How To Program a Music Box - Hole Punch Tutorial

Welcome to this music box programming tutorial.

This is a 30-note music box set,

and this is a 20-note music box set.

And when you program

longer songs on these music boxes,

like this one,

It is quite daunting sometimes.

And I've been doing this for

a lot of years now and developed

some tricks that makes it less daunting

and drives you less crazy.

So in this video, I want to share

my best tricks

on how to program these music boxes

with you!

Normally they come in C major,

the 20-note music boxes,

but I have retuned my music boxes

to different keys by adding

some soldering on some notes.

To join these two pieces, you will need

tape, a ruler and a knife.

(rip)

So we start with securing

one piece to the table.

And on this second piece

we're going to cut a little curve,

so we see all the lines,

(whoosh)

like that!

So now we can pair this grid

with this grid.

That looks good!

Put an extra tape

straight over the seam like this!

(rip)

And here's the magic.

So now you take the ruler

and you make a diagonal cut

through both pieces at the same time.

(cutting)

(rip)

(more cutting)

Clean the surfaces of the joint.

Good quality thin masking tape.

(cutting)

(peeling tape off)

And there's your perfect joint!

When I started making these

music box programming,

I made the joint

straight over the paper.

And look at them now.

When you do it right,

the joint should disappear.

(paper flipping)

The next step is to record

your song in MIDI.

That will make everything so much easier

at the later stage.

(Metronome plays at around 110 bpm in 3/4)

(Music starts)

(Music ends)

(spacebar)

So before starting programming

I always

give myself some help by

putting in these reference marks.

So this song is in

waltz tempo, 3/4

one, two, three, one, two, three

and the dotted line will be the division

and by adding these reference marks

it will be much easier later

when we start to punch the actual holes, to not get lost

but we can make it even more clear

by putting in the chords from the song

(spacebar)

so D minor starts

(Music)

do, do-do

(spacebar)

D minor

Remember this part that we cut off in the beginning?

So cut off a little piece like this

and drag it with you when you draw your notes

and then you have easy reference

on the vertical lines.

I always use the MIDI grid

and I have it right in front of me here

so I can see in the MIDI grid

what notes are coming and I can playback

and it helps a lot

from

to remember your arrangement.

So, first bar

do-do-do-do-do-do

D

minor

(writes notes)

Like that!

(time lapse)

And at this point

it can actually be smart to try to cut these holes

to try the tempo on the music box

to see if you've been thinking correctly

with the resolution of the timing,

and that you're heading in the right direction.

Instead of making the whole song

and then realize that you can't crank fast enough or

it's way too fast or something.

(Music Box hits the table)

(pudoh)

(wrrrp)

(Music box plays)

So now there's no contact microphone

recording the sound from the music box,

so we will have a lot of sound from the gears

(brrrrr)

(Music box plays)

So, the test told me that we are on our right way

and we can move on.

And in this next bar

I already see a problem with the MIDI.

This note, doesn't exist on the music box.

It's too low.

You can try to put it one octave higher.

As you can see I drew some mistakes

but then I just cross out those circles

and then when I start punching the holes

I know that I shouldn't punch those.

It's good to keep this song in mind.

Like here I know there's two notes at the same time.

I want the base note to be little earlier

so I put the hole a little bit in this direction

like a little bit before

and this melody I put a little bit that direction

to have that 'g-dang'

nice music box feeling

(click)

(click)

(continuous clicking)

so, that was half the holes

so here, where we are now

I want the song to repeat itself

I want to play what we have programmed so far, twice

And the goodnews is that there's a way of copying

what we have just done

If we take this note, where the song should repeat

and we align it with the first note that we already cut,

we can actually just use the holes that we cut

and copy them onto the new paper, like this.

But before I draw all these, I'm gonna check for mistakes on the first holes.

And note now that we don't have the real microphones in the music box now,

so it's going to be a lot of mechanical noise.

Slower...

What happened there?

The highest note didn't play.

I didn't hear any mistakes.

So this time I was lucky enough because there was no mistakes in this programming so far.

But I want to show you a trick on how to fix your mistakes.

It's actually no problem, because you will make a lot of mistakes.

So I'm gonna show you just for an example.

I put a hole here

this one

and I just realized that it should be on the line next to it.

So what I do is that I turn it around

and I tape that hole.

I make sure the tape has very nice edges

and then I re-punch the hole right next to it.

So now the right note will be played.

and the wrong note will be silent.

So, that's some comfort, in a way

If you put a note a little bit too early,

I think here, I put this note here

you can just keep on making a hole until you want the note

because the music box wont play until the hole ends.

Now I have repeated the whole song twice

but I want to end the song

with

repeating the first little part, also.

So, take the beginning

and you're just gonna draw that little part in as well.

Last hole!

Riiiiight there.

Okay.

When you cut for a long time, the paper edge is

tearing up your skin like this.

I just put a piece of masking tape on my hand

It works very good, actually.

So, this song is done.

I think if you were good with writing software

you could write a software that takes MIDI

and makes a laser

cutting template

and you can just put these papers into the laser cutter and have the laser cutter to

cut perfect holes with perfect timing

Annnnd . . .

if someone is interested in doing something like that with me, please let me know

because it would be quite cool, actually.

I know for a 30 note music box,

I have seen rolls

long rolls with paper so you don't have to join them.

If someone has seen

long rolls

for the 20 note music box paper

so you don't have to join them

I would be very interested for that link as well.

This song is done.

and, on the next video,

I'm gonna put the song onto the music box

and record it properly

so you can hear the result.

I hope you learned something today

and maybe you want to try this yourself.

I would love to see your version of a

music box like this.

It doesn't have to be motorized, it can be hand cranked.

That's sometimes even cooler.

And . . .

You can subscribe to Wintergatan here,

And . . .

Thanks so much for watching.

See you on the next video.