Take a weekend, and make something: that’s the challenge behind the Music Hack Day, which joins a growing phenomenon of events built around collective creation. (CDM held its own tangible interface hackday online, which I definitely hope to follow up soon!) Initiated by Dave Haynes of music sharing service Soundcloud, the Hack Day has already hit London. Many of the events were Web app-based and focused on consumption rather than creation of music, but we also saw a chordal synth plug-in and beer bottle percussion instrument.

The Berlin Hack Day, which wound up earlier today, offers still more projects focused on the creation side of music hacking. Having Ableton and Native Instruments as sponsors likely helped the mood. And as you’d expect from one of the world capitals of creative hacking, Berliners don’t disappoint.

Among the projects: a beautiful, elegant 3D sequencer, a fun bird-and-sky multitouch soundmaker with multitouch trackpad input, and a robotic xylophone controlled by monome. Someone even worked out a way to turn NI’s Maschine into a rhythm game, complete with Street Fighter sounds.

I’ve got some of my favorite projects here, but see also an eyewitness report (in English and Italian) at Audio News Room:
Just back from Music Hack Day Berlin
… and keep your eye on the wiki:
Berlin Hack Submissions

xylobot run by monome from robb on Vimeo.

Monomist Rob Böhnke and Ramsey Arnaoot created one of my favorite hackday projects so far: a monome-controlled robotic xylophone. The ingredients: one monome grid controller, one Java application for step sequencing to the output, one Arduino open source controller board, and one terrific xylophone “robot” made of an array of servos that strike the bars of the instrument. Oh, and some hot glue and wood, of course.