Junkyard Jam Band: DIY Musical Instruments and Noisemakers

Making music doesn’t have to be about dropping big bucks in the guitar shop or endlessly fiddling with expensive software. You can make good noise out of bits of wood and wire, plastic and steel. When you build your own instruments, creating your own sound comes naturally.

Junkyard Jam Band is a step-by-step guide to making a full array of complete musical projects—no previous carpentry or electronics experience required. Each build includes tips on how to coax the best sounds out of the instrument and encourages you to mod the project to fit your own style. Learn how to:

• Bust up your old tape decks for a handheld old-skool Scratchbox
• Give your voice a robotic makeover with the Droid Voicebox
• Circuit-bend unsuspecting childhood toys into mutant glitching jazz-punk machines
• Transform cigar boxes into thumb pianos and electric ukuleles
• Build a crackling, multifunction Mud-n-Sizzle Preamp to attach to any electric music machine

Along the way, you’ll explore the physics behind wind instruments, discover how harmonics work, and get your feet wet with some music theory. To top it all off, the back of the book includes a soldering primer for total beginners, along with extra circuits to customize your instruments even further.Build your own band your way!

Table of Contents

Part I: Quick Projects and Tinkering
Project 1: The Slinkiphone
Project 2: The Plasti-Pickup
Project 3: The Elephant Trumpet
Project 4: The CPVC Slide Whistle
Project 5: The Scratchbox
Project 6: The Droid Voicebox
Project 7: Circuit Bending for Beginners
Project 8: Junkshop Percussion

Part II: Weekend Projects
Project 9: The Playing-Card Pickup
Project 10: The Robo-Tiki Steel-Stringed Ukulele
Project 11: The Twang & Roar Kalimba
Project 12: The Mud-n-Sizzle Preamp
Project 13: The Universal LFO
Project 14: The Twin-T Phaser/Wah
Project 15: The Single-Chip Space Invader Synth
Project 16: The Bleepbox 8-Step Analog Sequencer

Appendix A: Electronic Components, Tools, and Skills
Appendix B: Extra Circuits
Appendix C: Music Theory Crash Course