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Retro gadget orchestra nails House of the Rising Sun, puts your garage band to shame (video)
YouTube user BD594, also known as James Cochrane, is no stranger to pushing retro tech to its musical limits. Back in 2009 he coaxed a scanner, an Atari 800XL and a host of other antiquated gadgets to perform Bohemian Rhapsody. The results, while certainly enjoyable, were a tad tone deaf. Well, in the years since he's tweaking his "musicians" and his orchestra has just issued its second single -- a stunning rendition of House of the Rising Sun, in the style of the Animals. Seriously, this staple of '60s high school rockstar wannabes is absolutely nailed by the assortment of hard drives, oscilloscopes and the scanner. Cochrane isn't alone in his quest to turn obsolete tech into musical magic. Christopher Mitchell managed to hack a Ti graphing calculator and floppy-disk drive into a monophonic media player. While his accomplishment is impressive, he loses this round for wasting his skills on the saccharin stylings of Cold Play. Check out both videos after the break.
Antiquarian peripherals play Bohemian Rhapsody
Like many things in life, the whirrs and noises of old computers that were formerly annoying now inspire a nostalgic sense of retro glee -- the bleating of a fax modem, the blatting of a large-format dot-matrix printer. It's this sort of nostalgia that inspires some users to make them sing, like a YouTuber going by the handle of bd594 who orchestrated a collection of outdated gear to emit the soulful strings of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. It starts with an HP ScanJet 3C playing the part of Freddie Mercury, then an Atari 800XL makes the organ sounds, TI-99/4a handles guitar duties, and a selection of other archaic goodies make visual and aural appearances. While the scanner did need to be recorded four separate times for all the "vocal" tracks, nothing was pitch-corrected, meaning your old scanner is officially more talented than three quarters of the Weekly Top 40. See for yourself after the break. [Via Boing Boing]
