Red Echo

February 10, 2011

As a musically inclined nerd in the ’80s, I once tried to play what I called the “Startup Song” on a piano: the sound of the floppy disk drive seeking from place to place as the ol’ Macintosh Plus started up made a distinctive and recognizable melody. This video goes much further: it is Bach’s Toccata in D minor performed on an organ made from four floppy-disk drives. The performer has rigged them up with a microcontroller and a MIDI interface so that the seek sound generates usable musical pitches.

1 Comment

  1. similarly amusing is the computer version of bohemian rhapsody-

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ht96HJ01SE4

    exceptionally done I would say :)

    Comment by Niviarsiaq — February 24, 2011 @ 11:24 pm