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WeeklyBeats.com / Music / MRDRCAT's music / Technical Wizardry 443

Technical Wizardry 443

By MRDRCAT on May 23, 2024 2:55 am

I have a completely booked weekend starting...tomorrow. So I had to get this finished early.

I sampled one of the most confusingly magical pieces of vintage tech I own: a 1970 Rock-Ola 443 jukebox. It wasn't working when we bought it, but after much trial and error I got it running pretty well. The mechanism is hypnotic to watch. There's so much stuff going on after you make your selection: the record carriage rotates, the read-in and read-out arms spin to find the proper stopping point for the carriage, the turntable starts and then the Big Arm grabs your 45 and throws it on the platter. Every part has its own sound, and the sample starts with power on (and the clicking & pinging of the fluorescent tubes turning on).

Anyway. I had fun. The levels are too high. Not sure if it counts as a song. But it's done!

Audio works licensed by author under:
CC Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike (BY-NC-SA)

You got it working!

OMG, that sample of the mech sounds AMAZING. Love how you blend the tones you've been using with the mech sample. Very much a song, and it's very much awesome. Love the full sound at 2:40 or so...huge and happy. Great ending sample!

"Not sure if this counts as a song", get outta here!!! Are you kidding me? This is super fun and fresh!!! Those mech clicks here and there work so well. They sometimes sound like menacing sentient scissors flying through the air, powered by some off screen wizard, hahahaha... Super fun stuff!!!

the jukebox samples are awesome! they work really well on this song (yes it counts). Love the synths especially in the first half

whoa, amazing mechanical samples here. A cool story as well. Definitely a song

cool mechanical samples.

Awesome!!

Paisleyfrog wrote:

You got it working!

OMG, that sample of the mech sounds AMAZING. Love how you blend the tones you've been using with the mech sample. Very much a song, and it's very much awesome. Love the full sound at 2:40 or so...huge and happy. Great ending sample!

Thanks!! Half the fun of this one was using whirs and clicks as transitional sounds instead of risers or fills.

jegasus wrote:

"Not sure if this counts as a song", get outta here!!! Are you kidding me? This is super fun and fresh!!! Those mech clicks here and there work so well. They sometimes sound like menacing sentient scissors flying through the air, powered by some off screen wizard, hahahaha... Super fun stuff!!!

Yay! I had this vision in my brain of a "music factory" with little mechanical arms plopping new parts of the track into place, moving other parts out, and exchanging some for others. It actually turned out way happier than I had intended.

ddmm64 wrote:

the jukebox samples are awesome! they work really well on this song (yes it counts). Love the synths especially in the first half

Thank you! I ended up using a mix of the stock M8 instruments (the mechanical sounding bass that starts everything was a delight to work with) and some of my own.

SQF wrote:

whoa, amazing mechanical samples here. A cool story as well. Definitely a song

Thanks for giving it a listen - I'll try to post a link to the full jukebox sample file, but if I forget, it's in the M8 bundle I posted on the Dirtywave Discord in the submissions thread for Community Jam 19: Sorcery.

ENC_ wrote:

cool mechanical samples.


cfurrow wrote:

Awesome!!

Thank you both! It was fun to record these sound effects and find some way to make them musical!

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