Day 208 / Hacking A Music Box

Last nights creative thing was both fun as well as frustrating.

 

This little music box had been sitting on top of my refrigerator since Day 171 when I broke open a snowglobe to do some macro filming of the fluid inside.  The moment I pulled it out from the bottom of that snowglobe I knew I was going to do something with it.  I had a hunch it was going to deal with customizing the music to play my own tune (the original song was “My Favorite Things”, a song I’m known for hating) but I had no idea how I was going to do it.

 

The idea of using an aluminum can as the source material occurred to me just a couple days ago.  I needed something strong enough to pluck the notes of the music box but malleable enough for me to bend and punch out protrusions.  The aluminum worked perfectly.

 

I used needle nose pliers to open up and flatten the original song and cut the aluminum to the same shape with a utility knife.  I also used the original music roll to help me line up where the notes would land on my custom song.

 

I punched out the notes using a seam ripper.  The seam ripper worked well but actually improved after I accidentally broke the longer sharper point off the end of it.  I was left with this short blunt end which worked perfectly for creating the right sized bumps that kept the aluminum attached rather than just poking holes.

 

I taped my custom sheet music into a cylinder and attached it to the two caps from the original music box roll.  I connected my custom roll into the gears and held onto a small plug on the outer cap in order to keep the roll in place.  This plug had held the original music roll but for some reason I couldn’t get it to stay without holding onto it.  While holding the plug I cranked the spring on the bottom and played my little tune.  It sounded great!  The aluminum worked well and the notes rang out nicely.

 

Now, the frustrating part.  I figured I had succeeded in my creative project and packed up everything to go to my studio and make a little video recording.  I took the music roll off and placed the plug in my shirt pocket.  Once I finally got the laptop set-up with the camera in position I put the music box into the shot.  I reached for the plug in my shirt pocket and didn’t feel anything!  Suddenly, I realized that that little metal plug could’ve been anywhere between my living room and my garage.  I looked all over for about a half hour and never found it.  I tried to make an alternative plug using a small screw from the Underwood typewriter I took apart.

 

Unfortunately, nothing worked as well as the original plug.  And what’s worse is that through the process of testing out different objects for the plug I ended up bending my aluminum roll out of shape.  By the time I found a decent alternative the aluminum roll was more oblong and wasn’t triggering the notes at all as it did in the house.

 

I realized later, as I was falling asleep, that I could’ve stuffed the roll with tissue in order to bring it back to it’s nice round shape but at that point, it was too late.  It was time for bed.