Patreon Exclusive Video

The link no longer works! RIP CUBABA~1.MID

I love these videos that show the not so sunny side of YouTube sometimes. I was really happy to hear that you are giving it away but I thought you meant the Tefi cartridge, oops. I recently acquired a Tefifon in great condition and it's sitting proudly in my HiFi! All thanks to you.

It is unlikely that you would have your videos taken down with the slower Cuba Baion track because... it's playing too slow.

I wonder how long it will last as my new ring tone ;-) Thanks Mat & Anders

This is so unbelievably cool, and the song, to me being german brings incredibly strong and fond memories of my grandma, her living room with the "Musiktruhe" or Music-chest, basically a music system in a piece of rather cheesy furniture with sliding doors, record player on one side, radio/amplifier on the other and sometimes a reel-to-reel tape (this was long before the advent of cassette tapes) a set of speakers on the bottom, where she would play songs that sounded quite a bit like this one. Anyways, the view of formerly everyday retro-tech you are showing in your videos is just genius and has brought back many fond memories of devices I've seen, lusted for or some even owned when I was young. Thanks for being around, and me patreoning you can't be but a small token of my appreciation.

By the Deutche laws, recordings, that maded before 01.01.63, didn't have copyright protection.

Coming back from the original Tefifon video, I'll have to agree, that most of the music sounds a wee bit hurried. Do you still have the thing, Mat? Can you simply measure it by putting some markings on a meter of tape and then filming it, to see how fast it goes by? Or measuring circumference and multiply that with RPMs.

When you said, you'd give something away, you were grabbing the Tefi and I thought: oh! what a nice idea to gift that old thing away! And then you said: "here's the MIDI file". I felt a bit silly then :D Will now go and watch the original video as i am super curious about the Tefifon. Any chance to license the original from whoever owns them now? would be even cooler than the midi. maybe a grand-kid of Kurt.

Thanks for the info on that track Mat.. Yeah you do get a load of 'muppets' in the coments to the YouTube videos!

Thank you both!

Lots of fun Mat- thanks for sharing that. I found it interesting that it's become the "Techmoan theme" in the wilds of the Internet. Hey, at least it's fun and catchy... You could have done much, much, worse. ;-)

Thanks for sharing that Matt. It's amazing how something as innocuous as a track from an old cart can take on a life of its own.. I've downloaded it and will be opening it in Logic on my Mac next time I'm bored and having a wee play..

But what is the name of the track and where can I down load it! MHAHAHAHA!

I love everything about this story. Thanks for sharing this (and the files), Mat! :D

I really enjoyed this video about the history behind this tune. It's amazing the type of reach some content can get online. Thanks for the download as well, what a nice treat! :)

Since a fellow Patron posted a link to a quality version of the Teffifon Cuba Baion, I've been listening to it a couple times a day. It's kinda stuck in my head this week. Thanks! (for now.)

Love your videos! Say, do you know the name of the track that you use behind the outros? Very catchy and would like to find a copy. . . . . . . . Kidding. Sort of had to.

This was neat! Thanks for doing what you do.

Speaking of songs, what is the other song played during end credits? I had to search through a few videos to find it but one of them is Pre-recorded Cassettes' Last Stand.

This is wonderful, Mat, thanks for this video. Also, I think nothing says "internet culture" like the a bunch of people going nuts over a "great song" that's actually being played at the wrong speed.

Hey Mat, congrats on hitting 700k subscribers on YouTube!

This was a deeply interesting video and an awesome topic for an exclusive. Thanks for this. You're easily one of the best content creators on YouTube. Cheers!

