Massive MIDI Slapophone

Slapping a tube has quite a plucky, satisfying resonance - making them great musical instruments. The Blue Man Group are famous for using them, but here we have a home made unit by Ivan Miranda - played by Lou Wiss. The performance is one thing, but I urge you to check out the build video below, for an intrepid journey into building something on this scale, featuring a lot of prototyping and really high-end DIY design. More from the build video below... 

This project has been in the works for a very long time and finally I got to make it real. I've always loved slapophones, those instruments where you make music hitting pipes of different lengths but I thought I could make it into a midi instrument so it takes less space and it is easier to play. Not sure if I reached any of those goals but it was amazing to see it built and playing it (or with it).

As an extra perk I've finally got _LouWiss_ _to play with something I've built so I don't have to rely on the little musical knowledge I have.

In hindsight having PVC pipes & 3D printed surfaces in the path of the sound wasn't the best of choices and probably the diameters of the pipes weren't tight enough to have the compact contraption working properly although I think it was a cool idea. The hitting mechanism worked good enough as it did the pipe sliding mechanism so even though it works there's room for improvement.

Some of you probably have proper knowledge in the field or good feedback so as always love reading your comments!

More from Lou Wiss

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• Bubblegum: Free Pitch Editor 08-Oct-26
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• Oxygene 50th Anniversary 07-Oct-26
• The Great Debate: Firmware Hacking 07-Oct-26