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Musical Organ Created From 49 Floppy Disk Drives

Posted by samzenpus on from the soothe-the-savage-student dept.

ErnieKey writes: A youth club in Germany, called Toolbox Bodensee, has created an unusual musical organ. It is constructed of 49 floppy disk drives all of which combine to play quite a unique sound. It has the ability to be played manually or act as a playback device. If you have a bunch of old floppy drives and want to assemble your own organ, the 3D print files are available for free download on Thingiverse.

76 comments

  1. Assemble your own organ by Silicon-Surfer · · Score: 2

    Assembling my organ is not what I usually do with it...

    1. Re:Assemble your own organ by marcello_dl · · Score: 4, Funny

      Haiku answer.
      Yet
      that one too
      is mostly floppy.

      --
      ---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
    2. Re:Assemble your own organ by Scottingham · · Score: 2

      That is no Haiku
      I will be polite because
      I am not a troll

    3. Re:Assemble your own organ by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Haiku answer.
      Yet
      that one too
      is mostly floppy.
      Burma Shave

      FTFY

    4. Re:Assemble your own organ by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually, it is.

      The old bit about 5-7-5 syllables in English is about as wrong as you can get. Modern haiku's aren't chained to any particular syllabic structure.

    5. Re:Assemble your own organ by marcello_dl · · Score: 1

      Haiku answer.
      Thanks
      that one was
      a most interesting read.

      --
      ---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
  2. 49 by dohzer · · Score: 1

    Is 49 the number of GPIO pins on an Arduino Mega or something?

    1. Re:49 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      7x7 grid of them on the wall

    2. Re:49 by dohzer · · Score: 1

      Yeah, but it still seems like a strange number to me. Not octal enough. :)

    3. Re:49 by JavaBear · · Score: 1

      According to the Arduino site, the Mega has 54 digital IO pins, and 16 analogue pins.

    4. Re:49 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      49 is the usual number of keys in a four octave keyboard.

    5. Re:49 by klparrot · · Score: 2

      It's the number of keys on many smallish keyboards: 4 octaves of notes, usually C2 through C6 inclusive, so 4×12+1=49.

    6. Re:49 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's the number of keys on many smallish keyboards: 4 octaves of notes, usually C2 through C6 inclusive, so 4×12+1=49.

      That means that they could have managed with 10 floppy stations as having more fingers than 10 is not common. You do not need to have one floppy station for each key, but one floppy station for each used finger. It is very seldom to use more than 5-6 fingers at once, so 10 would be enough in most cases for sustaining tones with pedal even.

    7. Re:49 by infolation · · Score: 2
      TFA doesn't make this clear, but there's some more information in this one.

      Musical floppy drives are made by manipulating the internal motor that moves the read/write heads over the floppy disk. Each floppy disk is divided into 80 tracks radially from the centre, which the notoriously noisy floppy drive motor can send the read/write head to. By pulsing the motor at any of those 80 positions, representing different frequencies, you can create a particular musical note. And, because floppy drives don't contain their own controller, they're far easier to manipulate with third-party boards and tools like the Arduino.

      Therefore I think each drive has to be chosen individually because with only 80 total positions the chances of any given drive playing consecutive semitone-spaced correct pitches would be small. So it would seem they've gone through a bunch of drives selecting the ones that have a track position that's nearest to each desired pitch to make up 49 semitone-spaced notes.

    8. Re:49 by fintux · · Score: 1

      Therefore I think each drive has to be chosen individually because with only 80 total positions the chances of any given drive playing consecutive semitone-spaced correct pitches would be small. So it would seem they've gone through a bunch of drives selecting the ones that have a track position that's nearest to each desired pitch to make up 49 semitone-spaced notes.

      Actually no, since the frequency is not a property fo the drive and it actually doesn't have anything to do with the number of positions either. The frequency depends on the rate at which the drive head is moved. Most of the controllers used to have a software-controlled setting called "Step Rate Time" (or SRT for short) for controlling this frequency. But there are some drive-related characteristics that defines for example how quickly the motor can step and also what kind of resonant frequencies the drive generates. That mostly defines the usable frequency range for each drive.

