The Floppy Disk 'Boombox'
Here's a quick (and hopefully fun) video that pushes dangerously close to mobilising youtube's auto music content-match bots. So far it's flown under their radar, but I'll be keeping my eye on it.
I once recorded a lady in the street singing Ave Maria, https://youtu.be/lDLOqhhlZnI and she was so pitch perfect that youtube thought it was a famous recording and deactivated monetisation.
So for the next couple of days I'll see if any of the music in this one generates a match, and if it does, I'll have to take it down and re-edit it.
You may notice a couple of focus and audio level issues...I experiment with things and they don't always work out perfectly.
As usual if after watching this you are interested in obtaining something like it, I'd suggest buying it before the general public get to see the video on the 1st December.
Comments (57)
Really enjoyed that Mat, Midi (sadly) passed me by but if I’d known how much fun it was i’d Have chased it to.....
Focus issues? Let me guess: You got a new camera, but it's a Panasonic Lumix camera whose entire line has known autofocus issues while shooting video?
No, it’s the same old camera, but I was using manual focus and it’s difficult to set accurately for the shots to camera.
I think it's neat how there's a bit of a "Techmoan effect" on eBay with many of these devices. It shows how original your content is. Also, count me in as not only pro-puppet, but also pro-singing. ;)
Mat, you have to use the clip of you singing karaoke hidden throughout some of your upcoming videos here and there. XD I enjoy all of your videos but this video goes down as one of my favorites. Take care! :D
I just hope everyone understands that it’s supposed to be silly.
Matt singing Daft Punk might be the best thing I’ve seen on YouTube in a very long time. Great episode !
Fantastic
I will forever be scared by the Karaoke Scene! What an interesting bit of forgotten technology. The floppy disk lives on once again! Thanks Mat
What a great little device! I still hate steel drums though. :)
Dear Matt! Will we see your 1st April issue again one more time? It was great.
After I made it - I realised it was a mistake to make a video that can only be used for a few hours on one day of the year. So I won't be doing it again - however you can still see the unlisted video here: <a href="https://youtu.be/u_si3xAoTeM" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/u_si3xAoTeM</a>
Another great video. If I was YouYubes music recognising algorithm, out the whole video I would most likely be triggered by the meatloaf section. (It's a solo instrument, quite a long section) Also, I wonder if the microphone temp rate is affected by the tempo?
I knew Roland keyboards used to support floppies, but never seen one of these. And I love the Mancunian Karaoke :)
I thought it was interesting to have a "Bwd"/Backward button rather than "Reverse" or "Previous." I don't see that terminology used too often on buttons. And I look at a lot of buttons. The slideshow display was really cool. WE'RE UP ALL NIGHT TO GET LUCKY
Thank you very very much for prereleasing it. For ages now, I like floppy discs, midi music, booms and boxes. I just ordered one here in germany for just 55€. I am not a rich guy, so after you releasing it, I probably would not had a chance of getting one. Thanks again!
That’s a great price. Make sure you look at the manual <a href="http://midimanuals.com/manuals/roland/mt-80s/owners_manual/mt-80s_om.pdf" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://midimanuals.com/manuals/roland/mt-80s/owners_manual/mt-80s_om.pdf</a> as it has a few features that aren’t obvious (like how to continuously play a full disc of tracks by pressing two buttons).
Too cool! Was wondering if you were going to break into song when Meatloaf started playing.
I thought with it would be a fun tease to leave hanging.
If anyone is just getting here and wondering why some of the comments are about pizza toppings it's because there used to be a puppet outro that mentioned this, but it has been deleted as it didn't really work.
I was wondering this! I didn't get to see it... why didn't it work? You worry too much about what commenters say. Were you afraid of yanks in the comments hurling abuse at you for saying pineapple shouldn't be on pizza, or something like that?
Brilliant - another I now want one of those and not being a musician it was new to me too. Liked the muppets too as we had a family ‘discussion’ vis a vis anchovies on pizza 😂 years ago. Looking for a decentBluetooth speaker at the moment and with sooo many on the market I’m wishing there was a vid from you to help me on my way (flashing JBL review excepted).
Its one of those categories where there are just too many choices. As soon as I reviewed one it would be out of date. However it's also something that you can't go too far wrong with. I think whatever speaker you picked at a sensible price, you'd be happy.
Your superb rendition of the 'Lucky' song in stunning Dolby quadraphonic karaoke format reminded me of that 'I say Tomato, you say Tomato' joke where it was delivered in exactly all the same voice. Think it was early Steve Coogan. You probably had to be there :)
That does ring a bell.
I thought the device was very interesting. Hadn't seen or heard of that before. That was brave of you to sing karaoke in front of everyone even if it was meant as a joke! (it was meant as a joke, right?) But, I must admit this was probably the first muppets section that I didn't care for. I don't know why, just didn't seem interesting. Still, overall, I usually do like them and I feel the add a unique feature to your show!
Yes it was meant as a joke. As far as the muppets outro go, I should delete them from this episode. I don’t think it worked either.
Thanks for another great video. I really do need this in my boombox collection lol. So ordered one on ebay and also 350k midi files for a whopping $2
That’ll take quite a while to listen to.
