There are all sorts of fun ways to make music with empty jugs and other things that resonate with a popping sound when poked with a finger. Should you ever get stuck on that proverbial desert island, you can entertain yourself by making cheerful, staccato music with nothing but a fingertip and the inside of your cheek. At the very least, it will keep your spirits up until you can fashion an ocarina from a coconut.
[Nicolas Bras] loves to make homemade instruments. When he saw all the scrap pieces of perfectly finger-sized PVC tubing piling up around the workshop, he decided to make an instrument specifically to play the effervescent synth tune “Popcorn”. (Video, embedded below.) He plays it by plugging and quickly unplugging wood-capped pipes with his fingers, and using another PVC tube to blow across the tops of them to fill out the orchestration.
[Nicolas] started by making a two-octave chromatic scale with 25 pipes ranging from C4 to C6. He kept building on it from there in both directions, ultimately ending up with a poppin’ 68-note pipe organ that sounds fantastic. If you’re interested in getting the sound samples, [Nicolas] has those and the instrument plans available through Patreon.
Be sure to check out the build and demo video below — it’s a joy to see it come together, and the whole thing clocks in under six minutes. Take our word for it and don’t jump to the “Popcorn” cover, because the build-up is necessary for maximum enjoyment.
Hungry for more “Popcorn”? Here’s a robotic glockenspiel busting out a striking cover.
Thanks for the hot, buttered tip, [This Field Intentionally Left Blank].
I’ve love to up vote this but there’s no Raspberry Pi, not even an Arduino, hell, there’s no 555.
Oh, nor is there an up vote button.
There should be an upvote button. Had to head over to his channel and click like.
I love this.
That’s how everyone “remembers” it, but how was it really?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTUM8gFyLqo
The third version is the sound like what we’re familiar with.
What’s funny about the different renditions is that most of them are played by hand on conventional instruments, and they run in and out of beat and miss notes, and people try to insert lyrics…
There are lots more versions!
https://www.popcorn-song.com/versions.php
I think the amiga .mod file version I used to have (prolly still do somewhere) was based on the ’88 M&H version.
Needs automatic fingers. How about rubber stoppers on solenoids?
A stopper would be a little too hard to pull for a solenoid, it would get stuck inside the pipe. The PVC pipe organ uses a rubber flap paddle to play, so you could rig a solenoid to slap the end of the pipe with a tiny rubber spatula – you just need to get it moving fast enough to make it loud enough.
Syringe plungers would probably be thing for this.
Awesome.
Really resourceful mechanically music inclined channel. Neat!
Thank, …Just sent me down the YouTube rabbit hole of Popcorn versions lol
Be sure to check out the rest of his work – so many delightful instruments!
i wonder, since the popcorn song is mostly monophonic, you could probably play it with a single tube and a variable plunger…?
I’d think it would be really hard to play it fast enough with one finger, maybe two tubes would work.