Building A Granular Sampler Synth

December 16, 2025 by Lewin Day 7 Comments

Synthesizing sounds from scratch is all well and good, you just use a bit of maths. However, the latest build from [Daisy] eschews such boring concepts as additive or subtractive synthesis, instead going for a sample-based approach.

This build is based around the Daisy Seed microcontroller platform. It was actually inspired by an earlier project to create a ribbon synth, which we covered previously. In this case, the ribbon potentiometer has been repurposed, being used to control the playback position of a lengthy recorded sample. In this build, the Daisy Seed is running its audio playback system at a rate of 48,000 samples per second. It’s capable of storing up to 192,000 samples in memory, so it has a total of 4 seconds of sample storage. The Daisy Seed uses an analog-to-digital input to record two seconds of audio into the sample buffer. It can then be replayed by placing a finger on the ribbon at various points. Playback is via granular synthesis, where small sections of the overall sample buffer are used to synthesize a new tone. The video explains how the granular synthesis algorithm is implemented using the Plugdata framework. Design files are available for those eager to replicate the build.

Once you start tinkering in the world of synthesis, it’s easy to fall down the rabbit hole. Video after the break.

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Finally, A Pipe Slapophone With MIDI

December 14, 2025 by Lewin Day 6 Comments

If you live in a major city, you’ve probably seen a street performer with some variety of slapophone. It’s a simple musical instrument that typically uses different lengths of PVC pipe to act as resonant cavities. When struck with an implement like a flip-flop, they release a dull but pleasant tone. [Ivan Miranda] decided to build such an instrument himself and went even further by giving it MIDI capability. Check it out in the video below.

[Ivan’s] design uses a simple trick to provide a wide range of notes without needing a lot of individual pipes. He built four telescoping pipe assemblies, each of which can change length with the aid of a stepper motor and a toothed belt drive. Lengthening the cavity produces a lower note, while shortening it produces a higher note. The four pipe assemblies are electronically controlled to produce notes sent from a MIDI keyboard, all under the command of an Arduino. The pipes are struck by specially constructed paddles made of yoga mats, again controlled by large stepper motors.

The final result is large, power-hungry, and vaguely playable. It’s a little unconventional, though, because moving the pipes takes time. Thus, keypresses on a MIDI keyboard set the pipes to a given note, but don’t actually play it. The slapping of the pipe is then triggered with a drum pad.

We love weird instruments around these parts.

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DIY Synth Takes Inspiration From Fretted Instruments

December 11, 2025 by Lewin Day 7 Comments

There are a million and one MIDI controllers and synths on the market, but sometimes it’s just more satisfying to make your own. [Turi Scandurra] very much went his own way when he put together his Diapasonix instrument.

Right away, the build is somewhat reminiscent of a stringed instrument, what with its buttons laid out in four “strings” of six “frets” each. Only, they’re not so much buttons, as individual sections of a capacitive touch controller. A Raspberry Pi Pico 2 is responsible for reading the 24 pads, with the aid of two MPR121 capacitive touch ICs.

The Diapasonix can be played as an instrument in its own right, using the AMY synthesis engine. This provides a huge range of patches from the Juno 6 and DX7 synthesizers of old. Onboard effects like delay and reverb can be used to alter the sound. Alternatively, it can be used as a MIDI controller, feeding its data to a PC attached over USB. It can be played in multiple modes, with either direct note triggers or with a “strumming” method instead.

We’ve featured a great many MIDI controllers over the years, from the artistic to the compact. Video after the break. Continue reading “DIY Synth Takes Inspiration From Fretted Instruments” →

Extremely Rare Electric Piano Restoration

December 11, 2025 by Bryan Cockfield 13 Comments

Not only are pianos beautiful musical instruments that have stood the test of many centuries of time, they’re also incredible machines. Unfortunately, all machines wear out over time, which means it’s often not feasible to restore every old piano we might come across. But a few are worth the trouble, and [Emma] had just such a unique machine roll into her shop recently.

What makes this instrument so unique is that it’s among the first electric pianos to be created, and one of only three known of this particular model that survive to the present day. This is a Vivi-Tone Clavier piano which dates to the early 1930s. In an earlier video she discusses more details of its inner workings, but essentially it uses electromagnetic pickups like a guitar to detect vibrations in plucked metal reeds.

To begin the restoration, [Emma] removes the action and then lifts out all of the keys from the key bed. This instrument is almost a century old so it was quite dirty and needed to be cleaned. The key pins are lubricated, then the keys are adjusted so that they all return after being pressed. From there the keys are all adjusted so that they are square and even with each other. With the keys mostly in order, her attention turns to the action where all of the plucking mechanisms can be filed, and other adjustments made. The last step was perhaps the most tedious, which is “tuning” the piano by adjusting the pluckers so that all of the keys produce a similar amount or volume of sound, and then adding some solder to the reeds that were slightly out of tune.

With all of those steps completed, the piano is back in working order, although [Emma] notes that since these machines were so rare and produced so long ago there’s no real way to know if the restoration sounds like what it would have when it was new. This is actually a similar problem we’ve seen before on this build that hoped to model the sound of another electric instrument from this era called the Luminaphone.

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A Touchscreen MIDI Controller For The DIY Set

December 7, 2025 by Lewin Day 6 Comments

MIDI controllers are easy to come by these days. Many modern keyboards have USB functionality in this regard, and there are all kinds of pads and gadgets that will spit out MIDI, too. But you might also like to build your own, like this touchscreen design from [Nick Culbertson].

The build takes advantage of a device colloquially called the Cheap Yellow Display. It consists of a 320 x 240 TFT touchscreen combined with a built-in ESP32-WROOM-32, available under the part number ESP32-2432S028R.

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Quiet Your Drums With An Electronic Setup

December 1, 2025 by Lewin Day 8 Comments

Playing the drums requires a lot of practice, but that practice can be incredibly loud. A nice workaround is presented by [PocketBoy], in converting an acoustic kit to electronic operation so you can play with headphones instead.

*A sensor installed inside a floor tom.*

It might sound like a complicated project, but creating a basic set of electronic drums can actually be quite simple if you’ve already got an acoustic kit. You just need to damp all the drums and cymbals to make them quieter, and then fit all the individual elements with their own piezo sensors. These are basically small discs that can pick up vibrations and turn them into electricity—which can be used to trigger an electronic drum module.

[PocketBoy]’s build started with a PDP New Yorker kit, some mesh heads to dull the snares and toms, and some low-volume cymbals sourced off Amazon. Each drum got a small piezo element, which was soldered to a 6.5mm jack for easy hookup. They’re installed inside the drums on foam squares with a simple bracket system [PocketBoy] whipped up from hardware store parts. A DDrum DDti interface picks up the signals from the piezo elements and sends commands to an attached PC. It’s paired with Ableton 12 Lite, which plays the drum sounds as triggered by the drummer.

[PocketBoy] notes it’s a quick and dirty setup, good for quiet practice but not quite gig-ready. You’d want to probably just run it as a regular acoustic kit in that context, but there’s nothing about the conversion that prevents that. Ultimately, it’s a useful project if you find yourself needing to practice the drums quietly and you don’t have space for a second electric-only kit. There’s lots of other fun you can have with those piezos, too. Video after the break.

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Building A Simple Ribbon Synth

November 29, 2025 by Lewin Day 1 Comment

The usual input device for playing a synthesizer is the good old piano keyboard. However, you don’t have to stick to such pedestrian interfaces when making music. [Daisy] has a fun build that shows us how to put together a ribbon synth that makes wonderful little noises.

Naturally, the heart of the build is a ribbon potentiometer (also known as soft pots). It’s essentially a touch sensitive strip that changes in resistance depending on where you touch it. You can slide your finger up and down to vary the output continuously; in musical contexts, they can behave rather like a fretless instrument. [Daisy] employs one of these potentiometers in such a role by hooking it up to a Daisy Seed microcontroller board, which reads it with an analog-to-digital converter (ADC). The resistance values are used to vary the pitch of a dual-saw synthesizer programmed in the plugdata framework.

We’ve featured some other great ribbon synths over the years, too, like this tribute to the Eowave Persephone. They’re not the ideal choice for those that prefer their notes on pitch, but they’re beautifully fun to play with when you’re getting a little more experimental.

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