This MIDI DIY project looks at making a MIDI glockenspiel, aka Quasimodo’s Revenge

The idea was to take a child’s toy xylophone and get the computer to play it. Now I know that the computer is capable of making noises electronically but it is much more interesting to watch an instrument being automatically played. I am sure you have all seen crowds around fair ground steam organs, whereas tapes of the same hardly sell at all.

A child’s toy glockenspiel was fitted with solenoids, driven by MIDI through an Arduino board, using midiO and GarageBand to produce some music by Philip Glass.

Here’s a video of the MIDI glockenspiel in action: