Symphony For Dot Matrix Printers 171
nico_DNS writes: ""The Symphony for dot matrix printers is a work which transforms obsolete office technology into an instrument for musical performance. The Symphony focuses the listener's attention on a nearly forgotten technology: the dot-matrix printer. Specifically, it employs the noises the printers make as the sole sound source for a musical composition. Leaving the constituent elements untouched, the process imposes a new order upon them, reorganizing the sounds along a musical structure. ""
Haiku (Score:2)
Yow! Just imagine
Beowulf cluster of these!
(Ouch! Karma deathwish.)
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YAY Musique concrete! (Score:1)
Since I'm stuck at work w/o the soundcard can anyone verify if this sounds good?
When I was little... (Score:1)
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hp scanjet 5p (Score:5)
set scanner to SCSI ID #0
boot system while holding down Scan button
you will hear "Ode to Joy" as Beethoven intended it-with the scan motor's whine :)
Opera quote updated... (Score:1)
(Sorry, have a fever, should be sleeping.)
Re:Haiku (Score:1)
Can we say... (Score:1)
Wonder what other computer components could be used to make music? Hard disk spinning up/down or acessing, removable media drives, cd-rom trays going in/out, tape drives running, etc... :)- ------------------------------
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other sounds.. (Score:2)
Re:YAY Musique concrete! (Score:2)
Unfortunately, no. It appears to be Slashdotted.
...phil
Re:YAY Musique concrete! (Score:1)
Symphony for Nine and Twenty-Four Pins (Score:3)
Dot matrix printers still have valid uses (Score:3)
Send the outputs of
Hard logs. Good securrity. Hackers: Try erasing these puppies. Better bring a lighter!
Now, Dot Matrix printers to Music would be interesting. They could probably use a few old DEC line printers for good bass.
Later models (24 pin) would be good for higher-pitch sounds.
I suppose old 'typewriter like' printers don't count?
These are gorgeous (Score:3)
There is something extremely peaceful and soothing to these songs. I looped them back-to-back for an hour or so, and I swear it was among the most transcendant experiences I've had this year.
They also have a distinct 20th century edginess to them; whoever arranged these had quite the mastery of rhythm. ;-)
Re:hp scanjet 5p (Score:1)
That's what I was trying to remember. Thank you!
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what a way to make music! (Score:2)
Other uses of old dot matrix printers include:
Cheap alarm clock alternative
80 movie props
prop doors open
small boat anchor
Musical Machines (Score:1)
But the history of this very cool idea goes all the way back to one of the old kit-computers where you toggled in the entire program using switches and got results from a couple of LEDs. It produced a different frequency whine depending on how hard the processor was working. Somebody got it to play "Mary Had A Little Lamb" at a meeting of an early Homebrew Computer Club. I can't remember which computer or club specifically, though.
Concerto for Dot Matrix Printer and Orchestra (Score:2)
Anyone know any more about this? I've tried a couple of web searches but not found anything. We are talking about 10 years ago if I recall right.
Baz
Re:Opera quote updated... (Score:1)
When *that* matrix sings it usualy brings the
house down.
pizseticata (Score:1)
Emulator? (Score:1)
Duh! Heh!
Re:When I was little... (Score:1)
Any advance on that?
It's got a good beat and I can dance to it. (Score:1)
5 1/4 disk drive music (Score:1)
I used to have the program but I hardly ever used it. I was always afraid of damaging such an expensive piece of equipment!
Epson? (Score:1)
Was it the Diablo series of printers that had their own soundproofing case?
new musical forms (Score:1)
However, I can imagine musicians sampling this into their own recordings.
My $.02
Arun
Dot Matrix Bohemian Rhapsody (Score:1)
And I thought boy bands were bad!
Very interesting (Score:1)
I still have a Printronix P300 line printer! (Score:1)
Re:YAY Musique concrete! (Score:1)
I have the mp3's downloaded. Want me to mail them to you? I'll give them to anyone who wants to mirror.
Not news (Score:1)
Isn't this old news? The sites were posted in an earlier thread.
The link is posted in this comment. [slashdot.org]
Does this mean we can all be karma whores and submit user posts as news?
--Jeff
Bad idea... (Score:1)
The horror... (Score:5)
(by stabbing them over and over again... for several minutes... in the same location... with almost imperceptible variations to my rhythm... until those listening to the murder would fall into a trance-like state of understanding the structure of what I am doing.)
