I will explore the ways in which music is influenced by making and hacking, including a whistle-stop tour of some key points in music hacking history. This starts with 1940s Musique Concrete and Daphne Oram’s work on early electronic music at the BBC, and blossoms into the strange and wonderful projects coming out of the modern music hacker scenes in London and Berlin, including a pipe organ made of Furbies, a sound art marble run, robotic music machines, gesture controlled moon cellos, and singing circuit sculptures. I'll also be sharing some of own work, plus my favourite new ways to make embedded instruments, including plenty of amazing Open Source hardware and software.