Assignment #2 Make a Musical Instrument

When making your own musical instrument there are endless of possibilities and for my instrument I wanted to create something different and unique. So the first thing that came to my mind was John Cage and the unique instruments that he made. I decided to go to a thrift store and look around to see what I could find that might be good for a musical instrument. While I was there I found many things which include an old black briefcase, some Christmas ornaments, a child's keyboard, a rubber Frisbee, drumsticks, green Styrofoam, a roll of shiny material with holes, and a plastic toy clamp. Once I got all of these items I needed to make an instrument. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to contain the musical instrument inside the black briefcase in order to make it compact. I also knew that I wanted to incorporate water into the instrument. I then realized that if I filled enough of the Christmas ornaments together and connected them all I may be able to get the water noise that I was looking for. Next I took apart the child's keyboard and I decided to use just the keys and the metal grate that was the speakers. I learned that when I rubbed the drumsticks across the metal grates it created an interesting noise. So I attached one of the metal grates to lid of the briefcase using the shiny material to attach it and the other grate I stuck to the Styrofoam. This made me decided to also attach the keyboard keys to the Styrofoam which made the plastic keyboard keys sound interesting. Next I needed to figure out what to do with the plastic frisbee and I found that if I attached it to the side of the briefcase with the plastic toy clamp then when hitting the frisbee with the drumstick it made a great bass noise. After figuring out how to fit everything into the suitcase I was then done with making my musical instrument and it came together quite well.

Here is the Sound for my Musical Instrument https://soundcloud.com/izzy-deguero/musical-instrument