Here’s some excerpts from the show– thanks to bee Chris for editing and naming the songs!

You may be able to catch an interview and some more from the show on NPR’s Weekend All Things Considered this Saturday or Sunday. [Update: the interview aired on March 7th and can be read & heard on NPR's site.]

photo: me and two bees with our granny-carts full of junkstruments!

Years ago I was in a gallery show with Mineko Grimmer, who makes sound sculptures of pebbles frozen in ice. As the ice melts, the pebbles drop into a pool or a wooden lattice and make irregular sounds.

I made my own version entirely out of things from my junk drawer: marbles, squashed pennies, old keys and dog tags, and some acorns I was saving in a tiny jar. What does it sound like? I won’t find out until the weather warms up.

Many thanks to Thing-a-Day for inspiring the instrument-a-day project for the second year in a row!

This one didn’t really work out. It was supposed to be a sequel to last year’s automatic tension guitar, but it doesn’t work or sound nearly as good. I’m experimenting with cheap substitutes for the little clapper solenoids I used last year, which are now really hard to find, but so far the results are bad.

And it’s not even automatic! I didn’t get around to rigging up a computer interface, so I’m playing it with the funny little wooden keyboard you can see at the upper right. It sounds like this.
Download audio file (iad27-autobass.mp3)

Very very tiny. I clamped it in steel pliers so I could use a magnetic pickup to record the sound it made. Slowed down by a factor of eight (down three octaves), it sounds like this.
Download audio file (iad26-tinytuningfork.mp3)

It sounds like this. (Video here.)
Download audio file (iad25-mudflail.mp3)

It’s a familiar tune played upside-down and backwards, and then just backwards, and then upside-down and backwards again. Over and over, forever.

It sounds like this. (Video here)
Download audio file (iad24-mobius.mp3)

A drum, some antique wind-up motors (from the Aladdin Toy Motors company of Brooklyn!), and leftover wood from the laser whistles combine to give you a simulation of the sound of a peaceful sunday morning in New York City. It sounds like this. (Video here)
Download audio file (iad23-sundaysim.mp3)

Tower of pot & pan lids wired to an old floor lamp. Yes, I buy my cookware according to its sound; don’t you?

It sounds like this.
Download audio file (iad22-circulonelan.mp3)

Good old-fashioned circuit-bending with a baby-rattling device I found in the trash and slightly modified. Magnetic pickup and contact microphone pick up sound in two different ways.

It sounds like this.
Download audio file (iad21-babyshaker.mp3)

Fruit crate, found twigs, hardware, piezoelectric disc, sewing needle, hot glue, and "Walk This Way" by RUN-D.M.C.

I don’t have a record player, so it was time to make one out of whatever I had lying around. It sounds like this.
Download audio file (iad19-gardengramophone.mp3)

A strong magnet distorts the sound of a music box by warping the tines. It’s recorded through a hand-wound magnetic pickup, and it sounds like this. (There’s no processing added to the sound except for noise reduction.)
Download audio file (iad18-bentmusicbox.mp3)

Thanks to k for the music box!

1/8" steel rod, found wood, hand-wound magnetic pickup, played through a cheap battery-powered amplifier for a bit of that KONONO N°1 sound. Inspired by the chimes made by Nathan Davis for Phyllis Chen (but not made with nearly as much skill or artistry). It’s played with drumsticks.

The steel chimes sound like this (warning: loud! but for best results you should turn it up even louder.)
Download audio file (iad17-steelchimes.mp3)

Another way to use up waste bamboo that was too split up for a wind instrument. Though a real shishi odoshi (deer scarer) would use good bamboo and make a much nicer sound. The sticks are gathered from the park; the pivot is steel rod through an aluminum tube (leftover from the slide guitar).

It sounds like this. (video here)
Download audio file (iad16-shishiodoshi.mp3)

This length of bamboo was going to be a clarinet until it split all down its length, so I took some leftover bits of wire and aluminum tubing and a guitar string from the servo guitar and made this. The shape makes it almost impossible to hold and play at the same time, but eventually it sounds like this.
Download audio file (iad15-leftoversguitar.mp3)

The open tube shape gives a tiny bit of acoustic amplification out the ends, but it’s still not very loud.

