Today, the question “How did you do that?” came up quite a few times (often preceded by, “Er, what is that?”) The answer to the latter question was, “It’s a banana xylophone”, and the answer to the other is set out below.
If you’ve got ideas or suggestions for making it work even better, that’s what the comment section below is for. 🙂 There are links for downloading the software, sheet music, and booklet, all of which you’re welcome to adopt, adapt and improve.
So, this week I built a banana xylophone.
Its key ingredients are, in no particular order:
- a Makey Makey board
- a laptop
- 11 bananas
- an ESD wrist strap
- some software to play musical notes when the bananas are touched, which I wrote in Scratch
I also used/made:
- a wooden board with an oversized piano keyboard painted on it
- cable ties to strap the bananas in place
- an electric guitar amp, for volume
- recordings of some Christmas carols and songs to play along with
- huge laminated sheet music
- booklets to help people to sing along
Add all ingredients, stir vigorously, et voilà.
Tim Morley 