Instruments – Page 2 – Vulpestruments

How to make a basic dulcimer from one piece of wood!

Here’s a quick tutorial on how to make a quick, acoustic dulcimer from a single piece of wood… Start with a nice chunky bit of timber: Trim a piece off the end: Trim a thin piece off the top, the thinner the better as this will be your soundboard: This was much thicker than itContinue reading “How to make a basic dulcimer from one piece of wood!”

Newest Dronemachine

My newest commission for Belgian musician Quentin Stinglhamber. It uses the coil of an electric fan as it’s pickup, with an additional piezo pickup at the far end. Two knobs control the levels between the 2 pickups and one for volume. The strings are excited by a small piece of string attached to a motorContinue reading “Newest Dronemachine”

The Schlechte-Bond machine

The latest commission is for composer Chris Schlechte-Bond. It uses electrical interference of various DC motors to create noises and textures in the central pickup. 2 inputs are connected to some pulse width modulation boards to control the speeds of the motors and gives different pitches and textures. The other 4 inputs share a 9vContinue reading “The Schlechte-Bond machine”

The Multi-Dronemachine

I made this one quite a while ago, but hadn’t got around to getting any decent photos of it yet. These are probably decent enough… It uses bike brake cables as strings, has dual piezo and inductive pickups. It also has some springs and strimmer wire strings added to the block with the piezo inContinue reading “The Multi-Dronemachine”

The Hummingbird MKII, Manual Mode

The Hummingbird is usually controlled by Twitter, I fancied playing it myself so rigged up a simple switch mode using connector block and bike brake cable that runs to the other pin of each relay unit. The noises are a result of electromagnetic interference from the motors creating a current in the pickup in theContinue reading “The Hummingbird MKII, Manual Mode”

Springything

I’ve had my Springything for quite a long time now, so have figured out a lot of fun different ways to get different noises from it. So here’s a short track using nothing but this instrument:

The Hummingbird MKII

This is the newest version of the Hummingbird instrument. It uses electrical disturbances of 8 different motors to induce a current in the transformer coil. It is connected to my twitter account via a raspberry pi. Whenever someone sends me a tweet the pattern of playing will change depending on that persons user id number.Continue reading “The Hummingbird MKII”

The Hummingbird @ the Tate Modern

One of my newest creations that I developed at my time at machinesroom is The Hummingbird. It’s a twitter – controlled instrument that I recently showcased at the Tate modern as part of the Turbine Festival. pic.twitter.com/yckbuCpngY — Vulpestruments (@Vulpestruments) July 26, 2015 //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js It consists of a series of 8 motors that playContinue reading “The Hummingbird @ the Tate Modern”

The Bookitar

When I got the confirmation that I would be at The Great Home Hack, I realised I should probably create something a bit more ‘crafty’ to fit in with the Upcycling theme. So, I came up with The Bookitar:

Piano Stool Viol

It’s been a while since I made this one, but things have been very busy over here and I never got around to playing it much! It’s made entirely from a broken piano stool! The neck was one of the legs and then the body is made from 3 planks that surrounded just underneath theContinue reading “Piano Stool Viol”