  3. It's a wonderful world by Buchenskjoll · · Score: 1

    How lucky am I to live in a time where dadbods and floppy organs are trending.

    --
    -- Make America hate again!
  4. The amount of drives is the point? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sounds terrible and unresponsive...
    Anyone remember playing Monty on the run, on 1 diskdrive???

  5. TFA Headline Is Wrong, Misleading by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The headline on the original article reads "49 Floppy Disks". Not quite. It is actually floppy disk drives. The OP got it right, though.

    1. Re:TFA Headline Is Wrong, Misleading by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, they're floppy diskettes not disks, if you're going to be pedantic.

  6. That is _not_ an organ by YoungManKlaus · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Organs are defined by their way of operation which works by blowing air into pipes of different length to make a sound. What they built could be best described as an electro-mechanical keyboard (if it even has keys)

    1. Re:That is _not_ an organ by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It is an organ. What is NOT is a pipe organ.

    2. Re:That is _not_ an organ by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Could you test this by blowing my organ?

    3. Re:That is _not_ an organ by thegarbz · · Score: 2

      Actually organs are an instrument designed to imitate the sound of a pipe organ. E.g. the electric musical organ, an instrument which has been in common use for over 100 years with no blowing of air required.

      Now please take that pedantic organ in your head elsewhere.

    4. Re:That is _not_ an organ by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 1

      Also, that is not a "youth club". It looks like a regular hackerspace.

      --
      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
    5. Re:That is _not_ an organ by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      Then what is a Hammond organ?

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
    6. Re:That is _not_ an organ by antiperimetaparalogo · · Score: 2

      Organs are defined by their way of operation which works by blowing air into pipes of different length to make a sound. What they built could be best described as an electro-mechanical keyboard (if it even has keys)

      "Organ[o]" is a Greek word meaning "Instrument" and, in Greek, a "musical organ" can be any "musical instrument" - the first "musical instrument" that was what is now defined by you "barbarians" (!) as "organ was made by Greeks ("Hydr-a-ylis" - "Hydraylic Pipe [Musical] Organ")

      --
      Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
    7. Re:That is _not_ an organ by aardvarkjoe · · Score: 1

      "Organ[o]" is a Greek word meaning "Instrument" and, in Greek, a "musical organ" can be any "musical instrument"

      Which might be relevant if we were speaking Greek rather than English.

      More relevant is that "organ" is used to refer to a lot of keyboard instruments that are intended to imitate (to some extent) the sound of a pipe organ. Whether or not this particular instrument falls into that category or not is probably largely a matter of opinion.

      --

      How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
    8. Re:That is _not_ an organ by antiperimetaparalogo · · Score: 1

      "Organ[o]" is a Greek word meaning "Instrument" and, in Greek, a "musical organ" can be any "musical instrument"

      Which might be relevant if we were speaking Greek rather than English.

      But you speak Greek: you call it "organ", so, speak it like a Greek, not like some "barbarian"! You know: "Greek m*th*rf*ck*r, do you speak it?"

      More relevant is that "organ" is used to refer to a lot of keyboard instruments that are intended to imitate (to some extent) the sound of a pipe organ. Whether or not this particular instrument falls into that category or not is probably largely a matter of opinion.

      Since "organ" is used to refer to a lot of things other than just musical instruments, even in English...

      --
      Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
    9. Re:That is _not_ an organ by YoungManKlaus · · Score: 1

      it seems the usage of the word "organ" is even more watered down in the english language than the use of the -gate postfix.

    10. Re:That is _not_ an organ by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      Could you test this by blowing my organ?

      True nerds would find a way to get Emacs to do it.....I bet RMS put the code in already even.

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
    11. Re:That is _not_ an organ by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I would say it's typical of a German to tell native English speakers what their words mean, but I've seen that kind of arrogance from Americans too.

