Enjoy ABBA's "Dancing Queen" played on a gorgeous 100-year-old mechanical fairground organ

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/09/18/enjoy-abbas-dancing-queen-played-on-a-gorgeous-100-year-old-mechanical-fairground-organ.html

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@pesco: wrong queen. this is the video you’re talking about. Although the other is also wonderful.

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Another show full post borked…

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Impressive (most impressive). Next show us the machine which makes the punched paper ‘tape’. Here’s hoping it isn’t someone with the score and ‘exacto’ knife.

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This sounds like an early Final Fantasy theme song set in a carnival.

I love it :heart:

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Sounds like the day I spend in the 80s programming music data with some weed, a music book and my Radio Shack MC 10

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They remind me of the sounds of Germany during the run-up to Karneval. They’re good, impressive for arrangements, but, due to the lack of dynamics, you would not hear more than one of these blasting through my home.

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The two videos were made on different machines, not the same one. These machines are marvelous!

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If I had to do this I would probably write a MIDI-to-carnival-organ-paper-tape converter. That would let me write and debug the arrangement on an ordinary synth. Once the general sound is OK, a cutting plotter can probably be adapted to make the “tape” for the actual organ.

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That’s a good take! Without hearing it =won’t= play 3/4 notes I keep landing on the side…with more cards and tape and x-actos and templates and superglue. May the ventilation be with you.

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If this is your thing and you ever find yourself in the area: Visit the most fun museum in the Netherlands! - Museum Speelklok :smiley:

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You could use one of these but that might be overkill, I am sure you could create a basic plotter.

I had an evening job operating a far more basic organ outside a Spiegeltent, staff in local restaurants and shops used to pay me to stop.

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