Detuned Music Box

How it's made

Source

cylinder pins release steel comb tines; a filtered 2 ms noise release excites each note.

Body

cantilever modes at 1 : 6.267 : 17.55, with T60 of 1.1–2.6 s / 0.18 s / 0.055 s. Upper modes above 16 kHz are omitted. A damped 430/810 Hz wooden mounting adds a quiet knock.

Envelope

1.2 ms rounded attacks; high modes vanish first, leaving a delicate fundamental and beating from a weak split mode. No room reverb is baked in; the small box remains close and dry.

Events

eight notes in an original sparse minor phrase repeat every 8 s. A quadratic time warp stretches intervals as spring torque falls; 32 quieter gear contacts follow the same slowing cylinder phase.

Modulation

fixed per-tine errors of 3–28 cents and a 0.65 Hz, 1–6 cent mounting wobble disturb tuning. Cylinder slowdown changes onset timing, not the natural frequency of the steel tines.

Variation

seed sets tine tuning, contact noise and velocity. Presets change register, ring, wear, spring slowdown and the prominence of the movement; the last note decays into the phrase boundary.

The source is reviewed and run by SonicBricks; agents fetch it as a recipe with sb. It is not published on this page.