Robot Slide Whistle Orchestrion

Inevitable really.
More info: mitxela.com/slide2
Emulator: mitxela.com/projects/slide2/emu
Patreon: / mitxela
Paypal: paypal.me/mitxela
00:00 Mii channel
01:22 Talking
02:51 Magic roundabout
03:36 Insides
04:47 All star
07:57 More talking
11:07 da vinci's notebook

[@doxielain2231]

The servo noise makes a nice rhythm accompaniment

[@goosenotmaverick1156]

Honestly it works so well with it, I had barely noticed them. 😂 Like I know they are there making noise but it just fits so I paid it no mind haha

[@dominicrichardson5546]

Sounds like a hiphop style record scratch sound effect lol

[@Alkatross]

Reminds me of the stepper orchestra

[@Thanks-Again]

lol quite the opposite I was coming to tell him he should do this with silent servos 😂

[@JamitinThereRepair]

​@@Thanks-Again I agree with the silent servos or at least mount them in back where we cannot hear them.

[@ERKNEES2]

How dare you not add more googly eyes

[@phylliida]

Each slide whistle has two

[@Alex_Vir]

​@@phylliida haven't you read what the cat wrote?

[@Jelte_Dijkmans]

@@phylliidaWE NEED MORE

[@RoboKnight924]

@phylliida, there are also two on the left middle one

[@Eunakria]

the reading comprehension on this site is piss poor

[@steveschritz1823]

“At the event, nobody seemed to care that it was out of tune. If anything, it just made it funnier.” Bingo … it’s the whimsical nature of a project like this that makes it pure gold!

[@HoneySoakedSeagull]

You're a monster. You have 4. You could have perfectly done bohemium rhapsody on them and made each of them look like specific queen members. Awesome video none the less.

[@GoldenPickaxe]

Because MysteryGuitarMan already perfected this

[@Eluderatnight]

🎶I see the silouete of a man....🎶

[@cosmicraysshotsintothelight]

@@Eluderatnight Yes, but can he do The Fandango?

[@rogerwilco2]

Heheheheh.

[@ed_halley]

Missed the opportunity to paint the tubes in spiral white and red paint, for a Barber Pole Quartet.

[@CaptainWizard3000]

THIS

[@fredericapanon207]

White washi tape in a helix

[@keleynal4424]

With slide whistles of different sizes to get some great harmonies and greater range.

[@chadmwest]

This is as great a crime as failing to name the Jet Ski the Boatercycle.

[@matteobessone5490]

Bow ties, they all need bow ties

[@Jett-n-gin]

I take a look at my enormous whistle and my troubles start a-meltin' away!

[@cartoonkeeper]

I see what you did there Naughty Boy

[@richfiles]

:D

[@CosmicRadioGuy]

lolol

[@Naro_Rivers]

I take a look at my enormous whistle And the happy times are coming to stay!

[@cilantrof190]

It's not size that matters...

[@wiebel7569]

You got me at the "Increasingly desperate transistor arrangement."

[@alexportiiii6414]

A few years ago, I made a robot slide whistle emulator! 10:30

[@wiggletonthewise2141]

This feels like something you would find in an old amusement museum made by someone in the 1940’s, like those old self playing pianos, well done!!

[@SeraphimKnight]

I'm a bit disappointed I didn't get rickrolled by slidewhistle robots.

[@seditt5146]

I feel so bad for the people who had a booth around this one all day long. They had nightmares, I am sure! Clowns and circus tigers with googly eyes chasing them so they can sing them a song or die.

[@Jonathan.D]

I just attended my daughters 4th grade recorder recital. This is so much better! I was praying that at any moment they were going to play the brown note and we could all go home. Because the effects of the brown note is preferable to an hour of 4th graders playing the recorder.

[@policy8analyst]

​@@Jonathan.D THE notorious brown note? How did they miss it?

