Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2012/10/04/gotye_gets_geeked/
ScanJet sings number one hit
Disks are cymbals, oscilliscope bass, in song that humans used to know
Posted in Bootnotes, 4th October 2012 02:15 GMT
What to do does one do with outmoded printers and obsolete computers? Create a machine that plays over saturated, heavy rotation pop hits from Australia, of course.
This week’s You Tube hit puller is from Canadian homestyle electronica boffin bd594 who has managed to use a 2004-vintage HP ScanJet 3c and an Amiga 600 to play Australian artist Gotye’s number one hit Somebody That I Used to Know.
The obscure clip has already attracted over two million views.
The mysterious bd594 says he “experiments in music, electronics, robotics and high voltage circuits combined” does a lot of this, with versions of Bohemian Rhapsody and The House of the Rising Sun also in his repertoire.
To recreate the brain-penetrating Gotye tune, bd594 used an HP Scanjet 3C for the vocals, Amiga 600 Bass on left audio output and Guitar on right audio output with each audio channel fed into an oscilloscope.
Two hard drives were used as the drums and cymbal. While a PIC16F84A microcontroller commandeered both the hard drives and a Xylophone.
The video of the song is below. ®