Dear Mat, you might remember me as one of your fans on youtube. Is it just me, for I have never heard you say that you were on Patreon? In fact I wanted to support someone else and when I combined my youtube account with it I found out that you were on Patreon as well. So this way I could decide to give you a small support per month as well as the other Patreon poster. The reason why I post here is that maybe, unless if I am the one who missed it, it would be good mentioning about Patreon on every youtube video you freely post there. This is how I found out about Patreon, for "eforelectric" pointed me to it. As you now have me as a regular supporter, you might attract other supporters when they will find out about your channel here. Just a well meant hint. Kind regards, Jean Loyens, Genk, Belgium

Dear Mat, thank you for your hard work to entertain us! I have to apologise, that I am one of these "guys" who never read the the text below your YT videos, because I'm watching them almost every time on my ATV - so I can't read them. So I also have asked you about the production of the Tefifon Schallbänder, as I never saw the description below these videos. But thankfully to this post I found and read them, so you can ignore my mail to you - as you will have done anyway ;) And also thank you for the nice music gift, I love this song in your puppet videos!

In case anyone is wondering what the DJX is... who better to explain than top Radio 1 Charidiee supportin' DeeJays Mark and Lard! <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_P3xIfMYoU" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_P3xIfMYoU</a> ?

Is it ok, being nearly 40, to still find the name alone 'Simon Krapp' amusing? That said, if I ever get 5 minutes to myself I'm really tempted to do a dance version on my Yamaha DJX!

German law should have this in the public domain: "Under German law, the copyright term for recordings which were made prior to January 1, 1963 has expired, meaning they have entered the public domain" <a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/09/how-contentid-knocked-down-decades-old-recordings-of-beethoven/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/09/how-contentid-knocked-down-decades-old-recordings-of-beethoven/</a> YMMV but seems ok so far and should be. Not that Content ID matching is foolproof as per that link.

Great Video Mat! The MIDI version sounds nice, thought I do agree with the above comment in that it doesn't sound as nice as the original recording, with the leisurely feeling of the rubato. It seems like someone on the internet archive has marked it as public domain, so perhaps you could do some digging to confirm that? It does add something special to the videos, since the Tefifon was actually the first video I watched, I found it on a news site and have been watching your videos ever since.

Are you planning to only use the MIDI arrangement in videos from now on? I would be a bit sad if you did, to be honest. I like the MIDI arrangement-- Anders is nothing short of a wizard-- but due to the necessities of the format, it has a different... air about it than the original recording to me, it feels more steady, whereas the original recording feels more leisurely, and I think that leisurely feeling fits the puppet segments a lot better. I would love to hear you use the MIDI arrangement to test/demonstrate MIDI-capable devices in future, though!

This is lovely! Thank you so much for this, I've loved Cuba-Baion to bits since I first heard it.

What's the name of this channel? Seriously, this was pretty fun. I have seen the Tefifon video but I didn't remember that was the origin of the "puppet theme". I actually believed it was from a library of free music which Mat mentioned at one time. Actually, this video inspired me to do some searching of my own. Like everybody who has more than a few records, I have the inevitable stack of light and easy listening music (In Germany a lot of it is "Schlager"). I figured I might find a version of "Cuba Baion", possibly a different one, but so far I found nothing. I haven't checked the singles yet, though. If I find an interesting version, I'll share it with you. Also, I'll try to play the MIDI file on some of the old sound cards I have... Might be interesting to see how it sounds on my Roland, Yamaha and other devices :-)

That was really interesting, weird how Cuba Baion always sounded vaguely familiar to me. I may make it my ringtone for a while...

Thank you very much, cool video! It reminds me of how the Dutch-speaking world got re-introduced to the Hammond organ music by Klaus Wunderlich by means of a simple (but genial!) cartoon named "Kabouter Wesley". I might like to try once to play it on the Hammond, if I have time...

It's funny how an almost-forgotton song spreads around the internet. Someone uploaded it to the Internet Archive and marked it as being in the public domain: <a href="https://archive.org/details/CubaBaion" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://archive.org/details/CubaBaion</a>

This was an incredible story. A technical showcase of a long dead format breathed life back into an unknown and long forgotten song ... Great stuff!

KIDDING!!

what's the name of that song?

What an odd yet amusing and entertaining video. I like it!

