I like IKEA.

I think they have a great business model, great design strategy, great associates, great plan for world domination.

I like DIY instruments. Anytime someone can go to Home Depot, IKEA, use found materials to create new sounds, I am interested.

Imagine my surprise when over at IKEA Hacker, a site dedicated to using IKEA furniture components in unique ways, they posted a DIY percussion instrument made from an IKEA baby changing table and PVC pipe.

Revel in its awesomeness here.

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Fascinating Instructable about constructing your own "Stick Bass" using a piezo pickup, a broken easel stand (anyone have one laying around?) and a single bass string.

Seems to me that this may theoretically be closer to the DIY Wash Tub bass, given the single string and no frets, but what do I know.

The interesting part to me is the piezo pickup. I didn't realize that you could coax that much bottom end out of those. I'll need to run some experiments with a washtub bass to test it's effectiveness.

Creating a unique instrument from spare parts - sorta like I created my girlfriend in college - is a pretty cool notion. I dig the audio demos, too.

Hop on on over to Instructables to check it out.

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Sick of synths and computers and technology and the whole having to know how to play an instrument thing? How about building your own music box.

ThinkGeek offers a DIY Music Box Kit that you can either play with and punch out your own tunes, or to throw into a larger project. Personally I wonder what this would sound like with a contact mic and plenty of distortion.

$13 at ThinkGeek.

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"Hi. This is the Do or DIY Podcast, and I'm Vicki ..."

For over 16 years, Vicki Bennett has been producing open source music under the artist aka "People Like Us". A pioneer of mash-up, People Like Us feature classic pop from the 60ies, 70ies and 80ies mixed up with German Schlagers, radio lectures and Tin Pan Alley musical inheritants. In short: everything Camp and Kitsch. the result is surprising, interesting and almost always highly amusing.

For a few months now, Vicki has been producing a podcast show for WFMR.org, called "Do Or DIY". The programs are some 20 minute long tour de forces of the very special People Like Us mash-up style, with a surprise 3 hour show popping up every now and then. The shows are published more or less weekly.

For more about Vicki and People Like Us, go visit www.peoplelikeus.org. To subscribe to the Do Or DIY podcast, visit the WFMR website, or paste this URL: http://wfmu.org/podcast/PL.xml directly into your podcast program.

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