[@cyborgamish]

The more I listen to this, the more it sounds perfectly in tune

[@makers_lab]

Yes, but know that anything else you listen to from thereon will sound terrible :)

[@cyborgamish]

@@makers_lab The Detunear 2000

[@asdfasdfasdfasdfzzzz]

LMFAO why did this start happening when I read this comment

[@Validole]

That's called Stockholm Syndrome

[@makers_lab]

@@Validole It isn't; maybe Stockhausen Syndrome though :)

[@AB-Prince]

mr sand man on slide whistles, or any "barbershop quartet" type of music.

[@JetSimon]

Mr Sandman is in his original slide whistle video if you want to see it.

[@pinaz993]

Sand?

[@h3lldr0p]

Nonono. You want Enter Sandman from Metallica on slidewhistle!

[@Klabbity_Kloots]

I mean, the last song was a "barbershop quartet" type of music.

[@a97civic20]

Last one was DaVinci's notebook. Look it up if you haven't heard of them, you won't be disappointed!

[@Wintergatan]

Absolutely top tier, as always from mitxela

[@botondszihalmi6947]

nice to see you here too

[@Hope_Boat]

Beethoven was deaf which makes him a great choice for playing something on this instrument.

[@tshackelton]

There are a ton of recalled CPAP machines around right now, and although you need an ESC, you should be able to get really precise flow rates. I'm using them on my 3d printers for part cooling, the flow rates are incredible for the cost.

[@abakedapplepie]

where would you go to purchase something like this?

[@jacobblotkamp2945]

Best April fool's day ever!

[@JustinKoenigSilica]

Thank you for your apologies before showing us this wonderful piece

[@rustybrooks]

It's always nice to know in advance if I'll be owed an apology by the end of a video

[@Bob_Adkins]

I was expecting more armonica and less calliope.

[@alantremonti1381]

I forgave him.

[@Ziraya0]

An air pressure capacitor, like in Look Mum No Computer's organ, would help with the blower consistency. If you can figure out how to miniaturize it. Just to cover it, the church organ has something akin to a bellows, a big box that inflates upward when the fan is on with accordion style walls, and then you put a big weight on it. The fan lifts the weight, and when pipes open they let out air, then if demand for air exceeds the fan's capacity the bellow will begin to deplete. Unless an arrangement is consistently blowing a large number of pipes, this over-demand period will be temporary. A bonus feature of this and all capacitors is that when implemented correctly they filter out higher frequency content in the supply. One way to miniaturize it may be to use balloons, these would be able to radiate fast spikes out of the air supply, and compensate for low supply

[@RyanWAFFELYoung]

Including the LMNC organ flow capacitor in this is a great idea. Could then get one larger blower to fill it rather than multiple as then the back pressure from the other whistles being off wouldn't affect the ones that are on. Could even put in electrically controlled valves to added 'velocity' to each whistel.

[@clownwreck]

This is very cool. I noticed that, during "All Star", the harmony whistles were drowning out the melody whistle. I wonder if there is a way to selectively dampen the sound of given whistles in cases like this.

[@official-obama]

the harmony whistles are all playing at the same time

[@warpeggioslab]

I'm currently researching air regulators for a street organ build. Have you seen the Apfelregal, or Bibelregal? They use a simple weighted bellows to maintain air pressure. Much like your leaky pumps, the two bellows generate MORE than enough wind, and the overpressure is simply exhausted silently, UNLESS enough pipes are speaking to consume all the bellows wind. @MichaelKrzyzaniak 's organ build mentions using a pressure sensor and control of the blowers, but I suspect that isn't the whole story.

[@nadiaplaysgames2550]

you can seet example but look at LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER organ playlist

[@Scrogan]

A pneumatic zener regulator. I’d rather see an adjustable constrictor than an adjustable leak, if just for efficiency’s sake. A pneumatic LDO, if you will.

