by Emily Hall

Created on: January 16, 2009   Last Updated: May 14, 2012

Most people have made a musical instrument at some point in their education - at play school you might make a rattle or shaker, and sometimes in school or craft groups students end up making instruments. However, designing your own musical instruments can be more challenging and interesting. Making instruments doesn't have to be the preserve of young children - adults can enjoy it as well, particularly when the design aspect is introduced.

Beginning your project doesn't have to mean a big financial outlay on tools and materials. For your first instrument making project, it is a good idea to use recycled materials or junk you would have thrown out anyway - that way it won't matter if you blunder! Recycled materials aren't just for beginners, either - I wrote my college dissertation on recycled instruments, and discovered that they can sound weird and wonderful in their own right.

The first decision you need to make is what kind of instrument you want to build. Percussion instruments have a high success rate, whereas strings may require more work and woodwind or brass style instruments often require advanced techniques. Percussion instruments are certainly not limited to drums and un-pitched instruments - if you want to make a pitched percussion instrument, the sky's the limit! You could also think about designing a hybrid instrument - a friend of mine made a very successful combination cajon/mbira out of an old tool chest which sounds fantastic. The two original instruments come from different countries, are entirely different sounding - one pitched, one not - and he had to make the mbira part about ten times bigger than a normal one to accommodate the size of the cajon, but it worked!

If you want to design an instrument completely from scratch, there are a number of points to consider before beginning to build. If it is a string or percussion instrument, you will need to make sure there is a resonating chamber to amplify the sound of the string, key, skin etc. Good resonating chambers pick up the vibrations that you make when you play the instrument - for example, the body of a violin resonates when the player bows or plucks the string, because the vibrations from the string are transmitted to the sound box via the bridge. Another good example is a tubular drum, such as those on a drum kit - when the player strikes the skin of the drum, the sound echoes down into the body of the drum and is amplified. Anyone who has played an unplugged electric guitar will

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