Japanese artist / designer Yoshi Akai has quite the repertoire of zany instruments and synthesizers. Not only do they have a wicked steampunk aesthetic, but the control formats range from credit cards to wireless signals. Cool stuff all around. This particular one is a 3 channel, 8 step synth that uses different colored LEGO blocks as triggers. You can even create 3D shapes to get really crazy.
Video after the jump.
Pack one for me, please!
It would be so cool if Lego made an official version. For a simpler version it seems like you could have a webcam look at the board and have some script read the colors, positions and sizes of the blocks to determine what sounds to make.
LEGO does make something like this but for kids and they only have like 4 inputs but with varying sounds.
It’s called a LEGO explore music. Do a search for them on ebay. You can hack it but the thing is pretty cool.