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The Chipophone — an 8-Bit Chiptune Organ
adunk writes "Linus Åkesson has built an 8-bit synthesizer inside an old electric organ case. 'All the original tone-generating parts have been disconnected, and the keys, pedals, knobs and switches rerouted to a microcontroller which transforms them into MIDI signals. Those are then parsed by a second microcontroller, which acts as a synthesizer.' The Chipophone is perfect for playing classics such as the Super Mario Bros in-game music or Rob Hubbard's Spellbound. A description of the build process, with photos, is available."
Similar vein, and I always wanted one of these: SIDstation, but sadly they're no longer made anymore.
For those using softsynths, have a look at QuadraSID too (demo MP3 on the right-hand side of that page), particular with the Rob Hubbard expansion packs. I use that a fair amount in what I write. If anyone else knows of some interesting softsynths along the same lines, I'd be interested to hear.
Cheers,
In
My jaw was already on the desk but when he started playing the Mega Man theme... OMG!
I inherited a similar one a few years ago. Mid 70's one owner Yamaha DK-40, pristine condition. ~$3500 orig price. I couldn't give it away. Name your price, free delivery anywhere in Ohio. No takers. I talked to the main piano/organ dealer in the city I was living in. "If you can get $300 for it, you're lucky. I have a basement full of those."
Throwaway culture or no, some things just aren't worth it.
Well, a couple of years back I was thinking of a similar project: use an Atmel AVR 8 bit (RISC) microcontroller to create a sound chip, controlled by MIDI. Well, this Linus dude did that, and MUCH, MUCH more! Pluse, the guy is a great musician (he can actually play a full organ, which in addition to hand, needs also foot coordination), and can play the whole of Rob Hubbard's Spellbound entirely by heart.
In a perfect world, this guy should be famous, make millions, and sportsmen like Tiger Woods would be happy to mow his lawn :o) (that's my geek utopian dream).
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
The whole geographical point here is the Scands mountain range, that runs north-south in Sweden and Norway. Hence, Scandinavian peninsula.
Whether the "cultural" argument is valid is a bit contentious -- a lot of the typically Swedish-speaking Nordists who are objectively speaking a bunch of Swedish imperialists certainly want to extend the concept of Scandinavia to include Finland ("because it is good for us").
Personally, although we all live a in typical Western European democracy with similar political leanings, I find Scandinavia to be culturally different. And of course it is linguistically different too; it's just that for some weird political reason, Finnish never is allowed to "count" in these kinds of considerations. After all, we're a bilingual country and all that, and in the future Swedish is going to be the mother tongue of all of us...
I want to play Free Market with a drowning Libertarian.