Many thanks to you and Mr. Jensen for taking the time to create, then upload, the music files! In your video you panned across some YouTube comments; one stated that "Cuba Baion" sounded very "Jacques Tati". A spot-on comment: Have a look and listen to Tati's 1953 classic gentle comedy, "Mr. Hulot's Holiday". Drabek's tune perfectly captures a musical flavor many of us geezers associate with mid-century France.

That was great fun and an interesting insight into the daily life of a professional YouTuber, Mat. Thanks for the music, too.

Oh, and about your "machine won't last" comment: You got one of the apparently stable pickups and the rest of the machine seems to be rather robust, so I don't think there's need to worry at all.

I could check if it's the mastering or your Tefifon that's apparently too fast, I have a Tefifon (your fault of course, my SO gave it to me as a birthday gift after I showed her your videos) and, again, of course, I hunted down that specific cartridge. Unfortunately my Tefifon has this specific kind of cartridge that has a wax-sealed piezo pickup. Once the wax dries out and cracks, moisture gets in and dissolves the crystal, so I have to retrofit a working, more robust modern cartridge first. Hm... might be a good excuse to finally repair this thing. ;-)

Been bothering me what song that Cuba Baion reminded me of, and it just hit me it was this: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WF-uZuce5R0" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WF-uZuce5R0</a> Tico's Tune by Manuel and the Mountains. A similar vintage I'd expect. Probably familiar to anyone who watched "Moone Boy" on Sky 1, but before that it was known as the "sig tune" for Gay Byrne's radio show on RTÉ 1 from the 60s to the 90s.

I appreciate and agree with your "comments" rant. However, I would offer one possible explanation beyond "lazy idiot". That is, when watching YouTube on devices other than one's laptop or PC, such as smartphone, tablet or smart TV, the video description and comment threads are quite a bit more difficult to view and parse. This is not a true excuse, but it might _explain_ some of the seemingly blindingly stupid comments.

Great video - really good story. That midi file sounds mint!

Brilliant story vid Mat and v interesting to see how it’s morphed into something bigger. Top marks to Anders too. Only one question comment: how have more than THREE years passed since Tefifon?!?

Did you ever try to track down the copyright holders of the original track?

You know what you should do? You should make a video about that song that you use for the muppet videos. What's it called again? ;-) Just kidding; thanks for posting! (By the way, the fact that everyone now calls this "The Techmoan song" should be a lesson to be careful being the first to spread something on the internet. Things on the Internet have a tendency to stick around and drown out any updates to the same thing, such as information about Cuba Baion, in your case. I ran into this myself too: As you know I'm a Digital Compact Cassette enthusiast, and I added a mention of an event to a Wikipedia page once, where a certain DCC recorder was introduced. Later on, I tried to find out more information about the same event, and the only thing I could find about it was copies of what I had written myself; any other information had been almost completely obilivated! This is a serious problem with the way search engines like Google work).

I love this song! For preservation purposes, could you post the stereo FLAC version of the song so that people can listen to it in full quality? I suspect that I'm not the only one clamoring for it!

Bravo! Well done and thank you for offering it to us!

It’s such a wonderful song ! It warms my black heart to see little pretty ditties like this rediscovered and sent back out into the world. Thanks Mat, Anders and Kurt. 👏

What was the name of that song?

I think that there has been a real push for non-linear thought and engagement on social media feeds.For example the removal of the ability on instagram to put you feed in most recent order.I hate this because just after the change I was on vacation and a recording artist I followed was having a release/signing at a record store 4 blocks from my hotel.i had no idea this was going to happen and it was going to happen in a hour,but I looked closer and it was a post from the day before that became popular,so it was the 1st listed in my feed that day.I barely pay attention to Instagram anymore.

Matthew, thanks for the gift and please keep on doing what you're doing! Oh and of course thank you Kurt!

