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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.
In which countries are you likely to have fast, secure, uncensored, and affordable internet no matter which device you’re on? A new report from eSIM company Saily shows the best options around the world, with the first 13 all being in Europe and then Australia, Singapore, and Canada coming next. Use the little gray scroll bar on the right of the full list to keep going and find the USA at #23 and UK at #27. Inexpensive travel/nomad destinations punching above their wealth include Poland, Romania, Lithuania, and the Czech Republic, all in the top-20. (Need an eSIM for an upcoming trip? Use our exclusive Saily code NOMADICO at checkout after choosing your destination and get 10% off.)
Best U.S. Airports for International Deals
The generically named Going.com was formerly Scott’s Cheap Flights and they know a thing or two about finding airfare bargains. They recently published their annual Flight Deal Awards for the USA and highlighted the airports that consistently see the best flight bargains. For international travel, you’re most likely to find great flight deals from large airports JFK (NYC), Logan (Boston), and Los Angeles, or smaller airports in Raleigh, Pittsburgh, and Portland. If you’re looking to cash in points instead of paying, your best bets in order are New York City (JFK again), Chicago, Boston, L.A., San Francisco, and DC.
Boring but Important: Good Socks
I once met a traveler in his late ‘60s who had just spent a week hiking around Torres del Paine in Patagonia, Chile. I asked him if he had any advice for someone planning a trip like that. Without hesitation he said, “Invest in good socks.” I’m about to throw away a pair of hiking socks from Darn Tough Vermont that I’ve been wearing for 14 years, on probably 100 hikes. They’re my favorite brand for a good reason. When I plopped down $24 for a pair while shopping with my daughter recently she saw the total and said, “For socks?!” I told her they were worth it and that I’d still be using them a decade from now. Get them at Amazon or at most quality outdoor/travel clothing stores.
A weekly newsletter with four quick bites, edited by Tim Leffel, author of A Better Life for Half the Price and The World’s Cheapest Destinations. See past editions here, where your like-minded friends can subscribe and join you.
