As an antidote to the escalating cost of quality disk boxes, I have
once again acquired a Fisher Price disk box of astonishing simplicity
and robustness. I did not inquire if it required disassembly and
packing before I transported it home from the garage sale (three doors
north), but I did remove the tone-arm (music box movement) from the
base unit in order to see if there was anything particularly
interesting about it.

The simple starwheels plink the comb without aid of dampers. The tuning
is in the modern key of G#, and I have simply transposed to C for
convenience. The absence of accidentals limits arpeggio chords a great
deal. In the distant past, I pinned a tune for this device, and have
another in mind to try. Perhaps someone with a very short compass
keyboard would like to offer arrangements and we will go into
business!  As a greater limitation than the short compass, the playing
time is only 30 seconds.

          cdefga¶
G..CDE.GABcdefgabcd

As you can see, the gaps in the bass octave make it less than useful
for melody, and the melody section is doubled for sixteenth notes and
slow trills. (If your mail reader does not have proprtional spacing, the
doubled notes should appear superimposed on their mates.) An upper d is
available for an expanded repertoire. I did not see many of these
features used on the disks, however, and most selections actually repeat
and identical 15 second tune twice over.

No, I have not pursued the development of a keyboard driver for this
device. The law of diminishing returns applies.

Karl A. Petersen¶
kap@firedragon.com