[rescue] Dot matrix music (was: New acquisition...)

[Francois Dion]

Joshua Boyd wrote:

>On Sat, Apr 03, 2004 at 06:43:38PM -0600, Jonathan C. Patschke wrote:
>  
>
>>I have fond memories of my older electronic typewriter clattering away
>>at a form letter.  I love that sound.  As far as printers go, it's
>>probably only second to a well-designed[0] pattern spewed to an
>>ImageWriter in terms of pleasant printer-driven audio output.
>>ImageWriters can sing quite well with appropriate output.
>>    
>>
>
>Have you guys heard of a band called Treewave?  They feature a dot
>matrix printer of some sort as one of their instruments.  Along with a
>pair of C64s.
>  
>
I've used a Digital Decwriter LA36 to accompany some of my live 
performances. In their advertising slicks they made it look like a 
musical instrument anyway:
http://www.research.microsoft.com/~gbell/Digital/timeline/1974-3.htm

Since it was too big to carry, I recorded this on my computer, a bunch 
of rhythmic sequences (99), and I made a CD-R. Later, when I got a 
playstation (1995) and worked for a company that had the dev kit, I made 
a program to seamlessly go from one sequence to another using the 
controller. I've also used a guitar pickup and an old electro-mechanical 
check printer (the impact noise was really cool). C64 was a natural too, 
with the Sequential Circuits interface and the Sequential Circuits 
Six-Trak, but that is more mainstream. Of course the C64 had the SID 
chip, but I ended up using the Amiga a lot more for music works.

When in Montreal with David Kristian, Scandinavian band Panasonic used 
some kind of electric typewritter, miked and sent to some guitar pedal. 
I wish I had paid more attention, the noise was pretty cool.

There is also this, in Quebec:
http://www.sat.qc.ca/the_user/dotmatrix/en/intro.html

But on this subject, the most interesting site by far (due to custom 
firmware) is this one:
http://qotile.net/dotmatrix.html

Paul is behind the band Treewave

Francois