  7. No morning coffee yet by BlackPignouf · · Score: 1

    No morning coffee yet : why/how do the floppy drives produce different pitch?

    1. Re:No morning coffee yet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Vibrating the read/write heads at different rates.

    2. Re:No morning coffee yet by jiriw · · Score: 3, Informative

      In a floppy disk drive there is a stepper motor which drive the read/write heads. That mechanism is used in normal operation to select the correct track/cylinder to read from/write to (a floppy drive is much like a modern hard disk drive in that respect, except the information density is way less and the 'disks' are of course portable).
      In the instance of this musical instrument/organ it's 'abused' by letting the stepper motor step with the frequency of the tone you want to play. The friction between the read/write heads and the rails they are gliding over makes the whole floppy housing vibrate a bit with the selected frequency. The housing acts as a resonance box and the vibration is transferred to the air where it produces sound waves in a frequency (the same the stepper motor vibrates with), you can hear.
      Because the stepper motor doesn't rotate smoothly but in steps (hence its name) the produced sound is rather 'sharp', 'blocky', or whatever you may call it (I have some difficulty here finding the correct musical jargon - English is not my native language). There are a lot of higher harmonics in it.
      Maybe if you saw the video in the original article, you noticed some random gaps in some of the notes played, where, if you knew the pieces played (they are rather popular numbers so I'll assume you know at least some of them), you would expect the note to continue. Those are caused because the head has reached the end of the track and now has to reverse (and so does the rotation direction of the stepper motor). That takes a moment in which no 'music' can be played.

  8. I too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    have a floppy organ

    1. Re:I too by fisted · · Score: 1

      But is it also microsoft?

      --
      CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
  9. "has the ability to"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How about "can".

  10. C= 1541 5,25 floppy ...concert by MxMatrix · · Score: 2

    I used to have a proggy that made music with a 5,25 floppy drive on my c=64 back in the '90's.

    --
    Bach says it all.
    1. Re:C= 1541 5,25 floppy ...concert by xororand · · Score: 1

      Did it play Beethoven's "Für Elise"?
      The one I had did, if I recall it correctly.

    2. Re:C= 1541 5,25 floppy ...concert by Lagmo · · Score: 1

      Did it play Beethoven's "Für Elise"? The one I had did, if I recall it correctly.

      Mine played "My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean" and promptly died 10 minutes later, it was quite an expensive repair too :/

  11. ABD: Already Been Done by ihtoit · · Score: 2

    somewhere floating about from ~2010 is a bank of floppies playing the Imperial March...

    --
    Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
    1. Re:ABD: Already Been Done by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah. Five of them. Not nearly fifty of them, Debbie Downer.

    2. Re:ABD: Already Been Done by ihtoit · · Score: 1

      8, and who the hell is Debbie Downer?

      --
      Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
    3. Re:ABD: Already Been Done by ArcadeMan · · Score: 2

      Star Wars - Imperial March on Eight Floppy Drives by MrSolidSnake745.

      It's also funny that eight floppy drives beat the crap out of the standard PC speaker for playing the Monkey Island theme.

      --
      Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
    4. Re:ABD: Already Been Done by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And those were programmed to play a single song. This one hooks in to a live keyboard so anyone that can play keys can play music from the drive.

    5. Re:ABD: Already Been Done by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      She's from a Saturday Night Live sketch.

  12. No doubt... by DerekLyons · · Score: 3, Interesting

    No doubt inspired by this guy, or any number of others like him who've been doing this for several year now.

    Though admittedly without the buzzword worthy but otherwise pointless 3D printed plastic brackets.

    1. Re:No doubt... by dave420 · · Score: 1

      Those are just 8 floppy drives playing music. This is a 49-floppy musical instrument which can be played in real-time by a pianist. That's quite the difference, and something you entirely failed to mention. I guess that would get in the way of Grumpy Old Man time, and take the wind out of you bitching about buzzwords and 3D-printing :)

    2. Re:No doubt... by DerekLyons · · Score: 1

      That's quite the difference, and something you entirely failed to mention.

      I didn't mention it because it's a difference without a distinction - whether you press a key and the command is saved to a file for later replay, or immediately processed and sent to the "instrument", it's all the same. It's something that's been done many, many times before.

  13. Dual use by Tablizer · · Score: 3, Funny

    You can also use it to Bach up your files.

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
    1. Re:Dual use by ihtoit · · Score: 1

      Johnny comes home from school, and says to his mom, "Mommy, I learned the alphabet today! The rest of the class messed up around F, but I made it all the way through!" Johnny's mom says, "Very good, son. That's because you're a violist." Johnny comes home the next day and screams, "Mommy, Mommy, I counted to a hundred today! Everyone else couldn't get past 60, but I made it all the way to 100!" And his mom says, "Excellent. That's because you're a violist." The next day, Johnny comes home and says, "Mommy, the teacher measured everyone's height in class today, and I was taller than everyone. Is that 'cause I'm a violist?" His mom shakes her head and says, "No, honey; that's because you're twenty-six."

      --
      Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
    2. Re:Dual use by AthanasiusKircher · · Score: 4, Funny

      You can also use it to Bach up your files.

      I tried that. But, to be Franck, I couldn't Handel how the sound Varese in this thing, so I ended up Haydn this Creation away; now it's just Leonin the server Cage. If I Figaro out what will work better, I'll make a Chopin Liszt, and go buy something that's Godunov.

      Okay, very punny. We done now?

    3. Re:Dual use by TeknoHog · · Score: 1

      Only if you can't pronounce the "chi" sound correctly, as in "Loch" or "TeX".

      --
      Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
    4. Re:Dual use by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nope, but the thread is starting to unRavel. We'll all be Borodin a few minutes.

  14. To be honest, sounds like shit by fleeped · · Score: 1

    But still it's cool in an industrial-music-sort-of-way.

  15. 3D printing? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    3D printing, 3D printing, 3D printing, 3D printing, 3D printed, game changer, makers, 3D printing, 3D PRINTING! 3D printed? 3D printed! Thingiverse, 3d printed.

  16. in another 20 years by mikerubin · · Score: 1

    there will unlikely be any more old floppy drives about.
    The next generation will have a bit of difficulty as they will have to use USB sticks,

    --
    I sat down to write a new sig tonight and all I did was make the chair warm.
    1. Re:in another 20 years by fisted · · Score: 1

      I always wanted retro USB drives that emulate the floppy disk drive sound when accessed. Maybe this will become a thing.

      --
      CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
  17. Dot matrix. by blueshift_1 · · Score: 1

    While this is very cool, I've always preferred the dot matrix music over the floppy drives. Something is just pleasant about seeing it print out on the page.

    1. Re:Dot matrix. by fisted · · Score: 1

      I occasionally listen to dot matrix, but to be honest, CNC mill is so much better. CNC mill over monster cables; it will blow your mind.

      --
      CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
    2. Re:Dot matrix. by ArcadeMan · · Score: 1

      I often listen to my CNC lathe, CNC mill, dot matrix printer and 3D printer quartet.

      --
      Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
    3. Re:Dot matrix. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I always wanted to figure out how make the printers work in 5.1 sound! Have 4 okidata 320, a screeching portable printer, and an okidata 2410 for the bass line :)

  18. Obligatory by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    She sounds hideous

  19. Why? by AndyKron · · Score: 1

    Why? It's been done before and it still sucks

    1. Re:Why? by dave420 · · Score: 1

      The previous floppy-drive-musical-machines were pre-programmed to play a specific single piece of music. This one can be played in real-time by a pianist - it's an actual instrument, whereas the ones you are thinking of were just players.

