With my own hands. Of course, making a violin or piano without special training, materials, or equipment at home is unprepared for this species the master will not succeed in his activities. And this is a fact that should be accepted unconditionally. But our article will tell those interested how to make fairly simple musical instruments with their own hands.
Where to find source material for crafts
Any object from which sound can be extracted is considered musical. And this is practically everything that surrounds us! If you carefully follow one-year-old babies, then it will become clear: the headboard of an iron bed, when hit with a spoon, makes a melodious ringing, similar to the sound of a metallophone. And if you knock wooden spoons on the table and chairs, you will get an amazing resemblance
It turns out that we are surrounded by continuous musical instruments! You just need to decorate them with your own hands in the right way, collect them in one place and place the “musician” next to them.
Gift for a drummer
For example, a beautiful one is made from a set of pans, lids and wooden sticks. Pencils, wooden spoons, and brushes are suitable as the latter. You can also carve special sticks for a beginning drummer from wood.
As you can see from the photo, making these with your own hands is quite simple. For beauty, you can even come up with a special emblem and decorate each item with it. For “plates”, metal lids mounted on a stand are suitable. By the way, metal buckets, mugs, bowls, basins will coexist wonderfully next to the pots. The main thing in this matter is to choose containers various sizes, which are capable of making different sounds.
Tool for spoons
Everyone knows such a Russian as spoons. Even solo numbers are practiced, where the performers manage to perform quite interesting compositions.
You can expand the capabilities of spoon musicians by creating an entire installation for them. It will require a wooden matryoshka doll. By arranging them in ascending volume, you can get an excellent installation tool.
DIY Guiro
Skilled woodworkers can make quite professional musical instruments. Handmade ratchets are also of interest to musicians today.
Initially, guiros were made from the fruits of the gourd tree, on which notches were made. Its place of origin is considered Latin America. Modern guiros are musical instruments made by hand from solid wood with notches along which a scraper called a “pua” should be driven. The musician thus produces interesting chirping sounds when accompanying singing or performing his part in an orchestra.
Today, these kinds of musical instruments appear, made by hand from metal or plastic tubes. In Russia, rattles made of wooden planks with notches were an analogue of guiro.
Maracas, shakers - rattles
You can make musical noise instruments with your own hands from a variety of containers. Metal coffee cans, plastic yogurt bottles, Kinder surprise egg cartons, etc. are suitable for crafts. wooden boxes and even inner cylinders from paper towels or toilet paper made of cardboard. Only the latter need to be sealed at both ends so that you can put anything there. A shaker is also made from two disposable cups, gluing them together with tape.
To create a sound effect, grains, sand, small pebbles, beads, shot, and buttons are placed inside the container. You can attach handles to round containers and paint them with acrylic paints. Then you get very beautiful musical noise instruments, which you can build with your own hands from scrap materials.
Castanets
Children love to make the most beautiful things together with adults. various crafts. Musical instruments You can also do it yourself at home.
You can make castanets using two large buttons with loops attached to them. These devices are worn on the thumb and middle fingers. The castanets knock when they touch and a sound is produced.
From absolutely unnecessary things, prepared for disposal in the trash, you can make enough interesting crafts. Do-it-yourself musical instruments are created by gluing covers onto cardboard pieces, after which the blanks need to be fastened together by folding them perpendicular to each other.
Tambourine
Children's musical instruments often contain bells and bells that ring beautifully. You can hang them on an empty paper towel cylinder or along the edges of disposable plates taped together. It is best to fold the latter asymmetrically.
Having brightly colored the instruments made in this way, you can use them in a children's noise orchestra.
Whistles and pipes
Easy to make DIY ones that produce sounds when the performer blows into them. They are made from the hollow stems of grass blades, the bark of twigs, plastic handles, cocktail straws. If the latter are cut diagonally at different lengths, you can get whistles that produce different sounds.
Whistles are also made from bean, pea or acacia pods. In childhood, everyone “played” such a musical instrument at least once.
Craftsmen make pipes from wood by cutting holes in hollow tubes. But this requires special skill. No less difficult - and just as interesting! - make a toy whistle from clay or salt dough. Usually a version of the “Dymkovo” toy is used here. Although you can make a little thing by hiding a ready-made whistle inside. Having made several of these toys that make sounds different heights, you can even play some tunes on them.
You can make homemade musical instruments with your own hands from almost nothing. Here, for example, is a cap from a plastic bottle, on which is stretched a piece of rubber cut from a broken balloon, will become a fascinating toy for a child.
