Interesting sounds can be created using a variety of sources if you have a looping pedal and pitch shifting ability. Richie Brown made a maraca out of a mannequin leg, currently for sale on eBay, and his video demonstrates just that. The leg is basically a shaker filled with various small objects and a piezo disk mic to turn the acoustic sounds into an electrical signal.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CLKh28t0Sk[/youtube]

Richie’s past and future projects include more mannequin recasings with conveniently placed touch contacts.

Touch Me – a public installation encourages spectators to interact with letters on a board by rubbing, poking, scratching, caressing, and knocking. These noises are picked up by the contact mics and fed into a looper as the day progressed.

The Monster Box demonstrated below was made out of a Roll-Up Piano Keyboard.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2U9c_8xOJ9c[/youtube]

And the Walking Song was recorded with contact mics taped to inner thighs and inner elbows  in hopes of being able to record a walking pattern. The song can is called HG Welles Walks and can be heard on his myspace page. Nice work, cool ideas!