And when I was little... (Score:1)
Slashdotted (Score:1)
On the Wall
Who has the fastest Mirror
Of them All?
Re:Musical Machines (Score:2)
This is all out of Steven Levy's excellent book "Hackers: Heroes of The Computer Revolution." Most of it is available online here [stanford.edu].
Re:I've been bored.... (Score:3)
It was a fairly heavy duty switch but one had to replace them every now and then doing that...
:)
The BBC would also sing to you as it operated, you could tell what it was doing by the electronic noises it made
Troc
This used to happen with mechanical calculators (Score:1)
monsters made by Marchant and others.
We used to have rooms of these things for statistics classes when I went to college, although I can't remember anyone doing a multipart score. Maybe someone at MIT?
Re:5 1/4 disk drive music (Score:1)
Paul Panhuysen (Score:1)
.matrix (Score:3)
Coolasmovie.matrix , Wagner.matrix
And they thought jello could start fires....
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Re:Dot matrix printers still have valid uses (Score:1)
Mirror ? (Score:1)
I listened to these a few days ago... (Score:2)
Unfortunately, the MP3's on the web site seem to be just short excerpts of the the whole symphony.
Now, I listen to a lot of music, from classical to rock to various electronica. I was impressed by this - I had expected it to be kind of a gimmick, or kind of a joke. But what I heard actually sounded musically interesting. Better than a lot of modern music, anyway. If I saw the whole thing available on CD I would buy it.
Your opinion, of course, may vary.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Re:Emulator? (Score:1)
Hey! I posted this already! (Score:1)
Re:Mirror ? (Score:2)
Re:When I was little... (Score:2)
When I was little ( i.e. when I was 30 yrs. old in 1977) , there was a program that did this on an HP 2108 CPU with a paper tape reader. I don't remember the tune now tho'...
Sinan
Current Epson ink jet printers (Score:1)
I've never understood why those printers make so much noise. The whiring and buzzing seems to last for about 30 seconds! My HP deskjet doesn't make any sound at all on power-up.
Re:Musical Machines (Score:2)
Well, if we're gonna talk about non-printers making music, then I may as well plug my VT100 Oddities page [rt66.com], since a VT100 can make music too. Sort of.
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Music to my ears (Score:3)
Now if only they could synchronize your hard drives to the printer music, so you could get a higher range. Throw in the fans and the modem and you could do a quartet.
Re:Haiku (Score:2)
Thanks, moderators
Glad you appreciate art
Won't repeat offense
How much karma have I?
That, my friends, is The Question
Dent knows The Answer
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Diva spark source (Score:2)
We never did do it, though.
Re:Dot matrix printers still have valid uses (Score:1)
"Copy 7 - Destroy"
Re:I listened to these a few days ago... (Score:2)
What this reminded me of most was parts of "Selected Ambient Works Volume II" by Aphex Twin. Tape loops and noises that sort of come together, much more than the sum of the parts, and induce a trance-like state... mmmm.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Forgotten technology? (Score:2)
Hard-drive races play this song, doodaa doodaa (Score:1)
Next: New from Nvidia, a graphics driver that sets your monitor sync out of range, to the tune of "Flight of the Bumblebee".
Really, it makes me wonder. Are these Easter Eggs the reason why most software is late? Or do they just get written out of boredom when someone else drops the ball, and coders have nothing better to do.
Re:Concerto for Dot Matrix Printers (or car horns) (Score:2)
A small description of that concert is available here [socan.ca].
Victor Davies' website is at http://www.goodmedia.com/vdavies/ [goodmedia.com]. I recommend you check some of his music out. He is a phenominal composer.
Re:YAY Musique concrete! (Score:1)
I don't know when the next new performance around here is, as I don't know the tour schedule.
Re:Epson? (Score:1)
Re:I still have a Printronix P300 line printer! (Score:1)
Re:hp scanjet 5p (Score:3)
Anyone got an mp3 of this, for those of us without the magical musical hardware?
umm... (Score:1)
Re:These are gorgeous (Score:1)
Aha! There's the comment [slashdot.org]!
Reminds me of Bill Ding (Score:1)
Re:Hard-drive races play this song, doodaa doodaa (Score:1)
Can-can! (Score:1)
Re:other sounds.. (Score:1)
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Re:These are gorgeous (Score:1)
. . .something the world could use a lot more of
Playing music on printers is older than most of us (Score:5)
From "Mechanical Music Digest(tm) Archives":
http://www.foxtai l.com/Archives/Digests/199812/1998.12.15.09.html [foxtail.com]
Except that was probably someone trying to do a cannon shot...
(Also from the same source): Introduction & Line Printer Music [foxtail.com].
Since I can't seem to find anything really good on line printer music, I'll share some anecdotes which were shared with me.
The "chain" on line printers (which holds the letters) used to have all the characters in ASCII (or EBCDIC, I presume) order. Notably, A-Za-z was present in unadulterated form. The problem with this is that anyone printing A-Za-z (interpolate for yourself, please) would fire 52 solenoids at once, frequently blowing the power supply (Or as mentioned in an article linked above) firing the chain out of the printer. The solution was to move the characters around the chain and have the printer translate by means of a lookup table (presumably). In any case, some people did go through the effort to figure out where the characters had been moved to on some printers, but this effectively killed line printer music. How do you do a good cannon shot without being able to fire them all at once?
In any case, it's much the same as using a dot matrix printer; You fire off combinations of characters to generate different sounds. The thing here is that making music with line printers dates from the early seventies if not sooner; Since I'm from the late seventies, it predates me. People were making music with line printers before dot matrix printers existed.
It's worthwhile to never forget your roots.
Even older music... (Score:1)
Hell, I can remember many a Monday I didn't want to get up for school, as Dr. Demento was on at 1AM on monday mornings. I distinctly remember a piece entitled "Symphony for full orchestra with a typewriter" - how's *THAT* for old-school tech producing music?
If anyone knows who that's by, or how to find a copy of it, please mail me - it's been lingering in my mind and I've been waiting for an appropriate time to mention it.
Re:Dot matrix printers still have valid uses (Score:1)
Oh no, I think we've been cracked! Let's go look at the logs. Lesse, 2000 lines on my log (that's almost 34 pages full of information), and now I need to find all instances of the IP address 163.272.34.52... hmm...
How do you grep on a dot matrix output? (Or, if you're like me, just do a pattern search via less on paper?)
Hmm, line 324 - access from 163.22.32.521 .. nope, not right... next line... access from 127.0.0.1... no, still not right... hmm...
I wonder... (Score:2)
Quick, hide! They're arming themselves with fruits and vegetables!
I still have my IBM ProPrinter X24E(?) (Score:2)
Revenge of the dot-matrix printer (Score:2)
One of my dorm-mates once used his dot-matrix printer to get back at some rudeness on his roomie's part. Said roomie had stayed on the phone till about 2 AM arguing with his girlfriend, and my friend was trying to get some sleep before an 8 AM exam. Didn't work out too well.
So my friend waits till a night when the roomie comes home drunk. He lets the roomie sleep for about an hour, then sends a half-megabyte text file to the printer.
All bolded.
With the printer set to half-speed mode.
That was the last time the roomie kept my friend needlessly awake.
Aero
*You've* been bored? Check these guys out... (Score:2)
Printers with MIDI Ports! (Score:2)
"Why are you hooking your printer up to your SoundBlaster MIDI port?"
"To make it sound better."
This Reminds Me Of Something. (Score:2)
Does anybody out there have a copy of LONE.EXE? I have searched for it on the web in vain.
This was a program that played "The Lone Ranger" music through the PC speaker. The really impressive thing about it was that it was supposedly written on a pre-PC computer that used a similar instruction set and architecture to Intel (can anybody cite an example of that?).
Anyway, another really impressive thing about this program was that it was only 4k for something like 5 minutes or more of music, albeit in an electronic sounding format. I had a copy of this on my old 286, and I saved the hard drive. Unfortunately, it used an interface standard that predated ISA. I've been told it's possible to adapt the drive, but I have neither the time nor the money to look into it, and it may not be on there anyway.
This is also of some historical interest, as it is possibly one of the earliest "PC music" programs. It may even be 25 years old or more, so until I find it, I'll just have to make sure that nothing damages the old hard drive because it may be a "historical artifact".
Re:The horror... (Score:3)
What will you do for the 50 or so years between the turn of the century and the advent of minimalist composers?
Flight of the Bumblebee (Score:2)
This computer normally emitted radio waves during operation, and the "program" that was running during the demonstration was written especially to emit radio waves that played "The Flight of the Bumblebee".
Re:Playing music on printers is older than most of (Score:3)
Re:When I was little... (Score:2)
If you were inhumanly patient and had a decent ear, you could write programs in FP Basic that would make an Apple II+ play tones out of the speaker. I remember a popular tune at our ComputerLand franchise was Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring."
Re:The horror... (Score:3)
I guess I would use the end of my knife to pluck Middle C on a piano until 1935, when Terry Riley is born... then I'll start with him.
Why would I wait for them to grow up and start writing? That would defeat the purpose of going back in time. If I just wanted revenge, I could take it out on Brian Eno.
Re:Hard-drive races play this song, doodaa doodaa (Score:3)
I myself added an easter egg to a program I've worked on (not at Microsoft). A Mandelbrot generator in an RTF print preview program doesn't take that much space. One other developer has found it for himself (in the code) in the 1.5 years the code has been out... and that's because of the blatantly obvious out-of-place "mandel.c"... sticking out right there in SourceSafe. I did it because, at the time, I had nothing better to do, and have always wanted to make an easter egg in a commercial product.
Silly me, I forgot the point of easter eggs (at least the Microsoft ones you see) and neglected to even include my name.
BTW, Ctrl-Alt-Shift-NumPad*
Something Similar for the C64... (Score:2)
-- iCEBaLM
nine inch nails,.. (Score:2)
at the end of 'ringfinger' (the last track on 'pretty hate machine') there is a twisted guitar (that's what i've heard it claimed to be) which sounds almost exactly like a dot matrix.
to me anyway..
...dave
Symphony for 9 and 24 Pins? Look out ELO! (Score:5)
Man-oh-man, it must be Friday, 'cuz I read something totally different
Sympathy for Dot Matrix
(to the tune of "Sympathy for the Devil" By Mick Jagger/Keith Richards)
Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a past that you must face
I've been around for a long, long year
Stole many a man's soul and faith
I was around when TRS-80s
Had their moment of dubious fame
Made Damn sure that Tandy
Washed their hands and sealed your fate.
CHORUS
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game
I stuck around in adding machines
When the computer saw the time to change
I handled carbons and NCR's
As the lasers screamed in vain
Built like a tank
Held a general's rank
When line printers raged
And the toner stank
CHORUS
I watched with glee
While compatibility
and the price you paid
Were the laser's grave
You always knew
What screwed your CRT
It was EMI
From the DMP
Let me please introduce myself
I'm a past that you must face
And I'm the best for preprinted forms
That can't be filled in any other way
CHORUS
Just as every box is a terminal
Most of your print queue is text
I'm noisy as Hell
Just call me Lucifer
'Cause for some jobs I'm still the best
So if you meet me
Have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some taste
Use all your well-learned politesse
Or I'll lay your forms to waste.
CHORUS
Tell me baby, what's my name
Tell me honey, baby guess my name
Tell me baby, what's my name
Tell you one time, you're to blame
Ooo, who -- Ooo, who -- Ooo, who -- Ooo, who -- who
Ooo, who -- Ooo, who -- Ooo, who -- Ooo, who -- who
Oh, yeah
What's my name
Tell me, baby, what's my name
Tell me, sweetie, what's my name
Ooo, who -- Ooo, who -- Ooo, who -- Ooo, who -- who
Ooo, who -- Ooo, who -- Ooo, who -- Ooo, who -- who
Oh, yeah
Re:Symphony for 9 and 24 Pins? Look out ELO! (Score:2)
Hey, Bubbala, for a fellow
Listen to the Rhythm of the Line Printer
To the tune of "Rhythm Of The Falling Rain" by The Cascades
Listen to the rhythm of the Line Printer
It giving me a terminal headache
I wish that I had thought before I hit 'Enter'
Cause the feedpath screws up when I 'Break'
The user queue is lengthy for for the batch laser,
And management won't buy a broken part.
So I'm stuck with this Goliath of a Line Printer
That grew up drawing ASCII art.
Hey, please tell me now does that seem fair?
The sysops all are underpaid, but they don't care
I can't track a cracker when log output takes half a day
The user queue is lengthy for for the batch laser,
And management won't buy a broken part.
So I'm stuck with this Goliath of a Line Printer
That grew up drawing ASCII art.
There's Pain in my temples and it just won't go.
I'm going to light the paper, set this place aglow
Take the mainframe apart, then maybe our budget will grow
Listen to the rhythm of the Line Printer
It giving me a terminal headache
I wish that I had thought before I hit 'Enter'
Cause the feedpath screws up when I 'Break'
Oh listen to the falling rain
pitter-patter, from the sprinklers, ooo-oo-oo
Listen, listen....
