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Best DIY instrument how-to
Here are three great guides for making your own musical instruments. Advantages of making your own: 1) Personalized, 2) Cheaper, 3) Types no one else sells, 4) Satisfaction of making. There is not much overlap of instruments featured between these three books. The coolest of the three guides is Making Gourd Musical Instruments. It has very explicit step-by-step instructions for making 60 instruments using lightweight gourds as the sound amplifiers. Gourds enable wind, string and percussion instruments – so you could make an entire orchestra. This book has the most variety of musical options and great examples of world-wide traditional instruments for inspiration. If you can get only one of these three books, this should be it.
Making Musical Instruments by Hand is a good guide for making instruments from wood and wood veneers. Their builds are a little more complex resulting in instruments that may look more “professional.” They require a bit more skills and tools, although none out of the ordinary.
But if you are making your own instruments, why not make ones that have never existed before? Sound Designs, an older book, lays out helpful hints for making 50 different unorthodox instruments using salvage materials. It stresses innovative interpretations: how about oxygen bottles for bells, or electrical conduit xylophones? Its intent is to encourage you to not just make your own musical instruments, but to invent them as well. – KK
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A cool tool can be any book, gadget, software, video, map, hardware, material, or website that is tried and true. All reviews on this site are written by readers who have actually used the tool and others like it. Items can be either old or new as long as they are wonderful. We post things we like and ignore the rest. Suggestions for tools much better than what is recommended here are always wanted.
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I am the Head of Community at Boltplus.tv, where I also host my very own free, online Star Trek quiz show. — Spanner Spencer
PHYSICAL
Mini Portable Keychain Light: A very minor purchase to take an order over the threshold for free delivery, this mini keyring light turned out to be the best item of the lot. The LED is incredibly bright, it charges from a USB-C (and we have those cables all over the house), lasts for ages, and the magnet on the back means we can keep it on the fridge for easy access.
XD Design Bobby Hero Regular, Anti-theft backpack, cherry red: I loved the style but felt this was a bit pricey. I bought it anyway, and it's been outstanding. The shape is excellent and sits quite high on your back, making it distribute the weight really well. It fits more than you'd think, and I love the built-in USB port that lets you put a power bank inside it even when it's zipped up. Pockets everywhere, streamlined (fits under an airplane seat), very rugged, and beautiful styling.
Gerber MP600 Multi-Plier Bladeless: I've had this for over 25 years, and it's still like new. With a bit of practice, you can use it one handed, including opening, closing and using all tools. One of the reasons it's lasted so well is the saw can be replaced with standard jigsaw blades, which is an invaluable feature.
DIGITAL
Joplin Multimedia Notes: Fantastic, free notes app that's fully encrypted and can be synced across all your devices. Works across computer, tablets and mobile. I have thousands of notes now, and sync them through a free Nextcloud account to keep it completely secure and private. A gigabyte gives you more notes storage than you could ever use.
Tab Digital Free Nextcloud: Nextcloud is a bit like Google Drive, but you can host it yourself. Or you can go to somewhere like Tab Digital which lets you have 8GB of storage in a Nextcloud account for free. Then you can also use it to sync your encrypted Joplin notes.
INVISIBLE
"Where is the universe?"
In the classic John Carpenter film Big Trouble in Little China, there's an invaluable quote from character Egg Shen that's the perfect way to stop stupid or obstructive questions and comments in their tracks!
"Where am I supposed to put this?" Channel your Egg Shen, and respond: "Where is the universe?"
"Where's that work you were supposed to be doing?" "Where is the universe?"
"Where's my coffee?" "Where is the universe?"
What’s in your NOW?
We want to know what’s in your now — a list of 6 things that are significant to you now — 3 physical, 2 digital and 1 invisible.