[@warpeggioslab]

​@@Scrogan i'm only a couple weeks into my research but from what i can tell, organs usually have main regulators to provide pressure, along with spring loaded regulators near to the windchest to provide fast response to pneumatic hammer, which sounds like flutter when a large pipe or chord of pipes is closed suddenly. The resulting step-effect causes a wave in the ductwork if it's not dissipated by a regulator. The way that @mitxela did the valves over the aperture probably doesn't seal tightly enough to cause that issue.

[@Sixta16]

Just use bigger fan, so that the small volume flowing to 4 tiny whistles does not influence pressure as much.

[@theorganguy]

for God's sake, please only use proper bellow systems when building a street organ!

[@amyshaw893]

It kinda sounds like those organs you get at fairs that use punched cards for music, and now I want to see a punch card interface for this haha

[@fburton8]

Like some kind of Magic Roundabout, yeah!

[@RobertMilesAI]

I wonder if anyone makes a piano roll reader that just outputs midi. Easy modular old time music machines!

[@alfiegordon9013]

​@@RobertMilesAIeven if not, I can't imagine it'd be a huge project to slap one together Now I want to do it....

[@satibel]

@@alfiegordon9013 I did something similar in 2 projects, a midi organ, and a light sensor that uses a strip, you basically have a row of leds with either phototransistors or photoresistors. since we don't need analog, a pair of SGPT4057/SIR4056 will do the trick. for feeding, a pair of rubber paint rollers works well, and you can either repeat that on the other side, or just have a small slit that's barely larger than the card, with felt on both sides. you can use an ide cable to connect a 3 octave reader (36 notes, plus ground and power, and 1 pin is nc ) midi is very easy, just serial write on each change (note on/note off).

[@amyshaw893]

@@rustycherkas8229 no it's not, a calliope is metal and powered by steam, I mean a book organ

[@jonasglue]

I want this playing at my funeral

[@jamesspinks716]

Me too, it’s the only way to get a tear.

[@ame7165]

i don't know why, but i really like this project. it's fairly complicated, but executed cleanly, and the resulting music is too absurd to be bad. and honestly it's the best type of thing to show off at an expo. brilliant work!

[@StephenTack]

During the All Star demo, I was thinking, "this sure could use closed-loop pitch control...but you'd probably have to use a contact mic." Great minds... I'd be more optimistic regarding the chances of isolating pitch feedback. I'd love to see it attempted, even if you failed. Heck, a failure after an honest attempt would make great click bait. Keep up the good work!

[@snoopsnet8150]

Those tiny joints are amazing. I can't believe they hold up 👍

[@rustedwrenchrestorationwor9779]

This is beautiful! I'm crying from laughter. I can just see the little flaps shaped like white glove cartoon hands. the googly eyes are necessary! I wonder what it would take to do this with kazoos? Probably just a tone generator and a fan... hmmmmmm.....

[@josephwisniewski3673]

And now I'm picturing a servo-driven Theramin.

[@JyrkiPelaa]

I can already hear the soothing vintage scifi movie noises..

[@cosmicraysshotsintothelight]

Zombie hands get pretty stinky after they've been out for a while. Birds might start picking at them too...

[@StereoTyp0]

Apologies are not enough. Great Job. edit: I recognize that barbershop tune, cheeky

[@scattergun]

Never thought I'd see googly eyed slide whistles harmonizing to Allstar

[@chupathingy5862]

Bob Moog was once interviewed shortly after debuting his synthesizer. The interviewer leaned forward and asked, "Mr. Moog, tell me: don't you feel guilty about what you've done?"

[@official-obama]

according to los angeles times, "Robert Moog, 71; His Synthesizer Brought New Sounds to Music": In “Moog,” a recent documentary by director Hans Fjellestad, an interviewer leans toward Moog and sternly asks, “Tell me, Mr. Moog, don’t you feel guilty about what you’ve done?”

[@cabe_bedlam]

Honestly, the slight jank is absolutely part of its charm!