There are a few of the MT-90S models on ebay that have been modified by a company called Miacom and have USB.
There are - although only really financially viable to someone living in the US.
That's awesome! I didn't know Roland made this. I used to have a grand piano that was also a player, it had a floppy disc module to do the same thing, playing all the instruments via Midi files, and the piano parts were always in player mode. It was fun to watch the keys all animated.
I always liked watching those player-pianos. It's another thing I'd like to have if I had the room (and the money).
Haha... nice video! Do you want to come to my studio and make an album? :D Btw.. you should have asked me, used to sell these in the music store I worked in from 1997 to 2003. I have buttloads of SMF/MIDI disks from Roland and other brands. I'd also add that these products are pure GM/GS modules with speakers so you could use them with games and such. :)
I should have guessed you'd know all about it. Now all I need is for someone to make a Roland GS version of Cuba Baion.
Another awesome find and a product that totally went past me without me noticing it when it was new.
Officially the coolest boombox.
haha we got you doing karaoke! killer. That last puppet bit got me wondering if you actually eat pizza and, well.. do you have preferred style/toppings? :) it has been a while since a kitchen gadget episode's been done .. but really.. doing stuff on almost anything weird and techy is right fun. Do you own any integrated clothing? like... <a href="https://www.amazon.com/hoodie-buddie-charcoal-sweatshirt-earbuds/dp/b00h5xyak6" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.amazon.com/hoodie-buddie-charcoal-sweatshirt-earbuds/dp/b00h5xyak6</a> for instance (yes thats a women;s, sorry) . I recall back in the 80's or 90's there was a jacket with a built in fm radio i think that was sold but pulled after it was found to be susceptible to immolation.. heh... not sure if similar weird stuff was done over the past 50-60 years...
I don't have any tech clothing - however I have recently purchased something for the kitchen that will hopefully appear in an upcoming video.
Perhaps try a Swedish delicacy? <a href="https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=kebabpizza+med+pommes&safe=active&hl=en&source=lnms&tbm=isch" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=kebabpizza+med+pommes&safe=active&hl=en&source=lnms&tbm=isch</a>
I don't think that one falls within the only three varieties of pizza accepted by purists. It looks like something I'd have liked to try though.
Now i am curious if that device would work as a General MIDI device in DOS games. o.o Could you try out some DOS game midis, like Grabbag from Duke Nukem, and post the video on the extra channel? Pretty Please? :D
I don’t have a PC with the necessary output cable/socket. However I presume that if you did it would work.
Thought so... and Well said... ;)
Which puppet is most like you ?
Definitely the dad, I like anchovies. The whole pizza thing got way off topic, but it's an allegory to how often I hear people declare that someone is 'wrong' for liking a particular genre of music, or using a certain operating system. I always say that I'm all for choice, everyone should choose what they want and not worry about what anyone else prefers and not expect others to justify their choices. Even if there are things I personally wouldn't use, I'm happier that they exist so that others who do want them can have them.
I see you managed to fix the floppy drive. :) My tip has been put to good use. :)
In the end it was a combination of me and the machine. I bought a couple of midi floppies (as I didn't have any discs in the house, so I thought it would be an easy way to get something to play on it) - they didn't play and threw up an error code. I then bought the Rock MIDI disc seen in the video and it played part of track one then threw up an error. So I bought a floppy disc cleaner and tried that - it then played all of track one, but still threw up an error on the others. So I got a USB floppy drive and put the discs in the computer and found that the reason the first two discs didn't play was because the filenames didn't conform to the 8 character limit that the Roland machine can read. After renaming them, they worked fine. The Rock disc just turned out to be a bit faulty and once copied to a new disc was fine. I did find that about half of the 3.5" floppies I had threw up sector errors when I wrote stuff on them, so they must be damaged. - So overall it was a combination of a finicky floppy drive, a specific filename requirement and a bunch of dodgy floppies. None of which you get to see in the video, it all looks like everything just worked perfectly, but there's a couple of months of off screen nonsense getting everything together so it looks like that.
That brings me back to when I worked for Creative Labs. There was a Roland MPU-401 interface on some Sound Blaster cards for a 'Wave Blaster' daughterboard. Never saw a standalone device like this though.
🎤 We're up all night to get lucky 🎶 The look on your face singing that cracked me up...
That's my fun Karaoke party face.
Oh my god, I saw this thing at the used electronics store here and thought "hah that looks brilliant". Went home, regretted not buying it, and the next time I went back it was gone. Chuffed to see a techmoan video on it!
I guess these are quite familiar to musicians and people who frequent music shops, but with me not being one the first time I became aware of them was when I bought this one from ebay. I have a feeling someone sent me the link to this - but I get so many emails and messages I can't find it now.
I'll take the margarita with ansjovis over a hotdog stuffed pizza any day. :P haha anyway, this device looks fun and totally up LGR's alley since it uses floppy disks. :)
I actually checked to see if LGR had already covered it at some point - I know he's into MIDI, I didn't find anything, but I suspect he's aware of its existence.
Some pretty epic karaoke skills there!
I'm just glad I had the lyrics printed.