The strings bit is vaguely reminiscent of the Still Game theme tune.. kind of

I nearly bought a Tefifon when i was in Germany in June (at the Friedrichshafen Ham radio show) one needed a new cartridge and one seemed complete but alas no Baion cart!! Feel the seller wanted too much for them plus getting them back might have been a problem - we were close to out baggage allowance as it was!!

It must have been somewhat of a relief that it was Drabek music. After all, it could have been Krapp music.

Does Cuba Baion translate to earworm, anyone?

Love this tune - still my ringtone on the phone and I've just dumped the midi file onto a floppy and played it on my Technics KN-2000 keyboard... Brilliant work Anders and Mat. Looking forward to more Patreon exclusives!

i wonder what my roland sc-88 pro will do with this

I do recall a similar incident with music publisher KPM (Keith Prowse Music) who supplied a music track to ITV on an ‘exclusive’ basis for a Saturday Sports programme - I think it was written by Keith Mansfield, a prolific composer of ‘library’ music, and LWT used it to introduce and exit the show with Dickie Davies. Now this track proved to be rather popular, but as it was written exclusively as a ‘library’ track, it could not be released commercially. After much hand-wringing, a solution was found - they speeded up the track (much cheaper than re-recording) and ‘The World of Sport March’ was born! It was released by EMI at their (then) pressing plant in Hayes, but it was 10% faster than the track used by LWT, but as it was effectively a new ‘work’ they got round the issues of not being able to release it. I was wondering if the situation you describe is the same situation? As a lover of library music, it has that feel - and a speed change will also kill content matching too!

Mat, I have become such a fan of your work in the last month. I've been going back and watching your videos and it's the best because there's SO much to catch up on. People always ask, "Hey, what shows are you watching right now?" Lately my answer to that is, "I've been watching this guy Mat who has a YouTube channel called Techmoan. If you're interested in 45 minutes on the history of MiniDisc, he is your guy!" The best is that a few people have said, "Oh, I love Techmoan, how come you're just discovering him? Did you see his video on Hi-Vision Laserdiscs?" Then I will say, "Of course I saw it!" Anyway, this is such a great video and Patreon exclusive surprise! When I woke up this morning, I didn't know I needed to know about Kurt Drabek and would want to hear a MIDI file of his work, but now I can't imagine a life WITHOUT a Kurt Drabek MIDI file!!

So if you've always played the song slightly fast and I always watch your videos on 1.5 speed, listening to the original will be like playing Sonic 1 on a pal mega drive

Now, without joking: i´ve just downloaded the song, and that´s great, what Anders made, and it sounds great. Thanks for your (and his) effort.

I can't help but think that the copyright behind this track's composition (as opposed to the recording on the album) is going to be almost impossible to untangle. If it was written while the original composer was working for RIAS, and was written as a work for hire, then it was at least partly (completely if before 1964) funded by the US Government. It would be interesting to see the copyright small print on the back of the album..

Hi, i understood, the name of the musician is Anders Drabek...now, could you please tell me the name of the song? roflmao.....

I can't wait to listen to it, thanks for the gift! :)

Thanks for the gift! By the way what is actually the name of ... Just kidding - I’ll only ask it in a year or so. I have to set a reminder for that ;-)

Couldn't resist and had to upload an OPL3 version of it. :D <a href="https://youtu.be/u3gW0qtlbX4" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/u3gW0qtlbX4</a>

Great video! Just the right behind the scenes story I enjoy watching. And the song is one that grows on you, as I mentioned in our mailing back and forth, it took me a little while to get this song "under the skin". It has quite a lot of that "magic from the 60s" to it, that is hard to convert into a more rigid format like the Standard Midifile Format (SMF). But I hope I managed to get most of the groove from the original into a format that is playable on practically any system out there these days. I should mention that I used my Roland SC-55 as the frame of reference as this is the grandfather (or mother) of all GM/GS devices, and it sounds best on this module or ones identical ones (the SC series, CM-300 and such). It will vary from slightly to pretty different on other systems as not all manufacturers use the same sophisticated methods of playing back their samples and sound system as Roland, Yamaha and Korg do. So even though a device is GM compatible, this (and other SMF files) might sound rubbish on some (like Windows XP and later embedded players). Just a FYI there. As an example, it sounds less OK on my expensive XP-80 workstation from Roland which is a JV-1080 with a MC-50 MkII sequencer built in. So even within the Roland domain, there are noticeable discrepancies. Thanks Mat, for the challenge. It was very fun to do. I had to re-work my strategy on how to make music and solve the puzzles, which was very refreshing. :)