[@camsy83]

It is very reminiscent of the turret orchestra at the end of Portal 2.

[@onenaner]

jesus christ also "enormous wenis" is peak

[@skyrimking4098]

I’m surprised more people didn’t notice this

[@richfiles]

It was an enormously great tune @@skyrimking4098

[@CosmicRadioGuy]

@@skyrimking4098 I did, immediately. Big Bob and Tom fan.

[@scotth9828]

No need for blasphemy

[@skyrimking4098]

@@scotth9828no need for your opinion 🤭🤭🤭

[@multiplysixbynine]

What an enormous slide whistle project!

[@nicholasamesbury]

Herbie Hancock"s 'Watermelon Man' 1973 is written for this device.

[@flare2000x]

The build quality and overall neatness of the final product is just one of the very impressive features of this project. The little clips to hold on the back plate for instance, this extra attention to detail is great.

[@shoofle]

I really appreciate the restraint and taste of not going for the low hanging fruit of never gonna give you up.

[@jonrpearce]

On the occasional well intoned chord, it's quite lovely. A bellows setup like a pipe organ may well make the erratic motor pressure more workable. There is some charm in the wild intonation, and I enjoy the percussive record scratches of the servos. Top work, as ever!

[@cademcclure2147]

What an absolutely beautiful/horrendous thing. I love it

[@TheMannus]

If you want your sound to be more tuneable, you could add a balloon or air chamber between your pump and the flute (This would give you some fluidic "capacitance"), thereby making the airflow more constant and easier to handle for the motors ;). Very cool project!

[@michaelsorensen7567]

Bag slide pipes.... I love it!

[@salterclan]

About a minute in and my daughter said it sounded like ambulances driving by. 😂

[@phroug2]

I had this video on in the background and I yelled at my wife from across the room "Hey thats Davinci's Notebook!!"

[@karl1ok]

What a glorious contraption! And such an excellent choice of Davinci's Notebook

[@graemedavidson499]

Now we know what a Clanger choir sounds like…

[@DaveBjornRapp]

The googly eyes really finish out the whole gestalt of it. Bravo!

[@delphicdescant]

Man, I've been conditioned to expect something like this to sound way better than it looks. I have to congratulate you for shattering all my expectations today :P

[@benjaminmiddaugh2729]

I'm not quite sure how to interpret this (congratulations). Does it mean that this thing looks really good and the sound is at least decent or does it mean that this thing is ugly with correspondingly worse sound? I can see (and hear) cases for either.

[@chopper3lw]

This is wonderful. You win my best application of a microcontroller 2024 award.

[@stop8738]

I was really enjoying the micro LED series but this is great! I love that you picked the Mii music of all things and how perfect this instrument goes with its sound. 😂🙌

[@Flying0Dismount]

This demands a Device Orchestra collab!

[@MPCmanNL]

Exactly what I was thinking

[@pileofstuff]

Or LookMumNoComputer.

[@thermostance1815]

​@@pileofstuffor both!

[@Benoit-Pierre]

👍🏻

[@only1muppet]

Old carousel 🎠 music would work great for those. I love the googly eyes, they’re so fun

[@wade-potato6200]

I now really want to hear Mr sandman played on these

[@bytesabre]

I now really want to hear Enter Sandman played on these

[@matthewkendrick8280]

You know what would play really nicely on this? The turret song at the end of portal 2. I believe it’s called Cara Mia or something

[@patchwrk]

OMG, I instantly recognized that last song and FELL ON THE FLOOR! 🤣🤣🤣

[@unazwetschge]

What about a setup with a soprano, alto, tenor and bass whistle?

[@unkobold]

And all Bach’s chorals as their repertoire ! 😊🥳

[@jerril42]

Well that was an overblown mess! I loved every minute of it. Thank you mixtela.

[@puffthecatpuff8931]

Still Alive?

[@puffthecatpuff8931]

Perform "Still Alive"!

