This article explores the impacts of information sharing and experimentation on electronic media practitioners. It draws on characteristics of ‘open’ or ‘DIY’ cultures prevalent in the technological ‘maker’ movement and suggests that we collectively describe such practices as cooperative experimentalism. In particular this article focuses on the discipline of music and describes how adopting an approach to making that privileges sharing of tools and knowledge might be a useful strategy in the development of handmade electronic music instruments and associated live performance practices. The implications of such trends in electronic media suggest that the notion of cooperative experimentalism may well apply more generally to creative electronic media practices in our (post) digital age.