Whether fruit or robotics, electronics and music come together in delicious ways. Make features projects like this drum machine robot (above) and Makey Makey banana piano (below). Photos courtesy Make.

Whether fruit or robotics, electronics and music come together in delicious ways. Make features projects like this drum machine robot (above) and Makey Makey banana piano (below). Photos courtesy Make.

Musical instruments remain some of the best ways to learn about the wonders of electronics, physics, and more. Our friends at Make are showing that off with a week of DIY projects at what they’re calling Maker Camp 2013. Staged in Google+ Hangouts, so anyone can participate. Friday’s guests include some of our favorite electronic musicians: Zöe Keating and (CDM 2013 MusicMakers participant) Imogen Heap.

Here’s how it works: morning North American time, you see projects and materials, then watch a video hangout to get extra tips and communication. There’s another project for the weekend.

Next up: later today is a DIY taiko drum machine and roaming robot drum machine.

I’m really keen to hear what people do with this – especially because years ago you readers had bugged us to do things just like this, but online tools (and bandwidth at our venues) hadn’t quite caught up. (In fact, we even did some things with Make in the MusicMakers aka Handmade Music series!) So if you do follow along, I’d love feedback on what worked and what you’d like to see! We’re always in summer camp mode.

Join in by checking out the schedule:
http://makezine.com/maker-camp/schedule/

bananapiano

And here are some of the videos so far…

A banana piano with Makey Makey (including creator Jay Silver) and OK Go’s Damian Kulash – Music on Plates:

Sound artist Jesse Seay’s circuit bending project, solar xylophone, and thumb piano:

A bow guitar and a ukelele made of recycled parts, plus” Walter Kitundu’s nature-powered hand-built record players, Krys Bobrowski’s kelp horns, [and] Zeke Leonard’s cigar box guitars”: