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Bohemian Rhapsody On Old Hardware
eldavojohn writes "The sweet sweet melodies of Queen and the late Freddie Mercury are reproduced by hardware almost as old as the song is. 'There are millions of computers sitting idle at home consuming fantom electricity. Let's see where all that power is going. This is dedicated to all fans of Queen and hey let's not forget about Mike Myers and Dana Carvey of Wayne's World. Please note no effects or sampling was used. What you see is what you hear (does that even make sense?) 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 Hard drive as the gong, HP ScanJet 3C was used for all vocals. Please note I had to record the HP scanner 4 separate 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.'"
Nothing really matters anymore.
...hell yeah!
If you liked this, you might also check out the 8bitpeoples, who specialize in this sort of thing.
http://www.8bitpeoples.com/
How long before the RIAA have this removed from YouTube for copyright infringement?
The reproduction sounds too -- excuse me -- mechanical. I wonder, was it due to limitations in the timing granularity of the devices used, or just a bad MIDI file?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
...about the HP Scanjet 3C?
(not that there's anything wrong with that)
- There is no point, it's like a sphere -
This is mad, but something makes me respect the artistry that you have done this with.
Anyone can see that. Carry on.
Some marketing weenie is going to take this idea and use it in some television advertisement.
That was very cool - like a cross between Queen and Futurama.
Allah your bass are belong to us.
Or at least one of their fans did: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOswq2P-pAs
What? Mercury? .... made in china?
That was an awesome job he/she did.
The Navy Motto "IF it ain't broke Fix It" "A day is wasted if you don't learn something new"
Yet another way that computers have enhanced our lives =]
(does that even make sense?)
No, not really.
What does standby power usage have to do with old hardware and music I don't personally like?
I mean, you probably plugged in that stuff just so you could play that song.
So, like.. unplug it. Problem solved.
When I saw this video, the first thing that popped into my mind was Get a life!
-- Will program for bandwidth
I wish there were another instrument. Some parts feel a little too sparse without one more voice.
slow news week?
Incidentally, I just discovered that Alan Turing was gay while reading up for class.
Seems like there's potential for some sort of a Turing-Queen tribute concert.
Though perhaps this suffices.
Yeah, right. You're posting on Slashdot; you can't fool us! You were too busy listening to Mr. Spock's Music From Outer Space or something, and had no more clue about Queen than I do about Britney Spears (or whatever the Hell it is that popular assholes listen to these days)!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Easy come, easy go and Galileo.
Qxe4
http://www.vimeo.com/1109226
Radiohead were so impressed that hey linked to it from their homepage for a while.
Freaking awesome. This made my day. Can't say enough good things. :)
No Synthesizers!
"phantom".
Have some koks instead. (Weird and unsettling video that Youtube saw fit to link to the Bohemian Rhapsody clip, not safe for garden gnomes)
would rock :)
And of course, the source for some of the tech he used for the art school project, http://www.afrotechmods.com/cheap/hdspeakers/hdspeakers.htm Almost as old as the internet itself
I dreamed of Freud: What does this mean?
This statement holds true only if you use a very broad definition of "sweet".
And "melody".
And "reproduced".
There were large segments where, if I didn't know in advance that it was supposedly "Bohemian Rhapsody", I would have had no idea wtf I was listening to.
Maybe in your neck of the woods but in this country (UK) it was massive right from get go. It was number one for nine weeks over the all important Xmas period and returned to number one later - the first single to do that. In 1977, only two years after its release, the British Phonographic Industry named "Bohemian Rhapsody" as the best British single of the period 1952-77
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Looks like somebody left those computers in the car for more than a fortnight.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
That was fantastic.
BUT, should someone with that much technical ability, creativity, and imagination, really be allowed to idle so much as to DO that? He should be curing cancer, or making space travel reasonable, or building giant robots to help me take over the planet! Don't you think?
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
"fantom" electricity ? Is this a delicious pun, or terrible spelling ?