[@westlydurkee6230]

I guess

[@keleynal4424]

Immediately thought this before I clicked on it

[@77nizzova53]

I am!!¡!!

[@_PJW_]

'Tell Me You're A Man Without Telling Me You're A Man'. Brilliant Dudeism. With the copper fixtures it begs to be Steampunked. Please stain the wood darkbrown, and add stained glass fronts. Some low-voltage indirect illumination in yellow or green would be a nice touch too.

[@-lolus-]

the last one fits sooooo well, almost like they made it with intent to play it on this

[@Alro12343]

That's "enormous penis" it's a barbershop quartet song which is probably why. Only four tones in total.

[@EllaPlaysSynths]

I'm a composer and a music technologist, and oh my god am I gonna have fun with that emulator. Thank you!

[@alan_wood]

Excellent, I can see a potential 'Text to Clanger' spin-off in the future.

[@ShifterChaos]

I was not ready for the surprise DaVinci's Notebook drop at the end. Wow

[@Murgoh]

Brings back the horrors of elementary school music lessons with a classroom of kids trying to play the same tune on their recorders. 😁

[@timc333]

I approve of this for classical composition . Only suggestion I would make, and it would be lovely, place a spinning propeller on the top of the box for added visual appeal . Possibly a spinning propeller beanie cap with a servo under the cap to run the propeller .

[@donerskine7935]

I guess we have reached Peak Civilisation when mankind has enough leisure time to come up with daft, pointless, wonderful, hilarious, fascinating creations like this.

[@SilvaDreams]

We've been at a peak for a while then because stuff like this has been made for centuries.

[@storbytronics]

AAA ITS HEREE!!! Thank you, Mitxela! I was hoping to see more from the slide whistles sooner or later!

[@GriddlockCosplay]

The compilations are truly beautiful, kind of in the same way when you hear a kindergarten class playing recorders (or maybe I'm the only one who really appreciates it), when your baby is playing to the best of their ability. Not the best in terms of world class musician, but fully better than someone who has never tried. Bravo!!! (I want one!).

[@theelectronwrangler6416]

Man. I simultaneously love and hate this. It's like having four toddlers running around with slide whistles.

[@danny_racho]

This is incredible and wholesome. Just the right mix of electronics and music enthusiast

[@nikchi]

compressed air and a regulator might get you a better and more consistent airflow. You could also size the compressor tank and flow rate to get a more silent back end.

[@jonrau5988]

I'm a saw player and I love this thing. Marvelous!

[@jimandskittum]

KZbin algo wasn't going to rest until I watched this. I'm not mad. Good work and rock on, you're an Allstar.

[@KeritechElectronics]

Achievement unlocked: Loud and Not So Clear! Survive the whistle orchestrion dissonance while listening on headphones.

[@iquemedia]

this is one of the best things ever created

[@WSWC_]

You built it so well.... Not seeing a ton of comments talking about the craftsmanship here but this is incredible. Everything looks nice, and nice to use.

[@tennesseered586]

What you need is a 'wind chest', a relatively large air box upon which each whistle is mounted and directly fed air. The air pressure inside the chest is kept constant by a weighted bellows. Each flute will therefore be fed the exact same air pressure as all the others. Air pressure in the chest will be automatically maintained by the weighted bellows. If the air chest is large enough and the supply fan has enough reserve capacity, the air pressure will not vary as each whistle opens and closes. That's the way organ builders in J.S.Bach's day did it. Air power was supplied by a rotating crew of choir boys working multiple large bellows in the basement. Hot, sweaty work.

[@Bananeisafree]

The googley eyes really seal the deal

[@AK-vx4dy]

For this i would be looking for pumps/fans from PCAP ( anti snorinng and hypoxia ) machines, they have good amount of constant presure and are very silent and flow parameters near what human produce, but i don't know how they are priced.

[@paulmaxwell8851]

That was both incredibly creative and hilarious!

