Making Music with Makey Makey

April 14, 2021

Making Music

The simplest (and most popular) way to make music with Makey Makey is by creating your own banana piano! Plug your Makey Makey into a computer, use the alligator clips to connect bananas (other fruits or anything conductive), open the piano app in any web browser, and play away.

Try adding food coloring to water and color code your music!

Make a Floor Piano

Use some HVAC tape to create a giant piano on the floor!

Key presses for a floor piano: six tape strips wired to left, up, right and down arrow, space and click, plus an earth strip

Super Easy Floor Piano

Full Scale Piano

You can get more complicated with your build and make an oversized full scale piano with this Scratch project.

Oversized Full Scale Piano

Want a different instrument?

Try out our bongos app, or our new music sampler app!

Ready to move into a DAW or digital audio workstation?

Here are some guides to help you make your own music or sounds with different software apps:

Garageband

In this guide by Frazer Merrick, learn to create and control your very own backing track. Using the sturdy stomping pads, you can play a stomping bassline or a thumping drum beat with your feet whilst playing another instrument at the same time.

Garageband Guide by Frazer Merrick

Sampler

Our Sampler is a fun way to create music based on pressing arrow keys or WASD. You can record your own sounds, upload sounds, or choose from our curated samples!

Sampler Guitar

Ableton

Create your own Ableton controller with Makey Makey and you can trigger samples, control loops and play beats with this arcade inspired device. Using arcade buttons and a Makey Makey, you can build your own custom controller and perform electronic music live, all with the push of an arcade button.

Ableton Controller by Frazer Merrick

Scratch

Build instruments out of cardboard and use Scratch to code audio samples. We have lots of guides for using Scratch! You can start with this Coding Key Presses in Scratch guide or check out this musical instrument guide by Kyle Kitchens.

Recorder flute wired to a Makey Makey so each hole works as a key

Create Musical Instruments in Scratch

You can also code music in Tynker, p5.js, Javacript, and more!

Music not your thing?

Music not your thing, but you still want to record sound bites or audio samples? Check out this Interactive Poster Project for recording and coding audio in Scratch.