This statement holds true only if you use a very broad definition of "sweet".
And "almost as old": BR came out in 1975, and the 800XL much later, in 1983.
Or does that 8 year difference only matter to people born before 1965?
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Given we now know the CO2 impact of traffic on the Internet, I almost can't believe we're incrementally destroying the Earth over this..
Did anyone else read that as "Shitpeoples" ?
The High Quality Viemo version can be viewed here:
http://www.vimeo.com/1109226
Radiohead were so impressed that hey linked to it from their homepage for a while.
Was that "until their record company bosses noticed it was an unlicensed reproduction and sued their asses"???.
I enjoy the remix groups like the one you linked, but there's simply nothing as good as the original hardware. Ahhhh nostalgia. ;-) Unfortunately I cannot provide a direct link so you'll have to do a little bit of navigation to Internet Explorer (does not work on firefox) and click here: http://www.lemon64.com/music
Then:
- Click VARIOUS
- Click M-R
- Click Merman
- Click Bohemian Rhapsody
This version of Bohemian Rhapsody is "okay" but I've heard far better music than this coming from the Commodore=64, like the stuff in the 20CC folder (top directory). I like their TV Tunes Mix and 20CC/van_Santen_Edwin/Final_Axel and 20CC/van_Santen_Edwin/Enigma_Intro. Other favorite sidtunes: Galway_Martin/Arkanoid_PSID (songs 1, 2, 3, and 4) and Galway_Martin/Wizball and Galway_Martin/Never_ending_story. The "DEMOS" directory is also worth checking out.
The 1982 SID sound chip uses just 3 voices and primitive Attack-Decay-Sustain-Release (ADSR) sound generation. No samples like in the later Amiga or Super Nintendo machines - just direct manipulation of the "instrument". It was the first home computer that sounded like music instead of a touchtone phone. In later years hackers learned to use the volume control to do voice generation such as in Impossible Mission where it says, "Ahh another visitor. Stay awhile. Staaaaay forever!" Another first for home computers.
Yep computing in the 1980s was definitely not boring.
Always somebody inventing something new and exciting.
More information can be found here:
http://www.exotica.org.uk/mediawiki/index.php?title=Special%3AHVSC&si=0&title=Special%3AHVSC&sr=0&md=qsearch&qs=arkanoid
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Brings back memories of a road trip from NYC to Dayton OH to go to the hamfest.
Must have heard that song a gazillon times on the radio. Also Layla.
Maybe he can do Layla next.
Nothing to do with the RIAA, though.
Slashdot users often use the term "RIAA" metonymically for its members, just as "the White House" is used for the U.S. executive branch. And many RIAA members, such as the big four record labels, also happen to be members of the National Music Publishers' Association.
If your work was created independently (and you're going to need some evidence here I'm afraid) without copying then there is no infringement.
Say I write my own song, but I'm not trying to copy anything. What precautions should I take before I publish to avoid being sued for accidental infringement like George Harrison was?
'There are millions of computers sitting idle at home consuming fantom electricity.
Fantom? As in "Phantom of the Opera" or that old comic "The Phantom"? Nah, can't be. Not spelled the same.
But, if in fact phantom was intended by the author, just what in hell is phantom electricity?
Fata viam invenient.
Reminds me of a project I ran into a long time ago - glad to see it still up - http://www.theuser.org/dotmatrix/en/intro.html
This sounds like 4th grade chilren playing music together: no one is on the same beat, and nobody follows the rythm. Technically, everybody follows the melody, but what a mess!
Cool use of the scanner and the disk drive, tho!
You're not old until regret takes the place of your dreams.
... cowbell
And I don't mean the cable channel. This is brilliant and fun and anyone who complains is just a big pimply butt.
because 2 million dollars for a single song is cruel and unusual punishment.
