Re: Music Box Plays Self-Punched Paper Strips

The manufacturer is actually Sankyo Seiki (Hong Kong) Co., Ltd.,
and the part number for the mahogany finished music box, crank model
(called Organette 20" on the bottom of the box), is OA-108-S-058.

Mine came to me through the kind assistance of Andrew Van Schaack,
who wrote to me last November about the box he had found in a Tokyo
department store.  We were feeling the pains of being music-box-less,
so he agreed to send one to Illinois.  Obviously this is not an
economical way to do things, because the boxes cost more in Tokyo than
anywhere else in the world, but it was a rewarding adventure.

Since the strips come in three forms: punched, marked for punching and
blank (lines for composing and punching), I had a great time making
strips, keeping the blank ones and using file folders for my own
tentative arrangements.  My favorite is "Suo Gan", the Welsh lullaby.

Searching the Internet, I found a Japanese site with two tunes,
including RealAudio3 files and JPEG images of music strips, at the web
page of Norikatsu Hamaiso <norikatu@nnc.or.jp.geentroep> :

  http://www.nnc.or.jp/~norikatu/musicbox/musicbox.html

This is quite well worth visiting, with links to other Japanese music
box pages.  The tunes are very fine and are of his own composition.

 [ There is also a nice photo of the mahogany music box.  -- Robbie

I scanned my strip of "Suo Gan" and posted it back to Andy, and I'm
including it and a MIDI file expertly keyboarded direct from the
scanned image by the inimitable Robbie Rhodes.  Since there is no site
for this material, and since the point of having such a box is being
able to code your own arrangements, I would suggest we have an
"Organette 20" spot on the MMD site.

I do not envy Andy's wish to punch Clair de Lune by Debussy as heard
in "Seven Years in Tibet".  This is probably not possible with only a
two-octave scale with no chromatics.  I think it easiest to stick to
bagpipe and pennywhistle tunes, but think there must be another
instrument and literature out there which makes use of this limited
scale but more than a single note melody.

Karl Petersen
Washington, Illinois

 [ Watch for the new page at  http://mmd.foxtail.com/Sounds/
 [ -- Robbie