You can also use empty bottles as a whistle. If you blow into the inlet from top to bottom, applying the container only to the lower lip and holding it vertically, you can make amazing sounds! Musicians change the inclination of the “instrument”, the distance between the lips and the hole of the bubble, the force of blowing air, and different melodies are born.
"Litrophon" or "singing bottles"
Today, more and more often, performers with such interesting instruments appear on stage that you are amazed! And what don’t they make them from! You can make it yourself, for example, from bottles or wine glasses, filling them with water.
Different heights of sounds produced are achieved by the amount of liquid poured, the material used to make the dishes, and changes in the volume of the container. The less water is poured, the thinner the sound. For beauty and convenience, the liquid is tinted.
Harp, or “musical comb”
Taking an ordinary flat comb (“hedgehog” will not work), you need to cover the location of the teeth with foil or tissue paper. By blowing into this simple instrument you can make cool rattling sounds.
Talented musicians from the stages perform various musical compositions on the harpa, including classical ones. Particularly interesting is this instrument, made from a comb with different thicknesses teeth
The main theme of Oginsky’s “Polonaise” or the melody of a folk song/hit comes out surprisingly similar to the original!
DIY guitar
This is truly amazing! But you can even make a guitar with your own hands from scrap materials, or simply from trash.
Closed ones are used as a basis. carton boxes, empty flat plastic bottles from under the shampoo. Of course, the sound of the instrument will depend on the material of the guitar frame and the size of the hole cut in it.
It is also important to choose the right strings for your guitar. Most often, they take stationery or aviation rubber bands and pull them with different forces.
So now you don’t need to run to the children’s toy store if your baby is capricious. After all, you can simply make an exciting toy for him - a musical instrument that will become the child’s most beloved and expensive thing.
Celtic harp for dolls (master class)We will need:
Thick and thin cardboard, a piece of wire, PVA glue, Moment glue,
Slip from any self-hardening plastic for soil,
toilet paper, acrylic paints, awl, toothpicks, wire cutters,
gold threads with lavsan, acrylic varnish.
First, of course, a sketch
Then I bend the wire according to the sketch - this will be the frame.
I cut out 2 pieces from cardboard according to the sketch.
I wrap the frame with a strip of fabric and glue it to one of the halves of the cardboard blank.
I glue both parts together.
I fill the voids between the parts with paper soaked in PVA.
Then I prime everything.
I'm priming everything again.
I pierce a lot of holes through with an awl (For those who want to make an instrument from plywood or wood - this step is unlikely to be feasible, the distance is too small) and on the sides I glue a pattern cut out of cardboard.
I cut identical pins from toothpicks with wire cutters and insert them into the holes.
The top row is an awl all the way through, the bottom row is halfway, only on one side.
And insert: First, cut identical pegs, then lubricate the holes with glue. While it dries, grease the pegs with glue and insert them into the holes, leveling the row so that everything is level. The glue sets within 1-2 minutes. During this time, you need to have time to trim everything. You can place a ruler on top and gently tap with a hammer. And then let it dry well. Better until the morning.))))
I paint the entire instrument with acrylic. I varnish it.
The last stage is tensioning the strings.
I make a knot at the end of the thread, lubricate it with Moment glue and insert it into the lower hole on the resonator. I wait about 5 minutes for it to dry and harden, then I carefully pull it and wrap it around the top peg, lubricated with glue. And in this way I stretch all the remaining strings. The process is quite long, but pleasantly meditative..))))
That's all.
For those who want to do the same from plywood or mahogany - a flag in their hands...
And my principle is that the thing should be light and made from affordable and cheap materials
I want to tell you how I made the harp. The project turned out to be as budget-friendly as possible.
It all started with collecting information. I didn’t find any freely available drawings, and it was difficult to find a simple description of the design. As a result, I took a photo of the model I liked and redrew it in AutoCAD.
I printed the drawings in life size, glued it together and figured out what it would look like. Seems normal. 
I usually glue the prints directly onto the boards and saw and drill directly into them.
The resonator frame was made of spruce. 
The boards were adjusted to each other and secured with glue, confirmats and corners. 
I made the decks from plywood; I bought suitable scraps from hardware store.
The top deck has a glued board (string bar), it will hold the load of string tension. Up and down. 
Bottom deck with holes 
I made cuts in the frame for the string bar and a stop for the harp column. 
For the neck and column I got an ash board. Marked and sawed 
I figured out how it would go together. 
I processed the parts with a plane, rasp and file, giving them shape.
I used beech pins to connect the neck and column. Glue - epoxy resin, mixed with sawdust. There were a lot of them) 
I had to tinker with the dimensions so as not to miss the mark, and then fix the details. There weren’t enough hands and space, the seam turned out to be too wide. 
