Design student Lucy Match has created and documented an interesting electronic musical instrument that can be used to easily create compose musical notes in order to create different melodies and visual patterns. Instead of using typical buttons for user input, Lucy has built a neat box and fitted nails to be used as buttons, which can be used as touch sensors and the Arduino capacitive touch sensor library.
The sensor data is then sent back to a PC via USB, and processing software converts the code from the Arduino into instructions and plays matching sound files, and thus the tunes. The system is demonstrated in the following video:
That's a lot of fun, and can be recreated to match the original - or you can have fun creating your own user-input device. Either way, you can learn more from the project page. And for more, we're on twitter and Google+, so follow us for news and product updates as well.
If you're looking for an Arduino Uno-compatible board to be the heart of your system, choose what tens of thousands of others have done and use our Freetronics Eleven - the Arduino-Uno compatible with low-profile USB socket, onboard prototyping space and easy to view LEDs: