Musical typewriter

posted Jul 16th 2009 8:14am by Caleb Kraft
filed under: digital audio hacks

We have often commented that we’re a bit tired of hearing random notes when someone sends us a musical project. We love home made instruments, circuit bending, and creative sound, we just like some intentional direction to the noise. This just might be an exception to the rule. This typewriter plays random notes as you type. While it might annoy your cohabitants into a violent rage, it seems oddly cathartic. We have heard people talk about the pleasure of hearing the keys clack as they type. It just seems like you would get used to this and find it just as pleasurable. Maybe we’re crazy. Unfortunately, they don’t divulge any technical details, but we can imagine a simple way of wiring directly into a cheap keyboard to get the same effect.

Comments [13]

tagged: circuit bent, music, typewriter

Reader Comments

I knew a guy back in college that had perfect pitch and could “sing” his phone number on a pay phone to dial the number instead of punching the keys. Makes me wonder what a song would look like as text instead. Or if patterns would emerge in different authors or styles of writing.

Posted at 8:38 am on Jul 16th, 2009 by polymath

“an acception to the rule” ?

“an exception to the rule”

Posted at 8:38 am on Jul 16th, 2009 by jimmythechip

polymath, they have that. It’s called “sheet music” lol.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheet_music

Posted at 8:58 am on Jul 16th, 2009 by TMH

@polymath

Really? How did he manage to sing BOTH tones at the same time? Phones use DTMF (Dual Tone Multiple Frequency) for dialing.

Posted at 9:50 am on Jul 16th, 2009 by Alex

I used to be able to whistle carriers to get modems to connect…

Posted at 10:04 am on Jul 16th, 2009 by dcpyatt

There was a documentary on hackers that showed someone who could supposedly do that. He was blind. This was back in the days of phone freaking. Not sure exactly how that works, though it is fairly easy to whistle and hum at the same time.

Posted at 10:10 am on Jul 16th, 2009 by Caleb Kraft

*sigh*

http://www.webcrunchers.com/crunch/stories/esq-art.html

Posted at 11:39 am on Jul 16th, 2009 by Adam Ziegler

With regard to:

We have often commented that we’re a bit tired of hearing random notes when someone sends us a musical project… This just might be an exception to the rule.

consider:

“The first question I ask myself when something doesn’t seem to be beautiful is why do I think it’s not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason.” –John Cage.

Posted at 12:18 pm on Jul 16th, 2009 by bueno

It appears that if you hit the same key multiple times it plays the same note, but I can’t tell if it plays another note when you come back to that key after hitting something else. Ya know, this would be cooler if you could (through software of course) “listen” to what the person is typing (contextually) and change the notes to major or minor scales or intensify the sounds depending on the “mood” of what’s being typed.

Posted at 2:51 pm on Jul 16th, 2009 by razor

fedora sighted!…

Posted at 7:51 pm on Jul 16th, 2009 by DanAdamKOF

Does it go up an octave with shift/caps lock on?? :D

Posted at 2:34 am on Jul 17th, 2009 by Martin_k

I was thinking of something a bit less cryptic and established as sheet music but thanks for thinking inside the box.

I did some digging and apparently the guy who could sing his phone number was “phreaking”. not that different to the blue box that was popular back in the late 70’s and early 80’s. this is no longer possible since the last phone trunk to use audio for switching went off line back in 06.

Posted at 7:52 am on Jul 17th, 2009 by polymath

Reminds me a bit of the old Jerry Lewis routine