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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?
...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.
Or at least one of their fans did: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOswq2P-pAs
The timing is definitely off, and with the timing of each "instrument" a little off, they're not in sync with each other. It's close enough that you can tell what it should sound like, but it doesn't actually sound like that.
For example, the rhythm of "easy come, easy go" starting at 0:36 is clearly wrong. The bass part starting around 1:30 isn't bad by itself, but it's not in sync with the other parts. 3:09 to 3:31 is pretty bad too.
I suspect it was easier to get the timing right with some "instruments" than others. The bass part, by itself, seems very rhythmically solid, particularly from 3:29 all the way through to the end, it's just that the other parts aren't in sync with that.
Overall, a brilliant piece of work. If these minor timing details could be cleaned up, it would be awesome.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
I don't think it was necessarily a limitation of the instruments; the problem was -- as I said before -- timing, not timbre. It was inadequate in the same way that a perfectly normal instrument played by a robot would be. I think it was simply that the person who made the (presumably) MIDI file used to drive the thing just did a poor job of it, and that it would have sounded just as wrong if it had been played back using the sound card's synthesizer.
Some of the pitches weren't quite right either, but that really would be a limitation of the hardware, and I'm not complaining about it. Far from it; I think the hardware aspect of it was brilliant! I just wish he'd used a better score.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Exactly. I thought it seemed pretty well in tune; it was the timing that was off.
If the creator is reading Slashdot: perhaps you could make some of your source material public, so we can see how you programmed each device to play its notes? Perhaps we could help work out some of the rhythmic details.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
http://www.vimeo.com/1109226
Radiohead were so impressed that hey linked to it from their homepage for a while.
No Synthesizers!
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.
I concur re the timing. I suggest replacement of the old hardware with some modern synthesisers and drum machines so that they all stay in time with a master clock. Maybe even get some humans to sing parts of it.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
WTF dude. If there ever was a /. post worth of the "news for nerds" title, this is one.
Absolutely freaking awesome.
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.
You should waste your angst on Las Vegas or something.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
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
...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
Oddly enough, TFA (the YouTube info from which this text was copied) spells it correctly!
The timing is definitely off, and with the timing of each "instrument" a little off, they're not in sync with each other. It's close enough that you can tell what it should sound like, but it doesn't actually sound like that.
For example, the rhythm of "easy come, easy go" starting at 0:36 is clearly wrong. The bass part starting around 1:30 isn't bad by itself, but it's not in sync with the other parts. 3:09 to 3:31 is pretty bad too.
I suspect it was easier to get the timing right with some "instruments" than others. The bass part, by itself, seems very rhythmically solid, particularly from 3:29 all the way through to the end, it's just that the other parts aren't in sync with that.
Overall, a brilliant piece of work. If these minor timing details could be cleaned up, it would be awesome.
The OP neglected to take into account (or neglected to do a good enough job taking into account) the latency for each command to each instrument. This is especially evident with the scanner: it has a long startup time, but, once running, does well. When it first starts up after a period of silence, it's horribly late, but if it is just changing pitch, it's snappy. The same is true, but to a lesser extent, with the floppy drive -- but it also is producing a louder tone for the initial few hundreds of milliseconds and then quiets down.
In all, I concur: a very good start at something that could well be brilliant, if a little more time had been spent obsessing.
One of the things that makes the original a phenomenal performance is the non-robotic timing (the grace notes, for example, are not performed the way they appear on the score; the rising lead guitar arpeggios accelerate, as another example). A serious job would have tracked down not only all of the latency idiosyncrasies of the hardware, but also the subtle timing variations. And it might have mixed the recording a little better, too.
Good start, though.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.