Music Box Phrase

How it's made

Source

a steel comb tine plucked by a pin on a rotating brass cylinder. The pluck is a 0.3–1.5 ms high-passed noise tick (pin release) plus a very short soft knock; a spring-loaded movement plays the notes.

Body

each tine is a clamped bar: partials at 1 : 6.27 : 17.5 of the note (≈ 800–2100 Hz fundamentals), the upper two fading much faster (T60 ≈ 100 % / 12 % / 4 % of the ring time). A wooden soundboard adds a broad low-mid resonance near 700 Hz and a gentle air roll-off.

Envelope

tines ring 0.6–1.8 s depending on pitch (low notes longer); the final note of the phrase is held longer. The 11-note tune leans pentatonic and ends on the tonic.

Tempo

the governor and spring make the cylinder speed drift, so note onsets follow a slow wobble (≈ 0.6 Hz, up to ±35 ms) on top of the base tempo, and each note has a few ms of random jitter.

Variation

`rng` mistunes each tine by ±0.15 %, varies strengths and spreads notes slightly across the stereo field (tines sit left to right along the comb). Presets change pitch register, tempo, tine ring and wobble.

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