There are some fabulous musical instruments this month, including the amusing recorder-based pipe organ, a tonewheel organ played with the fingertips, a squeezebox made with keyboard switches and load sensors, a device that pings rulers in response to MIDI and much more.
A lot's happened in my own world since the last newsletter. I've built a Noisferatu using the open-source schematics and published several videos including two that involve using e-ther with effects.
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So without further ado, read on for more musical news, views, reviews and nonsense.
Towards the end of August I built a Noisferatu.
I do find the kits very reasonably-priced and as a classic horror fan I love the artwork (this may have been the biggest attraction for me!) But the parts can be had for a song and so I built one using the information on Github to see how I liked it. The answer is that I love it!
I haven't tended to make 'behind the scenes' videos about my falling asleep music, because that's not really the idea. But there were a few things to say about this piece and I particularly enjoyed making the whalesong from e-theremin. This video contains the track as well as the 'how it's done'.
Also in e-ther news this month, I made a track that involved using it for a solo part through guitar effects. I really had a lot of fun.
I tried something different with this video - keeping a diary of my thoughts and taking screenshots and video as I went along, then cutting them together to show how the piece actually developed.
This concertina uses Cherry keyboard switches and a load cell in place of the bellows to measure the pull and push from the user.
I find this recorder-based organ hilarious. Great work.
It's made by a member of creative percussion group SOUDA who have been giving performances with this and various other handmade instruments.
The public voting has now closed for the MIDI Innovation Awards 2026 and you can view all of the entries at this page. There are a lot, spread over several categories. I'll be linking directly to some of them separately in this issue.
XA10C4 has made a ruler-pinging robot. It has a lot of Phase8 about it but rather than excite preset tines, it moves the tines to the right place before physically pinging them. it's very slick and can do this under MIDI control.
This project takes a real-time public camera feed and allows traffic to trigger notes. If a car changes lane it makes a pitch bend. You can choose the instruments.
A short video on social media led me to investigate this topic and I ended up at this old video from Steve Mould, which explains this very simple and very effective technique very well.
Sridhar Rajagopal has given this talk about building a capacitive touch MIDI keyboard. It includes some very interesting details about keyboards, such as the correct positioning of the black keys and the various standards for key size.
Ben Holmen has built this beautiful instrument / art installation for an arts festival.
It consists of a set of chimes that can be played directly with a keyboard, or indirectly by recording the performance as a pattern on receipt paper, which can later be read and played back by the instrument.
It sounds as beautiful as it looks. even the printed recordings look great. The page contains some recordings of music made by members of the public as well as a short video shot and edited by Ben and his friend Benjamin.
With thanks to Peter for the tip.
The word Kaliptera combines the word Kalimba with a Greek word for wings. It combines physical elements with electronic.
Post-digital sax is "a digitally controlled acoustic single-reed woodwind instrument". It has a real reed and acoustic horn, but allows electronic manipulation of the pitch and sound. This appears to be as much academic thesis as product.
Verto is a tonewheel organ that's played like a glass armonica. Gloves worn by the player have pickups in the fingertips.
Rob Smith has built an Amiga MOD player which reads both the tracker information and the sample data from a disc.
In this case optical doesn't mean a CD. He's actually printed the information onto paper, made discs and his player literally reads the information in order to play back the music. There are even mechanical visualisers.
It's an amazing feat and there's so much to explain that he's broken it into several parts. You'll get a worthwhile demo near the start of the first part, which I'm linking to with my main link. Part two and part three are also now available.
Legendary chiptune composer Lukhash has released software for the Commodore 64 which turns it into a SID-based MIDI synthesiser. I assume that it works with any of the MIDI interfaces for the C64.
www.hackster.io...vintage-c64s-into-live-synthesizers-1edf0d10de29
Kevin has taken a deep dive into the MIDI capabilities of the ZX Spectrum (128k onwards) and related hardware / software.
ako has reviewed the Electric Cow EC909 drum machine / soft synth for Atari ST/TT/ Falcon. It combines a TR-909 and a TB-303 emulator, much like ReBirth for the Mac.
ako found it unusable due to latency, but it may be that it works well on a faster Atari such as the Falcon. Either way, this is an interesting look at the software.
Besides the work on the Spectrum's MIDI capabilities, Kevin has also been looking at AY sound and in particular Tim Follin's music driver, also the Spectrum's display and implementing that on an RC2014, a modern Z80 kit computer. He's done a huge amount of work and there's a lot of detail on his blog post, along with a video showing the result.
Chase has reviewed a MIDI drumset which seems to represent remarkably good value.
AudioPilz / Bad Gear has been loaned a Korg Phase8 for review. He found it the best instrument of its kind because it is the only one.
LouD from the Netherlands is offering USBSID-Pico through SmallRun. It drives two real SIDs or SID replacements. It's available for pre-order as a pre-soldered board, with a Pico and/or 3D printed case. There's a PCB-only option with or without a parts kit which is much less.
By coincidence, someone showed me one of these at the weekend. It was hard to believe that you get so much for your money.
After watching Chase's video I realised that it's even more exciting than I thought. He has built an app that allows you to mess around with FM synthesis and load your sounds onto the FM1.
The Muro Box N40 is a musical box with 40 notes that responds to MIDI. It's a beautiful object.
Floyd has one for review.
Floyd has also reviewed the Storm Summoner, another beautiful piece of work.
Thanks to Pete Kabaragoya himself for the heads-up.
If you're interested in the electronic workings of guitar distortion pedals, Bill Jehle has done a brilliant job of classifying 62 circuits into 8 groups and then explaining each one.
Shane has built a Tin Can Banjo from a vintage pie pan and a set of plans from 1923 to see how it sounds.
The answer (spoiler:) is that it doesn't live up to its claims, but it does have a lovely, if 'tinny' sound.
Eric has built a Leslie speaker for guitar. This is an effect that modulates the sound by pointing a speaker into a rotating drum and rotating horns.
His is much smaller than a regular Leslie because it simply doesn't need to be that big for this purpose.
I'm sure you've seen signals from plants being used to create music, but this project takes the extra step and uses plant-controlled robot arms to play the music.
Astrofin allows goldfish to control the music, visuals and robotic output.
Coloratura uses wired paintbrushes to allow people to make visual art and music at the same time.
All that remains is for me to thank everyone who blogs, vlogs, writes articles or posts pictures on the subjects I'm excited by.
Nor can I do the things I do without your support, so thank you for that.
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Happy music-making!
Shiela Dixon - Editor / curator
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