Keep sending in your garden instruments (you have until September 01, 2008) for a chance to win special prizes and the public recognition your “moon-powered clanker passed down from your great grandfather” deserves!
Garden Instrument Contest Link

This is a wild reinvention of the classic thumb piano (kalimba). By turning a spool, the user can change the lengths of the reeds while they are vibrating. The design is such that almost any thin strip of metal can be inserted into the instrument (last half of video).
From Jamoflage on youtube:

“I love [...]

From Wouter Baeck, an amazing musician, sculptor, painter, and musical instrument creator.
“An ancient instrument came to live. Based on a thin long straight bamboo reed tied up with a thread on a small bamboo mouth piece. Protected by a gourd. Double pipe made out of bamboo or elder wood, and always with [...]

The “50 Particles in a Three-Dimensional Harmonic Potential” is a 10-minute composition derived from the algorithms explained in the “Sonification of Particle Systems via de Broglie’s Hypothesis.” The composition is broken up into 5 movements (listed below), each 120 seconds long. You do not have to be a physicist in order to enjoy [...]

These ingenious illustrations are from the book De Naturae Simia written by the very controversial physicist, astrologer, philosopher, and mystic Robert Fludd (1574-1637) who was first to discuss the concept of blood circulation. Maybe this is why so many of his instruments seem to involve hydraulics.

Somebody pinch me, please…

“The microphone has a remarkable contact point design, through which it can detect minute sounds that are virtually inaudible to the human ear, such as an ant’s footsteps or the heart beat of a snail.”
Instead of using a traditional diaphragm, this microphone uses a small “pin” which, on contact with a sounding [...]