While I agree that it is ridiculous, your argument is factually incorrect. The eighth amendment deals specifically with criminal punishment. Copyright infringment and the associated penalties are civil matters
If privacy had a tombstone it would read "We did it for your own good" . -- John Twelve Hawks
...and show off your true geekdom
I've lost all my marbles except one & It's fun to test angular & centripetal acceleration in my skull
Wholly fucking christ! heaven forbid you have a JVM open anywhere. That sounds like someone running that previous scanner sound through a carton of dry laundry soap.
Close everything if you open that URL!
Sounds fine after closing all Java instances.
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
The SID is great and everything, but if that's the only chip you're listening to you really don't have a clue.
Oh and 8bitpeoples is not a 'remix group'.
Castle Wolfenstein was shouting "Achtung! Schweinhund!" at me on my Apple ][ well before Impossible Mission came out!
Two guys singing, whistling, and otherwise imitating drum machines and synths. And a perky girl who pops up saying "LATE!"
Sweet and kind work by nice people.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
I didn't have any problems.
Is the JSIDplayer not compatible with other java programs, due to high CPU usage? Hmmm. I see it is using 11% of my CPU; maybe I better close it before I go to lunch.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Yes but...
The original $2 million per song punishment was mandated by Congressional law (or so I've been told), and congressional law is limited by the Constitution, so the law would be invalidated by the "cruel and unusual punishment" clause. When you stop and think about it, a multi-million dollar punishment levied against a single citizen is the equivalent to a life sentence, because that's how long you would have to work to pay it off. Issuing a life sentence because you used someone's copyrighted song is cruel in my humble opinion.
And ultimately when you have angered the People, who are the ultimate holders of authority, even if the law is declared constitutional it will eventually be changed by the scared Congress. No politician likes angry citizens. They don't want to lose the next election - or worse, get shot.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
This is also an interesting take on the song.
Only his tendency toward a dazed stupor prevented him from screaming aloud.
You nuts. It made hit number 2 on the US charts and was the break through song for Queen.
The album it was on hit number four, went triple platinum and was on the charts for 56 weeks.
It may have been no big deal to you but it was a big deal to the music world. The fact that it got any air play at all was a huge deal when you think about how strange and long the song was.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Was that "until their record company bosses noticed it was an unlicensed reproduction and sued their asses"???.
It's still there.
http://www.radiohead.com/deadairspace/index.php?a=377
The song was released after they shrugged off their "record company bosses", so I believe they own all the copyrights. (It was written and performed back in '97-98, though, so I could be wrong.)
I knew that there was a reason (besides that fact that it scans legal size and few other so) that I kept that HP ScanJet 3C.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I remember The Stars and Strips Forever played on a Control Data Corporation 3500 mainframe that used both a built-in speaker (controlled by the lower bits in a register) in the console, and 4 high-speed half-inch tape drives with three-foot tall vacuum columns for the bass section.
And then there was radio static music on an IBM 1130 mini from a program written in Fortran IV. The bulk of the program, after reading in the data cards with the notes of the song to play, consisted of a DO loop containing about thirty CONTINUE statements. So much for any sort of optimizing compiler on the IBM hardware. I tried the same program on a CDC 1704 mini, which was considered a reasonably comparable machine at the time and the 3 minute song "played" in 3 seconds. I still consider it my first comparative computer benchmark run.
Life was simpler and we were entertained more easily by clever hacks in those days.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Nice effort, honest.
Still, that hurt a bit :)
Here's one that was awesome instead of painful: Mistabishi: Printer Jam
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is-HVxmUELQ
It's not how well the bear dances, it's that the bear dances at all.
>>>The SID is great and everything, but if that's the only chip you're listening to you really don't have a clue.
Yeah I agree its great. That's why it was picked as one of the greatest computer chips ever made by PC World. However I don't know what you're talking about in the second half of your sentence. I've listened to lots of different sound chips over the years, Paula on the Amiga (best pre-1990 computer), POKEY on the Atari 8-bits, and the chips that make IBM PCs go "beep". For its time (1982) SID was the best-sounding chip that came with a stock computer.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall