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Big Ideas: Don't get any -- by James Houston

James Houston1 HN recommender · recommended in 1 month, 2011-2022
YouTube
1.1M views · 18 years ago · music · evergreen

James Houston's entry to Radiohead's Nude remix contest, performing the 6/8, 63bpm song on obsolete hardware such as hard drives, a dot matrix printer, a scanner and a ZX Spectrum.

It is the canonical example HN brings up in threads about music hacks on floppy drives, printers and other junk hardware.

Demoscene & retrocomputingMusic performance & songsEmbedded systems & DIY electronics#radiohead#dotmatrixprinter#harddrivemusic#zxspectrum#retrocomputing

5 comments from Hacker News

@LegitShady2022 · in “The Floppotron 3.0”

Not exactly the same thing but it reminds me of James Houston's cover of Radiohead's Nude on hard drives, a dot matrix printer, a scanner, and a sinclair ZX Spectrum. ▶ this video This says 14 years ago.

CitesView on HN
@ciabattabread2020 · in “Academics steal data from air-gapped systems using PC fan vibrations”

For a brief second I thought your link was the Radiohead cover that used old computer equipment, including hard drives as speakers. Here’s that link: ▶ this video

CitesView on HN
@esaym2016 · in “Hacked Together 118 GB Floppy Disk”

Ah, disappointing. I was expecting some giant array of them all running in unison and making beautiful "music". Sorta like the radiohead hardware hobbyist video ▶ this video

CitesView on HN
@sspiff2015 · in “Dot matrix printer playing “Eye of the Tiger” [video]”

This is brilliant. It reminds me of the old HP ScanJets, which came with SCSI commands to play musical notes[0] (someone at HP must have had too much free time on his hands ;)). Some videos of the scanners are at [1] and [2]. Another interesting hardware hack to produce music is the "hard drive speaker". You can see some of them in action in a rendition of Radiohead's "Big Ideas: don't get any" [3], as well as various printers and other devices used for their auditive side effects. [0]: link [1]: link [2]: link [3]: ▶ this video

CitesView on HN
@torme2011 · in “Star wars theme played by a floppy disk hack.”

If you haven't seen this yet, this is probably the best example of a hack like this that I've seen. It was submitted for a contest that radiohead held, and I believe was the winner (it takes about a minute to get rolling): ▶ this video The sound of the scanner is pretty awesome. And the original by radiohead in case you need some context. link

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