The instrument makers taking DIY music to a whole new level

These days, grime music is every­where. The genre has been embraced by the main­stream – so much so that Stor­mzy is now a head­line act at Glas­ton­bury. But like so many musi­cal gen­res, it stemmed from hum­ble DIY begin­nings.

The pio­neer­ing artist Wiley sold records from the boot of his car, and so much of the piv­otal music from the genre spread through home­made pirate radio sta­tions and inde­pen­dent record labels. It’s a sto­ry we’ve heard before: grime’s spir­i­tu­al pre­de­ces­sor, punk, was born in grot­ty sweat­box venues, pro­mot­ed with hand-scrawled fly­ers, and played by kids who bare­ly knew three chords.

That do-it-your­self ethos has result­ed in some of con­tem­po­rary music’s most impor­tant cul­tur­al move­ments. Record labels have been start­ed from bed­rooms, home stu­dios assem­bled in flats, and era-defin­ing raves organ­ised in aban­doned warehouses. 

A nat­ur­al exten­sion of this men­tal­i­ty is to take things one step fur­ther: to explore the pos­si­bil­i­ties of not only mak­ing music inde­pen­dent­ly, but to cre­ate the instru­ments, tools and machines need­ed to make that music in the first place. And as tech­nol­o­gy advances and mod­ern work­ing life becomes more flex­i­ble, more and more peo­ple are explor­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ties of cre­at­ing their own instru­ments – be it for plea­sure, or for business. 

If you saw the glam-punk band Pink Grease in the mid-00s, you may have seen Nick Col­lier with a weird flash­ing synth machine strapped around his neck emit­ting puls­es and bleeps (you may even have seen him pull out a sol­der­ing iron when one of his home­made cre­ations broke mid-gig). Mean­while, Neil Hep­ple­ston spends his days build­ing and hand carv­ing dou­ble bass­es in West York­shire; Thomas Tiet­zsch-Tyler can be found in Sheffield mak­ing bespoke elec­tric gui­tars; while Daniel Skev­ing­ton uses his free time to make every­thing from a cus­tom mod­u­lar synth to play on stage, to ped­als and drum kits. 

Here, the four crafts­men talk us through the how, what and why of being a DIY instru­ment maker. 

“I’ve nev­er been a very good musi­cian. I was more inter­est­ed in cre­at­ing instru­ments than play­ing them. I liked the sounds and tones, and the sci­ence of tuning. 

I start­ed build­ing wacky acoustic instru­ments at Uni­ver­si­ty in Sheffield: putting gui­tar strings on tree branch­es, or mak­ing a hur­dy-gur­dy that was pow­ered by a foot ped­al, like an old fash­ioned sewing machine. For my final project I made a big instal­la­tion out of found objects and junk, like a giant walk-in musi­cal instru­ment inspired by ani­ma­tron­ics and instru­ments that play themselves. 

I soon start­ed mak­ing elec­tron­ic instru­ments. I ini­tial­ly made it up as I went along, in a very chaot­ic way. I joined the band Pink Grease and had to make some­thing that I could actu­al­ly pick up and put in a van and play gigs with. I moved more from cre­at­ing works of art to prac­ti­cal instru­ments. It was very frus­trat­ing at first because I did­n’t have any back­ground in elec­tron­ics. It was a bit of a night­mare – more like tor­ture at times.

The first machine I made in the band was very heavy and built into a giant frame that took three peo­ple to car­ry. Then I made some­thing more portable called The Beast. It took a year to make. I was mak­ing it in hotel rooms on tour, fil­ing bits of met­al and pol­ish­ing plas­tic after gigs. I moved from mak­ing wacky nois­es to some­thing that was more emo­tion­al­ly engag­ing and melodic. 

I’ve made lots of machines and cre­ations. The Swedish elec­tron­ic band The Knife com­mis­sioned me to make them some­thing based on a machine I cre­at­ed called The Har­mon­i­con. I’ve not been as pro­duc­tive these last few years because I’m a sin­gle par­ent but I have some new designs and I also cre­at­ed a mini-ver­sion of The Beast called a Chaos Engine that I make to order.” 

“I start­ed mak­ing instru­ments in 2011 when I found myself in a dead-end job and was look­ing for some­thing new to do with my life. I had been play­ing bass since I was 17, and had always had a faint idea that I’d like to make a gui­tar or something. 

I picked up dou­ble bass in my ear­ly 20s – I had a fac­to­ry made instru­ment – and decid­ed that I want­ed to try mak­ing one for myself. I obvi­ous­ly could­n’t just start mak­ing a dou­ble bass, so I decid­ed to start with a vio­lin and work my way up. I went to the Newark School of Vio­lin Mak­ing to do an evening course for a year, after which I decid­ed to go full-time and stud­ied for the next four years.

As it’s my main instru­ment, as a play­er, I under­stand them bet­ter than oth­er instru­ments. Most mak­ers and repair­ers don’t like work­ing on dou­ble bass­es because they are so big and unwieldy, and you also need a whole dif­fer­ent set of tools to work on them. There were occa­sions when I was learn­ing that I made some pret­ty dev­as­tat­ing mis­takes, but there’s a quote that goes some­thing like, ​‘some­one who make no mis­takes, makes noth­ing at all’. Luck­i­ly, as a repair­er, almost every­thing can be fixed.

My favourite part of mak­ing a bass is carv­ing the front arch­ing; I could quite hap­pi­ly carve fronts every day. The process of see­ing some wood turn into an instru­ment is quite spe­cial; it still amazes me every time. I also real­ly like to do intri­cate carv­ings. I am hop­ing to do a few more baroque instru­ments in the future, which have loads of carv­ings and inlays all over them. 

I also real­ly enjoy research­ing instru­ments that come into my work­shop, you feel con­nect­ed to the past and it’s a real joy when you can tell cus­tomer infor­ma­tion that they had­n’t known about the mak­er or ori­gin of their instrument.”

“I’ve always been total­ly obsessed with gui­tars. When I start­ed to make them pro­fes­sion­al­ly a few years ago, I real­ly did­n’t think about any­thing from a brand point of view, it was just some­thing I want­ed to do. I used to work in trans­port design and I like mid-20^th-cen­tu­ry gui­tar designs that are based on cars – that’s what I’ve always liked about them. Part of the rea­son I did­n’t like work­ing in trans­port design is because all the cool shit from car designs does­n’t exist any­more. But it’s all still there on gui­tars: chrome and all the shapes and curves. 

I’m the kind of per­son that gets a new thing and then takes it apart and tries to fig­ure out how it works. I’m some­one who does­n’t turn off think­ing about a prob­lem – I need to find the solu­tion, I’m obses­sive. But those are qual­i­ties you need if you’re doing this job. I learnt a lot of what I do from threads in forums, as well as some YouTube videos. I’ve also designed and made pret­ty much all of my own tools and machines to make my gui­tars. The last gui­tar that I sold was the first gui­tar that I did­n’t have to make any­thing to make it. For years it was always a case of hav­ing to make some­thing to be able to do something. 

I’m real­ly lucky that I work in a build­ing with oth­er mak­ers, who have helped me. Port­land Works [a Sheffield work­space for mod­ern craft­ing and man­u­fac­tur­ing] is real­ly invalu­able. There’s a real sense of com­mu­ni­ty here. ”

Find more sto­ries from This Is Off The Wall, an edi­to­r­i­al part­ner­ship from Huck and Vans.