Floppotron, the “symphony orchestra” made up of 512 floppy drives and 16 hard drives

A Polish engineer, Pavel Zadrozniak, has combined his passion for music and retro computer technology to create a peculiar “symphony orchestra”. For this he has had to gather nothing less than 512 old floppy drives, 16 hard drives and 4 scanners desktop.

The first Floppotron played the “Imperial March” from Star Wars with only two floppy drives

Gone are the days of the first Floppotron, a simple combination of two floppy drives whose different startup sounds, conveniently synchronized, managed to perfectly interpret the well-known “Imperial March” composed by Joh Williams for the original soundtrack of «Star Wars – Episode V: The empire strikes back» (Irvin Kershner, 1980). Now in its third generation, the Floppotron is capable of playing more complex melodies, including multiple voices playing simultaneously.

The sound comes from the different motors that drive moving mechanisms of the different devices. Each one of them sounds with a different intonation, which is why, properly scheduled, they reproduce a chromatic and tonal spectrum that, properly adjusted and synchronized, is capable of literally sounding like music. To achieve the different notes, the “simple” procedure of alternating their frequency by modifying the speed of rotation of the respective motors is enough.

Once the different engines have been harmonized so that the sound produced responds to the required note, Zadrozniak’s work consists of distribute the notes of the melody between the different devices, synchronizing their performances. The operation of different floppy drives in charge of enriching the sound of the same note must also be coordinated, providing nuances, vibrato, sonority, strength…

Particularly noteworthy, due to its spectacular nature, is the set of floppy disk drives, organized and decorated exactly like an octave on a piano keyboard (although with the colors inverted). The floppy drives are responsible for reproducing the lowest notes while the scanners are responsible for the highest sounds. Percussion is the job of hard drivesfrom the beating of the reading heads and their movements on the disks.

The whole of this particular orchestra is organized as shown in the video published by the author himself, being able to distinguish the different controllers in charge of handling such peculiar “instruments” that, after going through a MIDI module and a USB converter, are connected to the computer in charge of managing the reproduction of the piece and the activation of the «instruments».