An instructor of mine once compared mixing a song to baking a cake. The various tracks are the ingredients, and once everything is mixed and baked, as with a cake, those ingredients can’t be deconstructed. Or can they? AI researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory have created an app…

Paweł Zadrożniak’s Floppotron, a desktop orchestra that uses old computer components as musicians, performs one of the greatest ‘80s TV show earworms ever aired with a thrilling rendition of the Airwolf theme. I’m also going to award bonus points for using the clicking sound of a wall of disk drives to recreate the…

Having previously wowed and terrified the world with his singing Furby organ, YouTube’s Look Mum No Computer is back with another musical creation that will appeal to both Star Wars fans and fans of creepy scifi sound effects: lightsaber theremins.

For a short while, listening to popular songs played on old-school calculators was a fun YouTube distraction. Fads come and go a lot faster on the internet, however, which is unfortunate for Casio. It’s releasing an updated version of a popular ‘80s calculator that plays music and a video game—but maybe a few weeks…

Those giant, curvy, concrete towers that rise above nuclear power plants aren’t only useful for cooling superheated water. Once decommissioned, the massive structures can also be used to naturally create amazing sounds and effects when playing instruments inside them.

As if the fear of a looming nuclear war wasn’t enough, Sam Battle, the hacker-musician behind the YouTube channel Look Mum No Computer, hacked together 44 Furby toys to build the world’s first (and hopefully last) singing Furby organ, introducing a whole new element to your nightmares.

By mounting a small camera looking out the sound hole of his guitar, musician Alan Gogoll was able to capture the oscillating wave patterns as each string was plucked. The result is a performance that’s as captivating to watch as it is to hear.

It took Antonio Stradivari months to create one of his instrumental masterpieces, but you can make yourself a tiny wooden violin in just a few hours using popsicle sticks, toothpicks, coffee stirrers, and string. It can’t be used to play Mozart, but you can still pretend to play it whenever your friends start…

Welcome back to Toy Aisle, io9's weekly roundup of the fanciest toys that will have you even more upset you’re not able to make it to the San Diego Comic-Con this year. And if you’ve ever lamented not having an Arnold Schwarzenegger figure that looks like he just took the day off to visit Home Depot, you’ll find…

When you see a 15-piece orchestra full of trumpets, violins, and cellos, you’re probably expecting to hear a little Chopin, or Mozart. But the Rundfunk-Tanzorchester Ehrenfeld (or Radio Dance Orchestra of Ehrenfeld, in english) plays a near perfect rendition of Daft Punk’s Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger in this…

The stories Mari Lesteberg tells won’t put her on the New York Times’ bestseller list, but that doesn’t make them any less fantastic. Watching her simple side-scrolling tale of a little girl venturing into a dark cave isn’t terribly exciting, until you realize the artwork is actually playing the accompanying soundtrack

Last year, artist Neil Mendoza turned a hamster running in a wheel into a talented sketch artist. This year he’s pulled off an even more amazing feat by turning inanimate rocks into a talented (literal) rock band that plays a surprisingly decent cover of The Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun.”

You know those deep feelings of resentment you have towards your parents for the countless hours they made you practice the piano? Arpeggio, a piano-playing robot that could easily perform at Carnegie Hall, is the over-achieving childhood musician your parents secretly always wanted.

For electronic musicians who still like being able to perform with dials and buttons, Teenage Engineering’s Pocket Operators are miniature synths that manage to pack a tremendous amount of functionality into a tiny package. And that now includes the ability to import and export sounds and patterns with the new PO-32…

At no point in the history of humanity did anyone ever ask for a bagpipe-playing robot that would never get tired. But this is exactly what Instructables’ XenonJohn has built with his Ardu McDuino bot that uses a pair of 3D-printed prosthetic hands to autonomously play a bagpipe’s chanter. Thanks?

Though musicians like David Bowie found ways to incorporate the Stylophone’s unique sound into their music, the tiny synthesizer has mostly been considered nothing more than a musical toy. But Dubreq wants to change that with a new feature-packed version of the Stylophone that might finally legitimize the toy as a…

You no longer have to be a Stradivarius, a Gibson, or even a Steinway to make your own musical instruments. Anyone with access to a 3D printer and this simple software, developed by Autodesk Research, can turn any 3D model into a wind instrument capable of playing a variety of different notes.

Invented in 1850 by French violin maker Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume, the absurdly oversized viola called the Octobasse, standing almost 12-feet tall, dwarfs anyone who tries to play it. But it’s a real instrument, designed to produce low, rumbling notes to accompany the rest of an orchestra.