I cut and attached the stop at the base of the neck. This part distributes the load and ensures that the neck moves relative to the axis of the deck. 
WITH reverse side It is recommended to additionally strengthen the neck and column with a wooden or metal plate (patch). I found stamped sheet metal at a hardware store and used that. 
I collect all the parts, connect them with wood glue and confirmations. 
To decorate the edges of the resonator, I used a wooden corner. I wanted to use a narrower one, but the construction store didn’t have one, and I was too lazy to go look for it. Useful school lessons geometry for constructing the bisector of an angle with a compass and ruler) 
I glued the corners with wood glue. 
Crevices and problem areas I went over it with putty, then sanded everything. Paint, varnish.
To pass the strings through the top soundboard, I used pop rivets with a wide head. 
I didn’t want to buy virbels (pegs), and taking an ancient piano for spare parts didn’t seem right to me either, so I found these screws. If you choose the right drill diameter, they can be screwed into wood with force. I drilled holes in the large screws for attaching the strings, and used the small ones as stops. 
An additional advantage is that for tuning you now need a standard hexagon, and not a tetrahedron for conventional virbels which I consider archaic.
I tightened the screws and tightened the strings. 
I glued a magnet to store the setup key. Doesn't rattle. 
It turned out something like this: 
The strings became a problem. So far I've used guitar strings and thick fishing line. The fishing line sounds bad, over time I will replace it with normal strings.
There are also no levers (a lever that raises a note by a semitone), but I don’t need them yet.
In terms of money it turned out like this:
ash board - 900
spruce board - 150
plywood, trimmings - 150
corner profile - 200
epoxy glue - 150
wood glue - 150
hardware (screws, confirmations, corners) - 700
strings, fishing line - 600
key - 100
Total: 3,000
I had varnish and paint, I don’t take them into account. I also didn’t take into account consumables like drill bits and jigsaw files, but everything seems to be intact.
The harp sounds, but requires replacing the strings with something more serious. Once the strings have stretched out, the tuning hardly floats away. 
The recording is very bad and I don’t know how to play, but it sounds something like this:
We use a huge number of things every day and have almost stopped noticing them. But it turns out that in the production of things that seem insignificant at first glance, there is a lot of interesting and educational stuff hidden. The entertainment program “Conveyor MK” will reveal the secrets of making the simplest things at first glance. Today on the program: .
The harp is one of the most ancient musical instruments of mankind. The origin of the harp begins with a bow with a stretched string. The harps depicted on frescoes from Egyptian tombs (benths) still resemble bows in their shape, and these harps are not the most ancient; the oldest harp was discovered by archaeologists during excavations of a Sumerian city in Mesopotamia; its age is estimated at four and a half thousand years. The harp is mentioned more than once in the Bible; it was the most common and beloved musical instrument in the ancient Near East, Greece, and Rome. Apollo's harp is a symbol of beauty and romance.
The harp came to Europe at the beginning of the Middle Ages and was very popular, especially in Ireland, where its image is still used in many state symbols, including the coat of arms and the presidential flag.
The harp was constantly improved, in early XVIII century, the German master Hochbrucker from Donauwörth (Bavaria, Germany) invented harp pedals, which made it possible to increase the chromatic scale and make it easier to play the harp. Almost a century later, in 1810, piano maker Sébastien Erard created a harp with double-action pedals. These pedals can be used to tune a string twice, raising the sound by a semitone and a tone, and thereby provide a chromatic scale in a range of six and a half octaves.
The harp has a triangular shape, strings are pulled onto the frame, currently 45-47 strings are used, but in different times and at different nations their number ranged from 7 to 30. It is considered one of the most beautiful instruments in the orchestra. Its frame is decorated with carvings and ornaments, sometimes gold and mother-of-pearl, and its graceful outlines hide its triangular shape. The weight of the harp can reach 20 kilograms.
The virtuoso capabilities of the harp are quite unique: it perfectly manages wide chords, passages of arpeggias, glissando - sliding the hand along all the strings tuned to some chord, harmonics.
The first harp in Russia appeared during the time of Catherine II. In 1765, the queen purchased a harp for the students of the Smolny Institute, and the instrument immediately became fashionable among the aristocratic community. “Only those who are free and noble play the harp,” said the poet.
As a spectacular solo and as an accompanying instrument, the harp was widely used and loved by leading Russian composers: N. Rimsky-Korsakov, P. Tchaikovsky, M. Glinka, S. Rachmaninov, S. Prokofiev and many others. Of the European composers, the harp was most widely used by G. Berlioz, R. Wagner and F. Liszt. Richard Wagner used six harps in the orchestra in his opera Das Rheingold, but usually one or two harps are used in the orchestra.
