Music

DJ Baja Blast’s Desktop Laser Harp Measures Hand Speed While Adding Tilt and Distance Controls

By Bill Smith November 4, 2026

Photo credit: DJ Baja Blast
Derrick, who goes by DJ Baja Blast, spent years turning a lingering idea into a finished desktop instrument after seeing a laser music installation at Meow Wolf in Santa Fe. Version 2 of his laser harp sits in a frame of cherry and walnut, finished with hardwax oil after careful sanding and some epoxy work to close imperfect miter joints. Fourteen low-power lasers aim downward at light-dependent resistors mounted in the base. Each resistor sits in a voltage divider so the Teensy 4.1 microcontroller can watch the analog signal in real time.

LEGO Greenlights Fan-Designed Daft Punk Alive 2007 Pyramid Stage Set

By Bill Smith October 22, 2026

Fans of the French electronic duo have waited years for something like this. On October 22, 2026, the LEGO Group and Daft Punk announced a new partnership that brings the robots into the brick universe, and the first concrete step is an official set recreating the glowing pyramid stage from the 2007 Alive tour.

Apple Music Unveils New Logo Crafted Directly from Sound Waves

By Jackson Chung October 21, 2026

Apple Music introduced its updated brand identity on October 21, 2026, built around the idea that sound itself should generate the visuals. British producer Fred Again and the sound design studio NEST Acoustics created a short original composition that serves as both a sonic signature and the source material for the new look. That piece runs through a transducer, a device that turns an audio signal into physical vibration, placed inside a shallow tank of mineral oil.

Sony’s $5,900 Gold Plated NW-WM1ZM3 Walkman Machines Oxygen Free Copper Into a Portable Flagship

By Jackson Chung October 15, 2026

Sony still builds Walkman players long after most people stopped carrying dedicated music devices, and the new flagship arrives with a price of $5,899.99. Pre-orders opened in mid-October 2026 for the NW-WM1ZM3, a Signature Series model whose body is precision-milled from oxygen-free copper of 99.99 percent purity and then gold-plated. The rear chassis uses the same copper, and even the screws receive a gold treatment chosen for low electrical resistance and a more stable ground path. That combination adds real mass: the finished player measures roughly 86 by 157.6 by 23.2 millimeters and weighs about 670 grams.

Drum Machina Go Puts a Four Voice Drum Machine Inside a 1989 Game Boy

By Bill Smith October 1, 2026

Nintendo shipped the original Game Boy in 1989 with a sound chip small enough to live on batteries for hours, and that same chip is now running a full drum machine. Drum Machina Go!, shortened to DMGo!, treats those four voices as a step sequencer you can carry in a coat pocket. Two of them are pulse waves, the square tones behind so many early game soundtracks. One is a programmable waveform. The last is noise, the hiss and crackle that usually stands in for explosions and static.

Apple Music Hall’s 600 Seat Spatial Stage Opens at Battersea Power Station

By Jackson Chung September 27, 2026

Battersea Power Station has loomed over the Thames since Giles Gilbert Scott finished the last of its brick towers in 1955, a coal plant so large it later sat empty for decades and still owes half its fame to the inflatable pig Pink Floyd parked between the chimneys for the 1977 Animals sleeve. Apple already keeps its its UK headquarters and a store inside the redeveloped complex. On September 28, 2026 the company adds Apple Music Hall, a 600-seat room built to stage a concert, lock a Spatial Audio mix, and send a multicamera feed around the world from the same night.

Burls Art Built a Playable Guitar With No Neck or Body Using Aircraft Cable and a Bed Frame

By Bill Smith September 23, 2026

Burl of Burls Art wondered how far you could strip a guitar before it stopped being one. He pulled the neck off, then placed the remains on tensioned aviation cable and attempted to play the creation. The experiment began as a side question when he was working on another project in his newly constructed garage. He kept going until he was left with only the Telecaster’s hardware, six strings, and a row of metal bars.

Jonathan Rowny Built an MP3 Player That Only Plays on Tape Decks

By Jackson Chung September 19, 2026

Jonathan Rowny has been feeling nostalgic again, and this time the answer is a cassette that holds no magnetic tape. His player looks like a mixtape, fits a standard deck, and stays silent until the mechanism starts to turn. Songs live on a microSD card inside the shell. Sound leaves through a real tape head pressed against the deck’s own head, so the old machine treats digital files as if they were oxide sliding past at walking speed.

Custom Hammond Organ Boasts Hand-Cranked Tonewheels and Twelve Keys That Sing Through Steel

By Jackson Chung August 22, 2026

Uri Tuchman decided a musician friend needed a present that could actually make noise. He chose the Hammond organ, that old electromechanical machine whose spinning iron disks and magnetic coils once filled churches and stages with pure tones. Instead of a full console, he built a single octave version he could turn by hand. The result sits somewhere between a careful reconstruction and a living demonstration of how sound can come from metal moving past a coil.

Six Years of Quiet Work Built a Pair of Robots That Make an Acoustic Guitar Play Itself, Called MegCell Pulse

By Jackson Chung August 15, 2026

After long evenings spent designing mechanisms and calibrating movement, a New Zealand engineer named Bruce finished a system that mounts directly onto an ordinary acoustic guitar and turns digital tablature into live string vibration. He calls it MegCell Pulse. Two coordinated robots handle the work of human hands. One presses the strings against the frets. The other plucks them with six individual plectrums. The sound that reaches the room is the actual instrument speaking, complete with the body resonance and the space around it.