Music Box

Found this music box mechanism online and decided to buy it for myself for Christmas - it uses card strips that you can punch holes in to make melodies. Thought it would be pretty cool to have a go at making some music with it and also I think the guy's voice seduced me into buying it somehow

Link to website

I bought a few contact mics off Amazon and set about looking for a suitable box to house the thing. I wanted to incorporate a mic into the box so I could plug it into my audio interface and potentially be able to use it live too. After a bit of hunting I found a nice metal tin and a couple of balsa wood boxes that would be ideal for the job. The tin was a shortbread tin and the balsa wood boxes were from Tesco's and used to have some cookies in. The balsa boxes fit snugly into the metal tin so I decided I'd use the tin as the case and the balsa to make the necessary compartments inside.

The mechanism, the lid of the box and the lid of the tin:

One of the balsa boxes and the shortbread tin:

Box inside tin:

I wanted to make the box as resonant as possible so I decided to leave a small gap between the bottom of the balsa box and the tin and also to lift the tin off the table too. I used four bolts for 'feet' to give clearance from the table which would otherwise dampen the box if it were in full contact. Between the tin and the box inside I put two washers to act as spacers then another washer and nut inside the box to keep it all in place. Four strips of thin card were used to pad the space between the balsa walls and the tin walls.

Contact mic:

I carefully drilled a hole through the tin where I wanted the female jack connector to be and filed it until it was a snug fit. Took quite a bit of time to get right but I got there in the end.

Then I made a hole in the balsa box for it

Final assembly of the lower chamber:

I sanded the tin to reveal the metal underneath and to get rid of the pretty garish paint job. The feet were put in place with the washer spacers and the card strips put in place too. The contact mic was then glued into position. I left the bottom of the tin untouched as I quite like the image of the shortbread and thought it'd be a bit quirky (also a nice nod to what the box used to be).

Top chamber:

This is the bit where the mechanism itself will sit. I used the second balsa wood box for this as it was identical in size to the one below it. Holes were drilled to hold the mechanism in place with more small bolts, then slots were cut in the front and back for the punched card strips to be fed through and another on the side for the hand crank.

I made two shelves inside which lined up with the slots - these are to ensure the card strips are guided directly into the mechanism and don't end up getting wedged anywhere they shouldn't. The size of the slots is only slightly larger than the strips to ensure they go straight in without needing to remove the lid to see what you're doing.

Final assembly:

I painted the outside of the top box a dark red to make it a bit more interesting - mixed in a bit of PVA to give it a slight satin sheen. When dry I positioned the mechanism and screwed it into place with bolts. The lid was made by bolting the lid of the tin to the lid of the balsa box. I drilled four holes in the side of the bottom of the tin and put some screws in to hold the two halves together (otherwise the whole thing would fall apart when lifted). The card strip in these last pics is the pre-punched Swan Lake that came with it as seen in the vid. Job done!

There's a small scratch on the lid from where the Dremel slipped as I was drilling one of the holes. I'll probably take it apart and sand it a bit more to get rid of that at some point. Will make a recording soon and post - it sounds really fucking good, lovely item. Glad I bought it! So yeah, that's the latest addition to my studio

Looks awesome, nice work!

really cool, and great work documenting how it all came together. thanks for sharing, lets hear the thing in action!!

This is sick, great work.

Wow thats awesome! Cool idea.

Have you tried the Mobius trick yet?

That's a really great idea, I haven't tried it yet but definitely will! Cheers for posting. Picking up an amp from someone in a bit so hopefully will be able to get a recording or two done later today - might even chuck a monotron delay in there too which should be good fun

So I had a little jam session and made three recordings - literally just plugged the stuff in and pressed record so it's a bit rough around the edges. First is the music box plugged into a guitar amp recorded with a Zoom H4n picking up both the amp and the acoustic sounds of the music box in the room. Next is the same setup but with the box going into a Monotron Delay before going into the amp. (Loads of filthy noise here because Monotron. Good fun.) Third is the box recorded directly into my DAW. When Soundcloud is working again the three recordings have been spliced together and uploaded here:

https://soundcloud.com/forward/music-box-test

Also some slightly better pics of the finished box

First impressions are really good, I'm going to have a lot of fun with this! Couple of issues I've noticed are because it's got metal feet it picks up a lot of noise from the surface it's touching. Might need to replace with plastic/rubber or possibly use a mouse mat or something similar to rest the box on while recording. Also the hand crank is pretty noisy - the metal handle constantly clicks against the crank as it's being rotated. Might need to replace with something quieter, will see.

sounds fantastic, love that mechanical chatter in the background. great job, and thanks for uploading that!

Great work, thanks for sharing. Sounds really cool!

Now just gotta figure out how to automate the card punching through exporting piano roll information from a daw....

I think this is a beautiful project and you've inspired me to make my own. From a kit... of course.

thanks for posting this. It sounds amazing. I can't wait to feed this into a daw and play around with effects.

  On 1/6/2015 at 8:23 AM, feltcher said:

Now just gotta figure out how to automate the card punching through exporting piano roll information from a daw....

Ha, yeah that's where my brain comes in. Have a feeling my first few attempts are going to end up being riddled with mistakes corrected with sellotape!

  On 1/6/2015 at 8:35 AM, StephenG said:

I think this is a beautiful project and you've inspired me to make my own. From a kit... of course.

 

thanks for posting this. It sounds amazing. I can't wait to feed this into a daw and play around with effects.

Go for it dude! Apart from an old tub of parmesan cheese that I put some rice in and wrapped a couple of elastic bands around and tried to pass off as a musical instrument for a homework project when I was 12, this is the only instrument I've actually made myself so far. Got the book 'Handmade Electronic Music' a few years ago and I've been meaning to try a few things out from that - this has definitely inspired me to do some more complex things next.

That's awesome dude! I've wanted to make one for years so I could compose for music box.

totally cool. feed it some aphex. avril 14th just for the youtube views. bet it will sound wkd.