my barrel organ

I’ve got an old Sibelius CD down in the warehouse, but I couldn’t be ar*ed to find and fetch, and it probably wouldn’t work on Vista anyway. So … I had a look around and installed MuseScore, a free, open source competitor for Finale Notepad (which incidentally now costs $10). David Bolton does a head-to-head here. It’s fine for my basic, barrel organ needs, and I found my way round the interface quickly. The big no, however, is that as far as I can see it doesn’t support MIDI keyboard input on Windows, meaning that writing with it would be way too slow. Other stuff: no undo, problems selecting notes/bars/…, cut/copy don’t appear to work, can’t find way of changing instrument output… One to watch - forums here.

More vids. Home. “this show combines beautiful sets, stunning aerial displays and wonderful animated landscapes. Set inside a series of miniature circus tents, The Sugar Beast Circus brings back to life the celebrated circus sideshows of the 1800s”

I once did a multimedia kiosk for some people using the metaphor of the red/white-striped tent. I really need to get one.

This means I can leave percussion off the organ. But does anyone play the washboard or frottoir in Spain?

More appropriate. A calliope is a musical instrument that produces sound by sending steam through whistles, originally locomotive whistles. The calliope is also known as a “steam organ” or “steam piano”. It was often played on riverboats and in circuses, where it was sometimes mounted on a carved, painted and gilded horse-drawn wagon in a circus parade (picture, right). The instrument’s name originates from Greek mythology: Calliope (pronounced /kÉ™.ˈlaɪ.o.pi/), daughter of Zeus, was chief of the Muses and mother of Orpheus. Her name, in Greek, means “beautiful voiced”. A calliope is typically very loud; even small calliopes produce sound that can travel for miles.

Here

Trouble@This Is the Modern World plays a simply divine collection of tracks.

Rather than mucking around with Gumstix and stuff, the excellent Christian Blanchard runs his Orgautomatix from MIDI data and a MIDI reader on a Palm (pic here of the setup). Old Palms go for a tenner and the Z22 is around 70 quid at the moment. IttyMidi does a package including an old Palm (only 8MB) for 120USD, so that’s about 3.50€ ;o) There’s a group, PalmSounds, dedicated to handhelds and music. Old list of software here, but all I want is a controller.

David Marks has done something similar:

128 outputs sounds useful. I assume you could also do that by banking two shrinkwrapped 64-output modules. But I am not an electrical engineer, or any genuine type of engineer for that matter.

I can’t really see the point of buying a proprietary MIDI controller like this one:

(Christian is also using the http://www.j-omega.co.uk/ as the next link in the chain.)

As you can see in the photo of the monkey under construction he sits on a circular ply board that is attached to a bar the other end of which runs in a gear-driven eccentric self-aligning bearing which rocks him with a circular motion. This motion is continuous and draws attention to him. If a coin is inserted into the slot he raises his hat, wiggles his feet and raises a notice from a slot in the base which says ‘Thank You’.

A couple of things found (a Topsy, for example, “runs for 7 hours on a 12 volt 30 AH battery“):

Trad dynamo setup = easier initial setup but less reliable

http://wfmu.org/playlists/shows/27314
http://wfmu.org/listen.ram?show=27314&archive=42923 nice xylophone stuff