instruments that I cover the topic enough to get your wheels turning.

Today we’ll look at a very simple instrument, but it sounds awesome.  It’s a drum made out of a water jug.  Easy enough to put together, and the sound that comes out of it could be very useful to a lot of you.

Home made Instruments: Percussion

I think a lot of musicians who are driven by being creative are fascinated by the idea of making their own instruments.  Quite a while ago I linked to a few sites about homemade instruments, and it was an article that a lot of people seemed to enjoy.

Recently I found a website that I’ve known about for years, and I decided I should share it with you guys.

The site is called Homemade Percussion.  Basically the entire site is about making your own percussion instruments.  The projects vary from very simple things that you could do quickly, to more advanced things that might take you a little longer.

The authors of the site have made drums out of coffee cans, pork rind jars, water bottles, and a lot of other things.  They have sound samples for a lot of their stuff.

If you’re into percussion, check it out!

If you want to talk about musical creativity, maybe one of the most outside-the-box ways of thinking you can find is creating your own musical instruments.

I’ve always thought the idea was incredibly fascinating, but to be honest, I’ve only done very simple things when it comes to instrument creation, and they’ve all been percussion-based things.

Some people, though, are creative, innovative, AND handy, and those kinds of people are the ones that can do some amazing things.

Check out this site I found.  It’s called “Bret Hart’s Ho-made Instruments”

It looks like it’s an older site that hasn’t been updated for a while, but the site has some descriptions and diagrams of several of the instruments that the author has invented himself.

Here’s another site that has some diagrams and instructions for making your own instruments… some of them traditional instruments, but several of them unique variations of common instruments:

WEBPAGE of DENNIS HAVLENA

And if you really want to see some interesting stuff, search YouTube.

In fact, click HERE to link to my YouTube search for HomeMade instruments.  There are all kinds of crazy things on there.

This just goes to show that if you want to make music you don’t have to have the high dollar guitars and pianos, and you don’t have to spend years taking lessons.  You just have to be willing to try out your own crazy ideas!