[@kristophermichaud4467]

I love how one slide whistle just smacks the base on those low notes

[@PTFVBVB]

Oh my god this is amazing! Honestly the servo sounds add to it

[@PatrickHoodDaniel]

No crimes here! Love the eyeballs! Damn shrinkflation! Are you controlling the half duplex UART for the servos from the chip or are you using a chip to help this out? Can't tell what that lone chip is doing on that perfboard. One would think there should be 10 slide whistles, one for each finger, but I guess an approximation could be worked out.

[@thomaslisson5619]

I can imagene, how much knowlegde You needed for this project: music, MIDI, programming microcontrolers, crafting the mechanic etc. Wow!

[@Orangetronic]

doofing around on this was one of my favourite things @ EMFCamp last time around. 10/10 contraption

[@vioscene]

Man this reminds me of the portal 2 turrent songs. Nice!

[@R.K.994]

Was gonna say the same thing

[@eldonad]

I think what could really improve this design would be to add a kind of feedback loop between the tone of the whistle and the motors. You could probably use some kind of contact microphone to extract the current tone, find the period via a FFT algorithm, and then correct the tone by changing slightly the motor position. EDIT : You addressed that in the video already, sorry ! Yeah, isolating all the whistles might be challenging, but still I expect that you would be able to get weaker amplitudes for all the other whistles than the one the mic is attached to, and even is that's difficult, by knowing the spectral profile of your whistles (which I can't imagine changing very much with tone or air pressure) you could fit the spectrum with an error minimizer algorithm (gradient descent and the like) or even a neural network to get the base frequency of all the whistles still without too much difficulty I think

[@whatbee]

He addressed that in the video

[@eldonad]

@@whatbee Yeah, I posted that before finishing the video 😅

[@markderonde6226]

lol

[@goosenotmaverick1156]

That's hilarious I was just thinking the same thing (not with the process of how to do it though, just the thought of it needing some way to tune them a bit. It's extra hilarious because as I went to type this comment, I got right to the part that addressed this 😂😂

[@jonathangjertsen3450]

most patient mitxela commenter

[@carlosvasquezjr92]

The slide whistles with the googly eyes at the the top make the mouthpieces look like the sardines from SpongeBob SquarePants

[@Bruke53]

A fellow enjoyer of DaVinci's Notebook. A man of culture.

[@themement3616]

Very peculiar choice for that last song... though it appears you gave the creator of the piece, but not its name...why is that?

[@Heysupdan]

This is a work of art, perfection beautifully silly

[@brad7141]

Your invention has opened my eyes to the possibility of a brighter future for all of humanity.

[@Jaystarzgaming]

That is art of an organ along with great music.

[@siobhanpeal38]

That is just fabulous! Thank you so much for your musical 'creation'.

[@AppliedCryogenics]

I have an observation about MIDI DIN jacks. I worked for a company which used these as a power/data connection to a measurement instrument that would get daily use in a particular industry. We would occasionally get them back in for repair, and often, the din jack would have a circular groove cut into its face, sometimes 4+ mm deep. Everyone, when attempting to connect this jack, presses the plug up against the face of the jack, and twists it while pressing until the key engages. It's not as bad as the 50-50 fail rate trying to connect a USB A, but still, a 4-conductor phono plug would be better.

[@ProAudioIQ]

This is brilliant! You deserve every good thing that comes as a result of this fantastic project and fun video!

[@brometheus___]

Loved the Da Vinci's Notebook stuff at the end! great video.

[@SysOpQueen]

i love a man who can build a robot slide whistle orchestrion ;)

[@chris22207]

I just spat my lunch out when I heard the first notes. This is amazing! I now need to clean the quonia out of my work keyboard and cuibal.

[@Metal-Possum]

This is most excellent. Works particularly with four-part barbershop type harmonies.

[@scenically6460]

Brother you do not need to apologize, This is amazing.

[@bigstyleart]

Great finish! I love it!