IN ideo:
Stringed musical instrument. It is believed that the beauty of one's appearance she surpasses all her neighbors in the orchestra. Its graceful outlines hide the shape of a triangle, and the metal frame is decorated with carvings. Strings (47-48) of different lengths and thicknesses are pulled onto the frame, which form a transparent mesh. At the beginning of the 19th century, the ancient harp was improved by the famous piano maker Erard. He found a way to quickly change the length of the strings and thereby the pitch of the harp.
The virtuoso capabilities of the harp are quite unique: it perfectly manages wide chords, passages of arpeggias, glissando - sliding the hand along all the strings tuned to some chord, harmonics.
Origin
One of the oldest musical instruments of mankind. It came from a bow with a stretched string, which sounded melodiously when fired. Later, the sound of the bowstring began to be used as a signal. The man who first pulled three or four strings onto a bow, which, due to their unequal length, produced sounds of different pitches, became the creator of the first harp. Even in Egyptian frescoes from the 15th century BC, harps still resemble a bow. And these harps are not the most ancient: archaeologists found the oldest during excavations of the Sumerian city of Ur in Mesopotamia - it was made four and a half thousand years ago, in the 26th century BC.
In ancient times in the East, Greece and Rome, the harp remained one of the most common and favorite instruments. It was often used to accompany singing or playing other instruments. The harp appeared early and in medieval Europe: here Ireland was famous for the special art of playing it, where folk singers - bards - sang their sagas to its accompaniment.
Device
It has the shape of a triangle, which consists of: firstly, a resonant box body approximately 1 meter long, expanding downward; its previous shape was quadrangular, but the current one is rounded on one side; it is equipped with a flat soundboard, usually made of maple wood, in the middle of which, along the length of the body, is attached a narrow and thin strip of hard wood, in which holes are punched for piercing the gut strings; secondly, from the upper part (in the form large sizes neck), snake-like curved, attached to the top of the body, forming an acute angle with it; Pegs are attached to this part to strengthen the strings and tune them; thirdly, from a front beam shaped like a column, the purpose of which is to resist the force produced by the strings stretched between the fingerboard and the resonant body.
Since the harp already had a significant sound volume (five octaves) in the past, and the room for the strings of the full chromatic scale is not enough, the strings in the harp are stretched only to produce the sounds of the diatonic scale. On a harp without a pedal, you can only play one scale. For chromatic raises in earlier times, the strings had to be shortened by pressing the fingers against the fingerboard; later this pressing began to be done with the help of hooks driven by hand. Such harps turned out to be extremely inconvenient for performers; These shortcomings were largely eliminated by a pedal mechanism invented by Jacob Hochbrucker in 1720. This master attached seven pedals to the harp, acting on conductors that passed through the empty space of the beam to the fingerboard and there brought the hooks into such a position that they, firmly adhering to the strings, they produced chromatic enhancements throughout the entire volume of the instrument.
The role of the harp in the orchestra
The role of the harp in the orchestra not so much emotional as colorful. The harp often accompanies different instruments orchestra; other times she is given spectacular solos. There are many of them in the ballets of Tchaikovsky, Glazunov, and in the works of Rimsky-Korsakov. Of the Western European composers of the 19th century, the harp was most widely used by Berlioz, Meyerbeer, Wagner and Liszt. The famous part of two harps in the “Waltz” from Berlioz’s “Symphony Fantastique” laid the foundation for the virtuoso style that has become leading in the last three centuries. Previously, from its appearance in the symphony orchestra of the 18th century until Berlioz, the harp imitated the sound of a harp (like Glinka’s in “The Aragonese Hunt”) or a harpsichord. The harp was also used in cases where it was necessary to evoke an association with antiquity. Examples include Gluck's Orpheus or Beethoven's Prometheus.
An orchestra usually uses one or two harps, but in some cases their number increases. Thus, in Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Mlad” there are three harps, and in Wagner’s “Das Rheingold” there are six.
Famous harpists
Nikola Boxa
Marcel Grandjani
Vera Dulova
Marcel Tournier
Tatyana Tower
Nadezhda Tolstaya
Alphonse Hasselmans
Ksenia Erdeli
Olga Erdeli
Papisova Anastasia
Natalia O'Shea
Video: Harp on video + sound
Thanks to these videos, you can get acquainted with the instrument, watch a real game on it, listen to its sound, and feel the specifics of the technique:
Sale: where to buy/order?
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