Floppotron 3.0 Sounds Off

Since 2011, Polish engineer Paweł Zadrożniak has been making music with obsolete computer peripherals with a series of “computer orchestras” called “Floppotron”. The original used two floppy disc drives with their stepping motors driven by a microcontroller to generate notes.

That was then, and this is now, and nothing succeeds like excess, so on 2022-06-13 Floppotron 3.0 made its debut performance. The orchestra is composed of:

  • 512 3.5 inch floppy drives (bass section)
  • 4 flatbed scanners (midtone and treble section)
  • 16 hard disc drives (percussion)

All of this is driven by an array of custom circuit boards, microcontrollers, cables, and powered by twenty PC power supplies, including sixteen 5 volt 18 amp supplies for the floppy disc wall. For complete details, see Pawel’s description in “ The Floppotron 3.0”.

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To the computer conducting the orchestra, it appears as a MIDI instrument with up to 16 channels, each of which can be assigned to a section of the orchestra by its program parameter. Existing MIDI compositions usually require tweaking for best results. He notes:

To create an arrangement, I usually start with already existing MIDI file. If I cannot find one, I have to make it from scratch – from hearing or using sheet music when available. Even if there is an existing MIDI for a specific song, re-arranging it for The Floppotron is still a time consuming process. Every „instrument” in the setup have its limits and the track must fit the note range it can play. Making a track sound good on the stacks of FDDs or a scanner usually involves a lot of tweaking. I also spend some time to add the fine details, like slides (portamento) or vibratos to mimic the quirks in vocal or guitar parts of original songs – these has to be recreated by ear. Making one arrangement for 3.0 usually takes me 3–4 evenings, which is a little longer than for the older Floppotron 2.0.

The work performed in the video above is “Entrance of the Gladiators” by Czech composer Julius Fučík.

For a trip down memory lane, here is where it all began: the Star Wars Imperial March performed by the original two drive Floppotron 1.0 in September 2011. This YouTube video has been viewed 6.7 million times.

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Here, in May 2023, is Floppotron 3.0 performing “The Final Countdown” by Swedish band Europe. The song, released in 1986, was ranked by VH1 in 2004 as 16th in the “Most Awesomely Bad Songs…Ever” and 66th on their 2009 list of the best hard rock songs of all time. The song reached number one on the charts in 25 countries.

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