"Bohemian Rhapsody" - A Concert For Codger Computers

It always makes me smile when someone uses retro computer hardware to create music today. Normally this is in the form of a Game Boy chiptune, or perhaps squeezing more than two notes of music out of an Atari 2600. It's seldom the actual hardware making the musical sounds happen.

Thanks to the untiring efforts of YouTube author bd594, he has harnessed the motor sounds of a scanner, floppy drive innards, and old Atari & TI computers to creak and buzz out a very credible version of "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen. These aren't manipulated and sampled sounds (though the author does mention doing some multitracking to thicken the chords), the song comes from the noises of the actual hardware.

I find the sound oddly reminiscent of an automatic fairground organ, or some Victorian era mechanical music machine. The way that the gear mildly drifts in and out of tune, the fragile nature of the sync, even the actual timbres of the music itself sounds much more ancient and charming than a pile of 80's scrap computers should. It's all terribly clever, and infectiously smile-inducing. And yes, there's a devil put aside for you too.

[via matrixsynth]

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