  20. IT fingernails on a chalkboard by TheRealHocusLocus · · Score: 1

    This is a phenomenon where music is produced from the very sounds IT professionals most dreaded to hear. A symphony of aggravation The clattering brings to mind drives in which customers had somehow inserted two or floppies at once and managed to latch them down, bending all the retaining mechanisms. The shrill higher timbres reminiscent of a faulty drive controller or driver software run amok. Louder notes mean resonance in the enclosure which does not mean "wow what a cool sound", it means "oh shit something's loose and I'll have to disassemble the drive to discover what it is. And get it back together without creating a new one".

    Anyone who can pick up these items for $10+ used but functional or $30+ may find it difficult to grasp the level of dedication that went into avoiding these sounds and the dread we experienced to hear them. From the late 70s floppy drives were in constant use, and replacement drives cost hundreds of dollars. You are a tech making $20/hour (the $80/hour of today) and you are given a drive to fix. Can you fix it? You clean the heads (thin epoxy resin over tiny coil) and put in a calibration disk, hook an oscilloscope to the analog circuit to see the Lissajous pattern, look at the patterns. Adjust the optical track-zero stop and re-index until signal is at maximum. Then go for track 79 and check the pattern. Does it get there? If not you could have stepper failure (missing pulses? grit in the slide mechanism? Graphite and tiny needlenose pliers are your only friends. Does the pattern waver on each rotation? weak spring or bent spring retainer. And so on.

    Then you have fixed the drive and send it out, only to discover that all the customer's data (and backup) disks were written to with the misaligned drive and no longer read properly. You get the drive back with the discs, and must intentionally mis-align it again until they read well enough to copy to a properly aligned drive. And then explain how your time doing all this was well spent.

    Not so nice music to my ears.

    "We have also sound-houses, where we practise and demonstrate all sounds and their generation. We have harmony which you have not, of quarter-sounds and lesser slides of sounds. Divers instruments of music likewise to you unknown, some sweeter than any you have; with bells and rings that are dainty and sweet. We represent small sounds as great and deep, likewise great sounds extenuate and sharp; we make divers tremblings and warblings of sounds, which in their original are entire. We represent and imitate all articulate sounds and letters, and the voices and notes of beasts and birds. We have certain helps which, set to the ear, do further the hearing greatly; we have also divers strange and artificial echoes, reflecting the voice many times, and, as it were, tossing it; and some that give back the voice louder than it came, some shriller and some deeper; yea, some rendering the voice, differing in the letters or articulate sound from that they receive. We have all means to convey sounds in trunks and pipes, in strange lines and distances."
    ~Francis Bacon, from New Atlantis, written in 1626 .
    This dude nailed modern electronics and digital sampling some 350 years before its time.

    --
    <blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
  21. Yep. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sounds exactly like I imagined German music to sound.

  22. If anyone wants to hear this in better quality... by Opportunist · · Score: 1

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    I tried to find different people doing it. Funny enough, the three songs played (Toccata and Fuge, He's a pirate and "the Tetris theme" (seriously, when will /. support Cyrillic characters?) were done by pretty much anyone doing floppy music.

    Yes, it's not interactive. But please, it's not like they invented the genre of floppy music, there's a ton of videos out there of people making music using floppies. With far better results.

    Hint: The key is to make both directions sound equal. I'm still working on that. The interactive part (i.e. playing it with a piano) is actually surprisingly easy to do.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  23. Been done elsewhere, but still very cool by mccrew · · Score: 1

    Nod to Seattle roots: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G081hD0nwWE

    --
    Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
    1. Re:Been done elsewhere, but still very cool by ITRambo · · Score: 1

      If I told a customer "slash" when dictating a web address, most would ask "which direction?" So, I say "forward" slash when I want to save time on the phone. And yeah, they all use Windows.

  24. Re:If anyone wants to hear this in better quality. by leonardluen · · Score: 1

    i am disappointed the youtube video wasn't titled "Toccata and Fugue in D:\Minor\"

  25. Daaamn Grrrrl! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You fine! You wanna come back to my mom's basement and check out my floppy organ?

  26. Re:If anyone wants to hear this in better quality. by guruevi · · Score: 1

    To be correct it should be A:\ minor ;-)

    --
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