Print your own strips for DIY music boxes.
Only for 15-note music boxes right now.
It's best to use 110-pound card stock or thereabouts. Smooth, glossy card stock works best, but regular card stock will work fine as well. 67-pound card stock might be okay. Index cards might be iffy.
Regular printer/copy paper won't work with the music box mechanism, but you can print these on it to use them as worksheets.
Be sure to turn off any scaling options such as “Fit to paper size”, especially when printing the letter-size PDFs on A4 or something.
It's a music box mechanism. But instead of winding a spring-loaded mechanism, it plays a tune as you crank the little handle. And instead of a pre-set tune, you get to punch holes in paper strips to tell it what notes to play and when!
I don't know. I first heard about these via a couple of Vi Hart videos:
They're rather simplistic in that they have only 15 notes, spanning two octaves, and don't have sharps or flats. But some of the greatest works of art are made because of, and not in spite of, the inherent limitations of their medium.
Some I did:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTzsO6_rhQY
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Zym2dmDSFs 🤘😈🤘
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZAx4NiIzDo
More:
- at Amazon
- no longer
at ThinkGeek
No. Grand Illusions sells 20- and 30-note music boxes in addition to the 15-note ones.
They also sell additional music box strips like the long ones that came with your kit, if you think finding card stock, printing shorter strips, and taping them together is a hassle.
for 15-note music boxes:
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41 mm wide
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15 notes spaced 2mm apart across the strip. center of hole for low C note 6.5mm from edge; middle C note in center; center of hole for high C note 6.5mm from other edge.
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beats 8mm apart along the strip
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punched holes 2mm diameter
Short URL: bit.ly/music-box-paper
Copyright 2013 Darren Embry.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
