Stick Saxophone

Today, we will be creating a stick saxophone with a Makey Makey, Stick and a few wires.

I recommend finding a stick that isn't to rough, yet long enough to find many copper coils. Also, try and pick a dry stick, since a wet one will make this project tough.

Drying out the stick is a key step in this process since a wet stick will make the stick conductive, which is something we do not want. Either leave the stick out to dry area or take a heat gun and "fire" the stick. Be careful to not light the stick on fire, we only want to remove the moisture.

Take copper wire an wrap the wire around the stick. Do a couple of loops and then add a alligator clip to the copper wire to establish a connection. Repeat five more times at different stops on the stick. Make sure they fit comfortably for finger placement.

With the wire coming from the stick, connect it to a pronged wire and insert into the Makey Makey at the 'W' key spot. Repeat for the other 5 wire coils, placing in the other letter spots. Finally, Establish a negative connection by making a larger wire wrap at the top of the stick. Attach this alligator clip to the Earth holes on the Makey Makey.

Visit Scratch.mit.edu a set up an account. Create a new project. Follow the following steps.

1: Move over the When Key is Pressed block onto the scratch interface. Repeat 5 more times.

2: Go to the Sounds tab and click add sound. Add 'A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E', 'F' sounds for the Sax (Or other instrument you like.

3: Go back to the code and go to the Sound side tab and add the block that is labeled, "play sound __ until done."

4: Change the sound to one of the added tones and change the key pressed to one of the letters labeled on the Makey Makey.

5: Add a "When flag is pressed" to properly start the code.

Attach the USB on the Makey Makey to you're computer and start the program on scratch. Test if each "key" on the stick makes a sound.Make sure that you are touching the large coil you made at the top of the stick since that will complete the connection. Thanks for following along?