As there is very little in the way of stylistic guidelines to define noise music, there are also no requirements for the gear used in its creation. Noise can be made using traditional instruments, examples of which can be seen in the Free Jazz and Noise Rock scenes, or using various non-instruments and “found sounds” (recordings of non-instrumental sounds and noises). Early noise music was often made by splicing together recordings made on tape machines, a process that to a large extent has been replaced by modern samplers.

Noise musicians are often known for creating their own self-made instruments and noise machines, either in the form of hardware synthesizers or effects boxes or using modern software tools such as Max/MSP. More conventional gear often used by noise artists includes the Roland SH-101 hardware synthesizer and the digital audio workstation Ableton Live.

The table below shows gear used most by noise artists. Click the name of a piece of music equipment to read more about it.