HAL's iPod?
June 6, 2008 2:55 PM   Subscribe

Inspired by the discussion of the remix of Nude, I dug up some other musical hardware (it seems that scanner engineers really like classical). Here's the earliest example of this silliness I could find.
posted by drfu (7 comments total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
Does Printer Jam by Doug Pound count?
posted by aftermarketradio at 3:05 PM on June 6, 2008


Not quite the same thing, but how about a Renault F1 car playing God Save The Queen or La Marseillaise...?

I've got a scanner that plays Ode to Joy next to me. I'm sure the old 660C printer used to do Fur Elise too...
posted by twine42 at 4:30 PM on June 6, 2008


People who like this stuff might be interested in Jóhann Jóhannsson's album IBM 1401 - A User's Manual, which is the model from the last link.
posted by synaesthetichaze at 4:48 PM on June 6, 2008


The Singing 1541. Man, that takes me back. On the Commodore 64, this kind of program worked in a way that was basically destroyed the drive; the heads could get knocked out of alignment, requiring costly servicing.
posted by monocyte at 5:49 PM on June 6, 2008


Impressive! Is he playing back the vocals off the hard drives? Thanks, drfu.
posted by damnthesehumanhands at 8:51 PM on June 6, 2008


So where's the link to Man or Astroman's "Simple Text File"?
posted by mnsc at 1:54 AM on June 7, 2008


Somewhat related - 1962 recording of an IBM 704 singing "Daisy, Daisy". This was on hardware custom-designed for music, but still worth checking out for the oddly creepy voice synthesis. You could definitely imagine you're listening to the ghost of the now dead computer.

This recording was the inspiration for HAL singing the same song in "2001".
posted by standbythree at 8:27 AM on June 7, 2008 [1 favorite]


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