A particularly ugly instrument today – a prototype, made mostly of hotglue, for an automatic slide guitar. It’s playing a test pattern which sounds like this.

The park near my house is a collection point for old christmas trees to be recycled. Someone dumped a bunch of bamboo in the pile (christmas bamboo?) so I grabbed a stalk and let it dry for a month. This bamboo really wants to split – in fact, I can hear the flute spontaneously disintegrating in the other room.

This is a Native-American-style flute (two chambers, with an external air passage connecting the two) made with guidance from Sammy Tedder’s page.

It sounds like this.
Download audio file (iad13-bambooflute.mp3)

Two music boxes, alternating notes. Can you recognize either of the tunes?

It sounds like this.
Download audio file (iad12-twinbox.mp3)

Clay pots, wood, brass, and hardware. (The flower pots had a previous life as companions to Trumpet Marine!)

It’s a very windy day today so I wanted to make a windchime. Sorry about the sound quality, but, well, it’s windy. You can hear birds singing and other people’s windchimes in the background. It sounds like this.
Download audio file (iad11-windchime.mp3)

While walking the dog I found a slab of marble in a heap of renovation trash. So of course I took it home and made a gong. Beaten with one wooden drumstick and one plastic-tipped drumstick, it sounds like this.
Download audio file (iad9-marblegong.mp3)

I assembled six more whistles from the pieces I laser-cut yesterday. Six more to go — you can probably guess where this is going. (One of these eight is a prototype that’s not going to be part of the final set.)

They sound like this.
Download audio file (iad8-morewhistles.mp3)

Laser-cut basswood and wood glue. I took a laser cutter class today at NYC Resistor and decided to make whistles based on the classic design of organ pipes. If you have a laser cutter of your own, you can download the plans here.

The wood’s not polished or stained, just burned a nice brown around the edges by the laser. It smells terrible.

I made two sizes of whistle; they sound like this.
Download audio file (iad7-laserwhistles.mp3)

Buddha Box, wire, brass, and conductive foam.

The Buddha Box is a little electronic gadget that plays any of 12 chants over and over again. I wired it up with a brass tablet and drumstick so I can play it like a drum– each hit switches to a new chant. (A little bit of conductive foam on the end of the drumstick muffles the tapping sound.)

It sounds like this.
Download audio file (iad6-buddhabonk.mp3)

Not enough time today to build a harpsichord or a kazoo or something, so in honor of the solution today of the Mystery of the Syrup Smell of New York, I took a jar of fenugreek seeds and played along with a famous movie scene. The results sounded like this.
Download audio file (iad5-zorba.mp3)

p.s. I cooked potatoes with fenugreek a few days ago. Delicious!

Made from a piece of dried up seaweed from a California beach, the mouthpiece from a junked clarinet or something, and a reed cut from the lid of a takeout food container. It sounds like this. (My fingers can only reach two sound holes, so I can only get three notes until I get more practice with breath and lip pressure on the reed.)
Download audio file (iad4-kelphorn.mp3)

Noisemakers that can be cut and folded from a thin sheet of stiff plastic. This is a variation on the drinking straw double reed. They sound like this.
Download audio file (iad3-foldable-squawkers.mp3)

The plastic I used is Avery 11900 Insertable Dividers (this also works great in a Craft-Robo!) To make your own: cut a rectangle about 1.5 by 3 inches. Fold in thirds the long way to make a little burrito, and crease the folds. Cut one end to a blunt-ended triangle as in the photo. Unroll the burrito, cut off the outermost triangle, and re-fold. Squish it between your fingers a bit so that it bulges a little, put the pointy end inside your lips and blow. With some practice you can get a horrible squawk out of it.

Motor, battery, bead garland, and drum.

I made a failed whistle, followed by a squawky plastic double reed which didn’t seem worth calling an instrument-of-the-day. Then I bumped a bead garland off of the sewing table, and as it slowly drizzled over the edge, I had the idea for the rain simulator. It sounds like this. Video here.

Download audio file (iad2-rainsim.mp3)

Monofilament, wooden scraps and dowels, and staples.

It sounds something like this.
Download audio file (iad1-crapharp.mp3)