How to make homemade musical instruments

Making instruments with recycled materials is a fun craft with a double objective. On the one hand, to get the little ones used to knowing how these instruments work and how they are created. On the other, so that they are aware that almost everything has a second life, if we know how to give it to them.

When it comes to making music, anything goes. It is not necessary to have the best instruments, since things as simple as a glass bottle or a box of detergent can be useful. This leads us to a very interesting world, such as that of recycled musical instruments for children. Compared to the traditional ones, these are made with all kinds of materials that we have at our disposal and offer double the fun.

This starts with the most technical part, which is to build musical instruments with whatever we have at home. The variety is as great as our imagination, so we can make classic-style recycled instruments or even let ourselves go and create invented instruments, according to our ideas and also to the materials we have. The second part is the most fun: playing those original homemade instruments and putting together our own ecological orchestra.

At this point, you may already be looking around the house for supplies, but have little idea what homemade instrument to make. To solve this inconvenience, we leave you our selection with some of the easiest and most fun instruments to make. Although if you want to know how to make original homemade musical instruments, you can also look for any video of the Argentine group Les Luthiers, specialists in this task.

homemade percussion instruments

Making homemade percussion instruments with recycled materials is one of the easiest solutions available to us. Just anything that can be hit to make music and enjoy the rhythm. In fact, this is the largest group of all that we have evaluated and also the largest, especially if you want to create your own musical instruments or you are interested in going a little out of the conventional. 

Among these instruments, we have the maracas , which can be made with a plastic egg or a similar container, two plastic spoons and adhesive tape, as well as vegetables for the filling. If this is a bit complicated for you, just recover a simple plastic bottle with a stopper, to which we will add the filling before closing it. Another interesting option is the xylophone with recycled material. To do this, we will need some empty glass bottles, the same size, as well as something to hit, such as a metal or wooden spoon. We will fill the bottles with different amounts of water, which will generate different sounds. If you don’t have bottles, you can use glass glasses. Without a doubt, one of the easy and simple homemade instruments to make.

We can also create a ball drum , for which we need a round cheese box, two wooden balls, thick thread and a kitchen spoon or something similar for the handle. Assembling this homemade musical instrument is as easy as placing the spoon inside the box, closing it with adhesive tape, tying the balls with the thick thread, and finally tying these strings to the handle. 

If you want to make a rain stick, just paper kitchen paper with some straight pieces of cardboard inside, fill it with vegetables or whatever you want and close both ends with insulating tape or something similar. We could not close this section without talking about the traditional recycled musical instruments, such as the famous detergent “ drum ” or the drum kit made from yogurt cups. A task in which the sticks of pinchitos also serve as drumsticks. 

homemade string instruments

Another common section is home-made string instruments, although these have the drawback that, due to the characteristics of the material used, it is difficult for them to sound good. But that doesn’t mean that a recycled material guitar isn’t fun. To make this instrument, all you need is a cereal box, a strip of cardboard as a handle, some thumbtacks to fix the strings and, of course, string or string to string the guitar.

This same design can be used to make a ukulele (from a milk carton) or any other instrument. Simply change the shape of the box so that it fits the instrument you want to create. So making any homemade musical instrument from this family is easy.

Homemade wind musical instruments

We close our article with the wind family, which is another of the most interesting when it comes to how to make homemade instruments. To start with, you can make a pan flute , for which you only need some plastic straws and tape to join them together. By cutting the straws to different lengths, the varied notes that this type of flute has is achieved.

We can also make a kind of trumpet , something particular, for which we will use a cardboard toilet tube, a kitchen tube, a glove and some tape. We start by cutting the WC pipe in half and then one of them at the top. We roll up this cut half, which will be the mouthpiece, and we put it in one finger of the glove, which we will have previously opened. We place the rest of the glove on the base of the kitchen roll, stick it with tape and it is ready to play. As a finishing touch, we can decorate the tube to taste.