HP ScanJet 4C (Score:3)
Quite interesting. I tried to figure out the file format, but to no avail... I think if I could feed MIDI files to my scanner, I wouldn't need any MP3's!
jason
Re:Hard-drive races play this song, doodaa doodaa (Score:2)
They were testing the hardware drivers, and they were ready ahead before anyone else needed their section.
Re:Playing music on printers is older than most of (Score:2)
Apple ImageWriter and Commodore 1541 (Score:2)
Reminds You Of Something? LOOK HERE! (Score:4)
Hey, all you nostalgics! Go here:
OAK Software Repository [oakland.edu]
Right from the main page, go to the section called PC/Blue Disk Library [oakland.edu], and go to the PCBLUE subdirectory. Then download the big master index (pbcat.zip). Find the archive file that holds the software you're looking for (trust me, they're all in there), and enjoy!
In your particular case, you're thinking of the "PianoMan" software. There were actually many, many different tunes available with that program, not just the William Tell Overture (a.k.a. the Lone Ranger's theme song). The PianoMan program had the ability to generate COM files from the included music (MUS) files. That's why the Lone Ranger song got distributed so much more than the entire PianoMan package.
Rest assured, if you download Volume 216 from the above archive, and then spend about 2 minutes reading the PianoMan documentation, you'll be able to re-generate that Lone Ranger tune/program.
Re:Reminds You Of Something? LOOK HERE! (Score:2)
Thanks!!!
The WILLTELL.COM file that it generated was 33k, but perhaps my memory exagerated this. This must be it, because it had a very memorable sound to it.
Thank-you very much for solving one of those "nagging little things" and now I probably won't have to fuss with the old hard drive.
This also explains why my searches were fruitless. Now, if somebody builds a search engine smart enough to index into compressed files, and even subindex into compressed files in formats as obscure as ARCX, I will be very impressed.
ArcticChicken should be moderated up Informative.
Cube featured dot matrices on its soundtrack (Score:2)
I also have a Graphtec X-Y plotter, which makes neat sounds, especially from programmatically generated images, such as a cardioid. I've been hacking it to do pencil and watercolor images, with promising results.
Oh well, back to paid hacking now.
Re:Forgotten technology? (Score:2)
My memories (Score:2)
They had this program they would run every now and then (like during lunch hour) which generated endless pages of math problems (like four digit addition, two digit multiplication, etc.) for the remedial math students. At 300 baud, the program made this unmistakable sound between the digits (with one or two spaces in between) and the lines under the problems. skritch, skritch, skritch, skritch, thunkswoosh, skritch, skritch, skritch, skritch, thunkswoosh, bzzzzz, bzzzzz, bzzzzz, bzzzzz, thunkunkunkswoosh...
Until someone realizes that you're doing it... (Score:2)
Oh yeah, baby!!! (Score:2)
Good thing I read all the way through the responses before I posted about this. I remember this vaguely from the 80's. My maniacal best friend told me about them, along with his copy protection breaking software.
Anybody remember "Impossible Mission?"
ICA (Score:2)
You might be interested to know that Man or Astroman? [astroman.com] are using the same trick on their new album, in a track called -- fittingly, A Simple Text File [slab.org]. Supposedly there's an mp3 of it laying around, but I haven't heard it yet.
Friends of mine are all into this kind of music. I remember hearing about one that did more or less the same as this dot matrix stuff, only with a room full of hard drives and very precisely accessed text files & a bit of perl magic. If you find this sort of thing interesting, you might want to listen to (void).mp3 [slab.org] by Alex MacLean [generative.net], which was 100% generated with a perl script and the logs of a mailing list, and generative.net [generative.net], where people that are in to this sort of stuff congregate and exchange ideas about what art really is [generative.net]. All very fascinating stuff...
Lotus Symphony? for dot matrix? Yeah! (Score:2)
One important question: do you need an 80386SX computer with 1MB of RAM to run it? Otherwise I'm out of luck. Blasted MS-DOS 3.3! What if I run Desqview -- is it Quarterdeck certified? It doesn't conflict with Sidekick or other TSRs, I hope. Can't live without those.
I hope it fits on a single app floppy. I hate having to swap floppies just to run a program. 720K ought to be big enough for anything.
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