Wonderful stuff Mat! Great video.

Hey, do you have the name of that sound from the bit about the doorbell? The one you playing in the coffeeshop? Seriously though, that was a spectacular video. I love these esoteric hunting for info type things. Not really the type of music I use for anything but its awesome you are giving it to us regardless. Can't wait for the next one!!!

Very interesting, I think everyone that watches your videos has that song somewhere in his head as it is very catchy. (And you do realise you opened a can of worms here as everyone will now ask about the song :)

Great video. Almost a shame the youtube public will not see it. Although the song is not my kind of music I really like listening to it. It makes you smile.

I LOVED the Tefifon video. Almost bought one but the vintage status makes me wary of something of that amount of money that won't work whatsoever if I ship it to the US.

This is excellent, nice job to both you and Anders! Having fun playing that MIDI on various equipment now :) Just as an aside, an old record I've had for a number of years contains the song as well, can't recall if I ever brought it up to you. It's an American release by Strings Unlimited called "Martini Time." It is a slower/lower-pitched version just like the other record you played, so I always assumed the Tefifon was doing something a bit weird myself!

It pains me to hear you talk about the copyright straitjacket. If you release the video you can leave that part out. The odds are almost nil that anybody cares, or could jury rig a standing that allowed them to claim ownership. You have to make the big money (Blurred Lines, The Lion Sleeps Tonight, Happy Birthday) before it is worth somebody's time. It is a real issue in the same way that STDs are a real issue. Before you give a partner a shag you could subject them to an interview, and a lie detector test, and interview the previous partners, and send them to the lab for testing….but by then the mission has long since died on the launch pad. Your best judgment after a minute of thought is generally good enough, as it was in this case.

Most people are shallow and thoughtless idiots, so most YouTube video comments will follow this pattern as well.

Brilliant, turned into a really fun tale this, great stuff.

Can you also share the flac rip of the original version please? ;)

This is great story. Thank you for sharing and thank you for the gift!

Outstanding. New ringtone unlocked! Thanks!

What a nice gift. Thanks Mat!

don't change the outros on the old videos! - (until you have to)

This was a really interesting video. You obviously put a lot of work into it, I'm surprised you don't release this to the rest of the world. By the way, I totally get what you are talking about on the comments section. I usually answer comments the first 24-48 hours after a video has released, but rarely afterwords. And the reason is just as you describe, it's all the same questions being asked over and over again. Multiply that by a few hundred videos and it would be a full time job just to answer those comments. Also, great work Anders! I didn't know you were working on that!

It's incredible how things snowball without you even realising. It's great to see this nice but forgotten track making a comeback and thank you to yourself and Anders for this version.

Perhaps the reason why people don't read the description and comments is because on the YouTube iOS and Android apps, the video description is completely hidden and it's not exactly clear how to get to it, and you need to scroll past the related videos to see the comments.

Aaw, that was a nice video. Its fun how music can be rediscovered and get a new life so many years after it was released. And who knows, maybe it was a flop when it was released the first time. Thanks for the video Sir. :-)

Great story, thanks! But now I’m intrigued as to how this person (Nate?) actually found it in the first place ha!

what's the name of the song played?

What an amazing story! Thanks for years of great content!

So I’m assuming you’re going to replace the music on your outros you’ve already done with the midi version before the YouTube Police bust you, right?

Thank you!