Music Box Samples

Earlier today I felt like making a lullaby like the ones you'd hear as a kid, but I figured that I needed samples from a music box. I have an old rusty music box on my shelf, but the wheels squeel and make crackling noises when it plays, so the quality of my recordings are horrible. Does anyone have any good music box samples that I may fiddle around with?

oil the wheel!

i got a music box that i plucked from a snowglobe

take it apart so that you can see the note comb and the spool

place whatever recorder, don't you have an R09?, near it and move the spool or wind it and limit it with your finger so that it can only play one note at a time.

there's probably about 10-20 notes on the comb, just map the notes to the right keys in renoise or whatever soft sampler you like

fill in the other notes with the cleanest notes

maybe get some samples of whirring and winding seperately, with the note comb removed, so you can add that in as needed

it's very worth it to do it yourself

ya clean it or drop the music-box science, adjective-stylee! but i imagine a squeeking and crackling musicbox would also sound good..

The thing is that it's a really old music box, and I can't really seem to figure out how to tear it about with ruining it. Guess I should just go to a secondhand shop and see if they've got a music box I can buy.

oh wow, yeah i wouldn't take that apart if you aren't confident you won't ruin it.

what you could do though is just look at a gift shop or something and get a cheap one.

snowglobes or ballerina type boxes, i see them for like $10 at wal-mart

with the cheap ones, once you break it out of its container it's like just a screw or two that hold the comb in place

you can adjust its distance from the spool

actually... from that pic, can you move the spool so that only one little nub plucks the comb at a time?

you could even wind it, and just keep it from turning with your finger on the gear. let it hit one note and sustain for a second or two

and do that until you have every or most of the notes. if you're restricting to only play a note at a time like that i don't think the squeek / mechanical noise would be there.

that one looks like it's got a ton of notes, i don't think you'll find a comparable range of notes in something cheap

You can't see it from the picture, but there's a glass cover on top of it, so that makes it even more critical to reach the mechanics, but yeah I see your point. I'll go look for a music box either later today or on monday.

Nice avatar btw :)

i love the track nannou by afx

music boxes are driven by tension stored in a spring you crank up - there are definite parallels in music, and i thought 'nannou' married the two gorgeously

if you have trouble finding a music box, with christmas coming, just tell a few friends that you're looking to get one for the sole purpose of deconstructing it. this is what i did around my brithday and my friend hooked me up and we took it apart together.

yeah hat nannou has had a huge impact on me (the whole ep, or single? is a .wav clinic)

gorgeous

partially inspired my deep sea track and this one

i wonder how one could make a spool for a music box

  Adjective said:

if you have trouble finding a music box, with christmas coming, just tell a few friends that you're looking to get one for the sole purpose of deconstructing it. this is what i did around my brithday and my friend hooked me up and we took it apart together.

 

 

yeah hat nannou has had a huge impact on me (the whole ep, or single? is a .wav clinic)

gorgeous

 

partially inspired my deep sea track and this one

link

 

i wonder how one could make a spool for a music box

I've been wondering about that as well. I'd end up destroying earth as I'd lose my temper after 390532 attempts to make the spool right.

here you bishes go http://www.mediafire.com/?dvnyifo190j

Does anyone know if there's such a thing as a Music Box VSTi, kinda like what Producer Snafu posted but fully mapped as VSTi-goodness. I can only find crappy synthesis representations rather that samples.

What are you using for a soft sampler? You should be able to save the sample map as an instrument with most and just load it up that way no?

  Producer Snafu said:

here you bishes go http://www.mediafire.com/?dvnyifo190j

"No servers available with that data"... Damn! Is this one of those upload sites where you actually have to pay to be able to download whatever content you've uploaded?

  Squee said:

  Producer Snafu said:

here you bishes go http://www.mediafire.com/?dvnyifo190j

 

"No servers available with that data"... Damn! Is this one of those upload sites where you actually have to pay to be able to download whatever content you've uploaded?

In a couple of minutes it will be available at http://www.gweep.net/~toad/musicbox.zip

EDIT: Done now.

Amazing! Thanks Snafu and TFTT!

ooh sweet. now i wont have to use dx10 for music boxes anymore

oh and adjective that melt ice track is a regular feature in my house this last month.

fantastic

Ludd, as a thank you for kind words i will save you from one of the following in your next nightmare:

- herd of naked children without torsos

- rabid horse and screaming swirling mist of appendages and webs

- natalie portman with a penis

- batcock

see ya then!

  Adjective said:

Ludd, as a thank you for kind words i will save you from one of the following in your next nightmare:

 

- herd of naked children without torsos

- rabid horse and screaming swirling mist of appendages and webs

- natalie portman with a penis

- batcock

 

see ya then!

don't interupt my natalie portman's penis dreams thanks.

  Squee said:

  Adjective said:

if you have trouble finding a music box, with christmas coming, just tell a few friends that you're looking to get one for the sole purpose of deconstructing it. this is what i did around my brithday and my friend hooked me up and we took it apart together.

 

 

yeah hat nannou has had a huge impact on me (the whole ep, or single? is a .wav clinic)

gorgeous

 

partially inspired my deep sea track and this one

link

 

i wonder how one could make a spool for a music box

 

I've been wondering about that as well. I'd end up destroying earth as I'd lose my temper after 390532 attempts to make the spool right.

you can actually get kits and stuff to do this:

http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/science/8f7f/

in the old days, i doubt they made them by hand either. probably made a mould, probably had moveable bits they could configure however to make the mould

I think i have seen soundfonts for this kind of think. Its also quite possibly to do this accurately with synthesis.

i see you have the dx that goes gong

Hmm, thanks for those samples. But it's an odd choice of notes... what is the logic behind it, is it a particular scale or something? Or just whatever your box's song used...

play it and find out?

blast it into battery, line tool in cubase, IS IT SONG OR SCALE OR CHAOS MY EARS WILL ANSWER!!

i think i need to listen to these samples brb ok

i have lent you my ears

here is the song i heard when i did as i suggested

i am not sure what it is called though so i just called it music box song