Building musical instruments would be interesting. Perhaps the teams could be given 3 choices of songs to have some real musicians provided by the show to play on their creations. Of course the expert for each team would be somebody that builds violins or something. It would really be cool if the show provided some amplifiers and "pickups" like those used in electric guitars, to help them out a bit. A requirement might be: drums, keyboard, guitar, and bass --- sort of a classic rock band setup.

-- Michael Vest (mlv@mindspring.com), January 23, 2001

Answers

This has been posted earlier. An idea was to have the machines play the JYW theme. I was a musician for a long time, (drums, guitar) and would like this challenge.

-- Waddy Thompson (cthomp3851@aol.com), January 24, 2001.

Actually..It's not a bad idea....Has Anyone Here ever heard of the Blue Man Group? The instruments they play look like something that can be made of of the Junk Yard. Could be interesting

-- JunkMan (r1ddller@juno.com), January 24, 2001.

BLECH!! Those Blue Man Group Intel Pentium III commercials are the freakiest things to ever come out of Satan Clara... Next to those damned Bunny People.

Thomas

-- Thomas (trh1@cris.com), January 24, 2001.

Here is band that DOES make its instruments from scrap materials. The lead guitar is constructed from a washing machine, the drum kit from things like plastic buckets, etc... The band's page can be found here: here.

-- Jeff - The NERDS (dp@the-nerds.org), January 24, 2001.

Here is band that DOES make its instruments from scrap materials. The lead guitar is constructed from a washing machine, the drum kit from things like plastic buckets, etc... The band's page can be found here: Neptune. It doesn't have particularly good pictures of the instruments themselves. They did a bit on a local NPR station, and they have some pictures here.

Fixed the URL's

-- Jeff - The NERDS (dp@the-nerds.org), January 24, 2001.

JYW is not about finesse--the attraction for many is raw, unbridled power. Take the music idea and have the teams compete to build the loudest horn--that is an objectively measurable outcome. Sonic boom vs. chamber music? fuggeddaboutit!

-- eric larson (neat98larson@aol.com), January 25, 2001.

I am the builder of the Great Animusitron ,the Rythm beastie and the Tireless Drumber.All instruments All junk from a prevouus existance.The tireless drumber is a drum machine which is electromechaniclly operated using real drums TT motors,cassette player innards bits off recordplayers and central locking systems from out cars.It reads 12 inch wooden disks with projecting pins which are interchangable......BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE... IT RUNS ON 12 V and it fits into your wardrobe. I want to build instruments out of junk with you guys!!!

-- Rupert (steprupe@hotmail.com), February 18, 2001.

I saw "Stomp" live last year and they were unbeleivable. Also the "Blue man group" do outraegeous stuff. That intel commercial sucks though. They shouldn't have done it. They are way better than that! How about building a car that drives down the road and has to produce a song using the motion of the car to trigger all the parts > Like a music box works. (As the drum comes around , it triggers notes and percussion) the rolling car is the whole motor...Like a clock. If you look up some of DaVinci's inventions. You'll find he made a drum machine that worked the same way. It was pulled into battle and drummed out the battle cry!

-- Duane Flatmo, Art Attack (flatmo@humboldt1.com), February 18, 2001.

how about a calliope or pipe organ? it could be steam or air operated even human operated, build an octave in less than 10 hours, pipes are common in a junkyard, interesting physics, score on accuracy, length of tune etc.

another possibility is make the loudest sound but score only in discrete octave bands (250 , 500 hz) for a fixed duration. lots of ways to make loud sounds

-- john w stoker (jstoker@demagdelaval-tr.com), June 27, 2001.