I just love creativity in music. We ran a story on the Kasio Kristmas music and the Gadget Orchestra, but this one in particular is simply amazing. It’s Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody ‘played’ entirely with old computer junk.
No effects or sampling were used in this song, basically the sound is coming from the devices that you can see in the video:
- Atari 800XL was used for the lead piano/organ sound
- Texas Instruments TI-99/4a as lead guitar
- 8 Inch Floppy Disk as Bass
- 3.5 inch Harddrive as the gong
An HP ScanJet 3C was used for all vocals.
The artist (or should I say computer tech?), James from Toronto, Canada, says “Note I had to record the HP scanner 4 seperate times for each voice. I tried to buy 4 HP scanners but for some reason sellers on E-Bay expect you to pay $80-$100, I got mine for $30.”
Here’s the video:
That’s quite a feat. It would have required a dumb amount of experimentation to get the motor voltages just right to intonate the correct vibrations, not to mention trying to keep all the gear in time. (Not all the mechanisms have the same range of motion or flexibility)
You may have already done a story on this, and its not quite the same type of deal, but it is a similar type of externally controlled machine music, except real instruments:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2JChnwv2Ws