Imperial March (of the Floppies)

Uh oh, I'm afraid my floppy drives might be turning to the dark side of the force...

The software this creation is based off of is open source and available here: https://github.com/SammyIAm/Moppy

Tutorial video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6tuMn...

I'd love idea for new songs to perform (or even original pieces if any of you are composing-inclined); if you have any leave 'em in the comments or message me. A word of forewarning though, not everything works well on floppy drives (they're pretty finicky as far as musical instruments go), so while I will consider every one of your suggestions, not all of them end up making good music.

Check out this playlist for my other musical floppy drive creations: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=...

• Category

  Science & Technology

[Beyondplastic21]

do you use an arduino board and if so what kind?

[Sammy1Am]

It's an Arduino Uno. There's a tutorial in the description with more details about exactly what's going on.

[kokoilie]

can you try to make it play real time

for example you talk to a microphone and they buzz your voice like a robot

[Sammy1Am]

It IS possible to play them in real time using a MIDI keyboard. Unfortunately, I can't actually play piano, so I haven't made any videos of it.

As far as reproducing audio (like a voice), it would be REALLY cool, and so I tried to get it working for a while, but because of the limitations of the drives, they can only produce audio with a 400Hz sample rate, which is... not enough for much of anything.

[youdoxie]

Are you familiar with the principles behind the vocoder, where you break down a signal into envelope functions of fixed frequency oscillators? Seems like a possible avenue.

[Sammy1Am]

I am, and looked into that a bit. Unfortunately, the drives don't have any amplitude control, so it's not really feasible to mix  frequencies that way. I can use the fact that there are 8 drives to increase or decrease the amplitude, but with 8 drives I can only produce 3-bit, 400Hz audio (aka grinding noises), which still isn't quite sufficient.

[hawk1674]

I was going to say the same thing.

[Sammy1Am]

Can MIDI files even BE dubstep?  (Honest question, I'm not sure if it would even work)

[brego129]

I find your lack of RAM disturbing.

[GurniHallek]

I find your lack of free space disturbing...

[YF19sama]

"CD-Drive I'm you're father." suits better to me.

[nikolait5]

Electrical engineers have too much time on their hands...



[MegaKracka]

and this will lead to the singing turrets from portal..

[TheElectrobuz]

MIDI files can be anything. It just depends on what it's trying to imitate. Although I see where you're getting at.

[MrThebakugannerd]

BAMF

[Muhammad Muizzuddin]

Teach me, Master!